In this tutorial, our Omaha web design and web hosting company shows you how to use post excerpts in WordPress. A post excerpt is a short summary of a post. Excerpts make your lists of posts easier to scan. Your RSS feed can also show a summary of each post instead of the full text.
When you set up a new WordPress site, the whole post shows on your front page. Visitors have to scroll through all of the text. A post excerpt shows a short summary instead, and visitors click to read the rest.
Log in to your WordPress website. On the left-hand side of the page, hover over “Settings” and click “Reading”. The setting for each post in your feed is on “Full Text” by default. Change it to “Summary”, and then click “Save”.
Next, hover over “Posts” on the left-hand side of the page and click “All Posts”. Click a post title, or hover over the title and click “Edit”.
If you do not see the “Excerpt” box on the post edit page, click “Screen Options” at the top of your screen and check “Excerpt”. Now the box appears on the post page.
In the box, write a short summary of your post. You can also copy a line from the post. When you finish, click “Update” on the right-hand side of the screen.
Some themes still show the full post on your WordPress website, even when you add an excerpt. In that case, use the “More” tag. Edit your post and click in the text where you want the summary to end. Then click “Insert More Tag” in the buttons above the text editor.
A line separator now shows in your post. Everything above the line is the excerpt.
When you finish, click “Update” on the right-hand side of your screen. Your list of posts now shows the excerpts. When a visitor clicks the post title, the entire post opens.
If you have questions about WordPress, or you need help designing your WordPress website, call us at 402-813-4034.
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