How Do I Use Post Excerpts in WordPress?

In this video tutorial, our Omaha web design and web hosting company will show you how to use post excerpts in WordPress. Post excerpts add visual appeal and usability to your site, and can also make your website more search engine friendly.

When you set up a new WordPress site, the entire post is displayed on your front page, and because your visitor has to go through all of the content, it can decrease the user experience. You can fix the issue by showing the list of your entire post by creating a post excerpt.

Simply log in to your WordPress website and go to the left-hand side of the page, then hover your mouse over the settings link. A sub-menu will appear, and then click on reading, and you will now be on the reading page of your settings. The default setting for your post is set to “Full Text”, and you can see that in the lower area of your screen.
Change that option to the summary, and then click “Save”.

After you click “Save”, hover over your post link on the left-hand side of the page, and click “All Post”. You will then click on the page title or hover over the title and click edit, and now you are editing the post. If you do not see the excerpt module area on the post edit page, you will need to enable it by going up to the top of your screen, clicking the screen options, and checking “Excerpt”. You should now be able to see your excerpt module in the post. In this area, you will write a brief summary of your post. You can optionally just copy a line directly from the post. When you are finished adding the excerpt, click “Update” located on the right-hand side of the screen. Depending on what theme you are using, you may still see your full post being displayed. The reason for the issue with not showing the post excerpt is because your excerpts also work with your RSS feeds to display a summary of your post in the feed.

If you are experiencing this issue, go back and edit your post, and then at the end of where you would like for the summary to conclude from your post in the text editor, and then click on the “Insert More Tag” that is located with the edit buttons above the text editor. There will now be a line separator in your post with everything above the line showing up as your excerpt. When finished, click the “Update button” located on the right-hand side of your screen. You will now see a post excerpt when you view the display of all of your posts, and when you click on the post header, you will then see the entire post.

If you have any questions regarding WordPress, or you need help designing your WordPress website, feel free to contact us at 402-813-0434, or fill our contact form.