Update: Things change radically in the plugin world, expecially when new version of WordPress is released and the developer stops supporting the plugin. While The Excerpt Reloaded still works as described below, it will not strip shortcodes in your post text before creating your excerpt. I am now using the Advanced Excerpt plugin, which does strip shortcodes.
I intend to use part of this blog to help me remember which plugins I have worked with, how I implemented them, and what I thought. I used The Excerpt Reloaded for a client a few weeks ago, and at the time I thought it was the handiest little plugin for the task at hand. Now my client has asked for the same thing on another blog, and I can’t remember how exactly I implemented his request. So here is a chronicle of my second time around with The Excerpt Reloaded.
The Excerpt
WordPress has a built-in function that, instead of showing the full contents of a post, shows either the first 55 characters of a post or the bit of text specified in the Excerpt field under Advanced Options on your Write Post page. This function is useful on any page where you want to provide a teaser of post content with a “Read more” link. See the WordPress codex page on how to use the_excerpt in theme templates.
The Excerpt Reloaded
The Excerpt Reloaded comes in handy if you want to change the number of characters shown in an excerpt or have your excerpt show an image. Using the plugin is quite simple, but it requires that you edit the template code. All you do is replace the_excerpt with the_excerpt_reloaded. Now there are many parameters that are available to you–the original plugin developer has a nice instructional webpage on the plugin usage and parameters. But note that if you want the newest version of the plugin, get it here.
The Results
My client wanted to show a 250 word excerpt on his home and archives pages. He also wanted the excerpt to show an image if there was an image in the post. To do this, I changed the_excerpt on his home and archives pages with with the following:
<?php the_excerpt_reloaded(250, '<a><img>', 'excerpt', TRUE, '(Read more...)', FALSE, 1, TRUE); ?>
That means, show 250 words in the excerpt, allow images and links to display in the excerpt, use the content specified in the excerpt field if there is one, display the “more” link, use “(Read more…)” as the more link text, do not force the “more” link if the post is shorter than 250 words, use the post content as your excerpt if an excerpt is not specified, and repair HTML tag elements if there are improperly closed tags.
See the final results on BallardBlog.com.
Thanks for the information! We are looking for a solution to showing the excerpt on a different page other than the blog “home” page. Will this work?
Yes, if you have a page using a different template, you can just put the_excerpt_reloaded() in the template and it will use that. Actually, I have been using a different excerpt plugin lately called Advanced Excerpt. This new plugin strips out shortcodes, which The Excerpt Reloaded does not do.