Quick Tip: How to replace full posts with excerpts on home page

If you have seen a WordPress theme that you’d like to use but don’t like that it shows a full post and want to show only an excerpt? Don’t fret, as modifying the theme to show only excerpts is pretty easy to do.

This assumes that you’ve edited WordPress theme files before and I recommend you have a back up of your theme files that you can easily upload to fix any potential problems but other than that it’s straight forward.

In WordPress admin, open Appearance -> Editor -> and select Main Index (“index.php”).

Then find the code:

php the_content('Read the rest of this entry »'); ?>

and replace it with:

<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

Note this code maybe not always be in the index.php file, it may been in a theme specific loop file. If you’re an advanced user, your best bet maybe is to add this to the bottom of your functions.php page via the instructions at WP Recipes.

Bonus - WordPress post excerpt resources:
The second thing you’ll want to do is to install the Better Excerpt plugin that will let you customize the length of your excerpt and replace the [...] with your own text plus a hyperlink to the full post.

If you need more information on posts/excerpts, here’s a great post at Rarst.net.

Update: if you want the quick and easy way, check out the Evermore plugin mini review…

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