How to Show Just Excerpts in WordPress

By default, most WordPress themes are set up to display a post's full content, unless yuo manually set it to show an excerpt instead. You can either manually create a post excerpt for each post, or you can change your index file to automatically display a default generated excerpt, consisting of the first 55 characters of a post. Before editing your theme's core files, check your Options panel. Some themes include an option for displaying excerpts or full article content.

Instructions

Manual

1. Sign in to your Dashboard and click on "All Posts." Click "Edit" beneath the post for which you want to show the excerpt.

2. Click on the area in the text body to create the cut-off point. The text above this will be displayed as the excerpt.

3. Click on the "More" button to add the "More" tag. You may also click on "HTML" and type the following code to manually create the excerpt.

   <!--more-->

4. Click "Update" to save your changes to the article. The post's manually created excerpt will appear on the home page, instead of its full content.

Automatic

1. Sign in to your WordPress Dashboard. Click on "Appearance," then click "Editor."

2. Open the "Index.php" file. This is the file for your home page that includes the WordPress loop. If you'd prefer to show excerpts for category, tag or date-based archives, open the "Archive.php" file.

3. Locate the following code:

   <?php the_content(); ?>

4. Change the code to display the excerpt, rather than the post's full content:

   <?php the_excerpt(); ?>

5. Click "Update File." Excerpts of all posts will now be displayed, rather than the full article content.

Resources

• WordPress