[Plugin: List category posts] How to get Excerpt to show underneath link?

To fix the line breaks after the author, change the query (starting on line 61, at least in my editor) to this :

if($atts['author']=='yes'){
$lcp_userdata = get_userdata($single->post_author);
$output.=" - ".$lcp_userdata->user_nicename."<br />";
}

the real change is in the ".$lcd_userdata->user_nicename."<br />";

Works for me at least…

Thanks for all the tips. I thought I’d post my solution as well in case it’s helpful.

For the excerpt, I inserted a single line at line 66 (before endforeach;) in list_cat_posts.php (v0.4.1):

$output .= "<p>$single->post_excerpt</p>";

I used div, h2, and p tags rather than ul and li. It worked better with my theme and it also fixed the break issue with the excerpt. So, the complete code from line 43 to line 70 (was 69!) looks like this:

function list_category_posts($atts){
  $output .= "<div class='custom-style'>";
  if($atts['name']!='default' && $atts['id']!='0'){
    $category='category_name='.$atts['name'];
  }else{
    $category='category='.$atts['id'];
  }
  /*I should check this for the next version: ('category__in' => array(2,6))
    to allow posts from many categories.
    http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/get_posts#Parameters:_WordPress_2.6.2B */

  //Build the query for get_posts()
  $catposts=get_posts($category.'&numberposts='.$atts['numberposts'].'&orderby='.$atts['orderby'].'&order='.$atts['order']);
foreach($catposts as $single):
  $output .= "<h2><a href='".get_permalink($single->ID)."'>".$single->post_title."</a>";
  if($atts['date']=='yes'){
    $output.=" - ".$single->post_date;
  }
  if($atts['author']=='yes'){
    $lcp_userdata = get_userdata($single->post_author);
    $output.=" - ".$lcp_userdata->user_nicename;
  }
  $output.="</h2>";
  $output .= "<p>$single->post_excerpt</p>";
  endforeach;
  $output .= "</div>";
  return $output;
}

Since List Category Posts 0.5, you may show the excerpt using the plugin. You just need to add “excerpt=yes” to the shortcode, and if there’s an excerpt for the post, it’ll be displayed.

There’s also a new templates system for you to use ul, h3 or whatever style you need. Check it out:
List Category Posts

It only works with “excerpt=yes” if the posts have saved excerpts. It does not automatically generate excerpts from the first X words of the post if the excerpt field is empty.
I agree that it would be very nice to see the auto-excerpt function in future versions of this plugin.

The easiest thing I’ve found that fixes this is just switching back to 0.6.

This plugin is still fantastic – thanks! – but for some reason this release also doesn’t seem to be compatible out-of-the-box with Mailpress (I use it to generate content for a newsletter) which also works great with 0.6. This was the dealbreaker for me.

great plugin
+1 for auto excerpt tho, that would make it perfect