This is a feature of WordPress rather than the theme, itself. That is, the default behavior for WordPress is to strip out any HTML tags (including links) from post excerpts (what you refer to as summaries). The reason for that is because there is a risk that a closing tag will not be contained within the 55-word limit of the excerpt.
That is, again, by default, the number of words that WordPress uses in the excerpt is 55 words. Let’s say you start a link at word 53 and the closing anchor (link) tag doesn’t appear until after word 60. Then your link is left open-ended, and could cause much more than your intended phrase to be interpreted as the link. It’s worse in cases where one might put in a DIV tag, and the closing DIV doesn’t get output. That tends to screw up the appearance of the entire page.
There are plugins that will allow HTML to be included within an excerpt. What you can also do (and what I recommend) is to use the Excerpt field in your post editor. That is, if you go edit a post, and scroll down, just under the Slider Options field is a field called Excerpt. You can copy & paste your own excerpt in there, including HTML code, and the HTML will be reproduced in your blog page. If you don’t see an Excerpt field below the Slider Options field, then click on the Screen Options tab in the upper right corner and check the box that’s labeled Excerpt.
Very succinct explanation, thanks very much. And it worked perfectly! I added the code below in my child theme to have the linked text show up better, as the black default on this theme for links is almost invisible.
.entry-summary a {
color:blue;
}
