There’s a few ways to go about this.
1. Learn to customize the Read More
2. Use the_excerpt() rather than the_content()
3. Use a plugin
Personally I use option #2. For reference here is how. Open whatever template file is used to display your home page – it will be either home.php or index.php and replace the the_content() with the_excerpt(). By default, WordPress will pull the first 55 characters from your post when using the_excerpt(). If you want to adjust that then insert the following into your theme’s functions.php file …
remove_filter('get_the_excerpt', 'wp_trim_excerpt');
add_filter('get_the_excerpt', 'custom_trim_excerpt');
function custom_trim_excerpt($text) { // Fakes an excerpt if needed
global $post;
if ( '' == $text ) {
$text = get_the_content('');
$text = apply_filters('the_content', $text);
$text = str_replace(']]>', ']]>', $text);
$text = strip_tags($text);
$excerpt_length = x;
$words = explode(' ', $text, $excerpt_length + 1);
if (count($words) > $excerpt_length) {
array_pop($words);
array_push($words, '...');
$text = implode(' ', $words);
}
}
return $text;
}
Adjust the line $excerpt_length = x; to whatever you want. OR …. when using the_excerpt() you can also include your own hand crafted summaries. Beneath the “write post” window you will see a box that says “Excerpt”. You can insert whatever you want in there and that will be displayed on the home page. Here is a screen shot.
More reading:
– Customizing the Read More
– the_content()
– the_excerpt()
Great! Option two worked perfectly. Its too bad it cuts out images and html when displaying an excerpt but I guess that’s a sacrifice im willing to make. The front index looks much cleaner now that you can immediately see more than one most recent post vs seeing one large post pushing the previous ones way below. Thanks!
If you use the Except box beneath the write post window this should preserve your formatting. For images you can do that using custom fields.
