Title: Plugin to summarize posts on index?
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# Plugin to summarize posts on index?

 *  Resolved [jh20001](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jh20001/)
 * (@jh20001)
 * [17 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-to-summarize-posts-on-index/)
 * Is there a plugin or option someone to summarize the posts on the index page?
 * By index I mean the front page of the blog that lists ALL posts. I would like
   to summarize these, and then to view the full post the user would have to click
   on the post’s name to go to it’s separate page.
 * I see the options offer the capability of doing that for RSS feeds subscribers,
   but I don’t see anything for the blog itself.
 * Thanks 🙂

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  [Len](https://wordpress.org/support/users/lenk/)
 * (@lenk)
 * [17 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-to-summarize-posts-on-index/#post-995852)
 * 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](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v479/Hedgehog67/wp-forum/excerpts.png).
 * More reading:
    – Customizing the [Read More](http://codex.wordpress.org/Customizing_the_Read_More)–
   [the_content()](http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/the_content) – [the_excerpt()](http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/the_excerpt)
 *  Thread Starter [jh20001](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jh20001/)
 * (@jh20001)
 * [17 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-to-summarize-posts-on-index/#post-996023)
 * 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!
 *  [Len](https://wordpress.org/support/users/lenk/)
 * (@lenk)
 * [17 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-to-summarize-posts-on-index/#post-996028)
 * 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.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘Plugin to summarize posts on index?’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [index](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/index/)
 * [post](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/post/)
 * [summarize](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/summarize/)

 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Len](https://wordpress.org/support/users/lenk/)
 * Last activity: [17 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-to-summarize-posts-on-index/#post-996028)
 * Status: resolved

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