Len

In my view WordPress is useless unless there is a system of support that works. Yes, I know they are all volunteers but it has not worked for me, and lot’s of other people if the number of unresolved problems is anything to go by.

The support surrounding this software is community-driven ie: you and me. Of the thousands of WordPress users out there only about a dozen or so help out in this forum answering questions on a regular basis. Do you see the volume of support tickets coming in on a daily basis? You do the math.

Actually another way to create custom length excerpts is to insert this in your theme’s function.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 x in $excerpt_length = x; to whatever you want.

With respect to images if you’re using excerpts on the front page you could use Custom Fields and place this in index.php right after the loop,

<img src="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/wp-content/themes/YOUR-THEME/images/YOUR-IMAGE.png" width="50px" height="50px" alt="" />

If you do this you’ll have to play around with the style sheet to get it to look right.

If you’re using excerpts elsewhere images won’t work. WordPress strips out all formatting on non-index.php/home.php post pages.

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The FYI says compatible up to WP 2.3 but I’m using it on WP 2.7 with no problems.

We can accomplish this by using the query_posts function. In that particular theme scroll down and find the Loop. It will look like,

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

Immediately before that add the query_posts function …

<?php query_posts('showposts=5&offset=1'); ?>

offset=1 will display posts after the most recent one while showposts= I think is obvious.

More reading on query_posts.

See any long term issues with that?

Nah. You can use all the stylesheets you want. They aren’t actually downloaded on a visitor’s browser until needed so it won’t affect load time.

Your approach is correct but of course now you have this ugly empty space where the sidebar used to be. 🙂 That’s easy to fix. You simply have to adjust your stylesheet. Look at the default Kubrick theme to see how it accomplishes this. Notice the content DIV on index.php and single.php uses different classes?

<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">

<div id="content" class="widecolumn">

Study the differences between these 2 in the stylesheet. It’s not that hard to wrap your head around it.

There’s a bug in mySQL version 5.0.51 and possibly others that can cause this especially when using themes that make use of queries. More info in this thread,

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/154622?replies=15

You won’t like this answer but since you haven’t upgraded in a long time you’ll want to do an incremental upgrade. Concise instructions in this thread,

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/215806?replies=3