How to Show an Excerpt in WordPress Versus the Full Blog Post

Some blogs like to just show an excerpt of the post and then a link at the bottom of the blog post to view or read more. So how are they doing that? It’s easy!

First write your full blog post in the WordPress control panel or migrate from Word if that is what you do. At the place where you want you post to break, just put your cursor there. Then click the HTML tab at the top right of your blog post panel, just above the font control and hyperlink insertion menu.

Then where your cursor is located just paste in this code:

<!–more–>

When you go back to the Visual tab, to view your post, you will now see a dotted line where your post is to break. When you publish your blog WordPress will automatically add a link to read more and then take the reader to the exact section of the post on the new page.

Cool huh? A neat trick to use the excerpt function.

Okay now why don’t I use this on my own blog? Well I have found that typically the reader will not click in to read more on most blogs, they will simply read the next post and not click in unless they are REALLY interested in what you have written. So I do not use this feature on my own blog as I want to encourage readers to review my full content with minimal action on their part.

Why would a blog want to use this feature? Some blogs have so much content on the home page that to “look” less intimidating they will use the excerpt format. Sometimes to have a less cluttered look, and sometimes so they can get more content on the home page.

On Vacation

Wishing You a Happy New Year!
Wishing You a Happy New Year!

I’m taking a vacation next week and Chris Harper will be posting for me all next week on my blog. Chris is my college aged son who is home for the holidays from Frostburg State University.

Be gentle with him as he is a new blogger, but I’ve helped him to choose the topics that he will be writing on this next week. I think that you will like them.

If you can think of a topic also that you think he would find interesting, just click comments below and leave a note and I’ll pass the topics on to him.

I hope that you’ve had a wonderful family holiday, shared gifts with family and friends, and eaten enough to blow your diet.

As I will be back online after the New Year, I want to take this time to thank each one of you for reading my blog this year and pass on my wishes for a Happy and Healthy New Year!

WordPress 2.7 Code Named Coltrane

Loving WordPress 2.7!
Loving WordPress 2.7!

I’ve heard from a few interested parties asking for more information about WordPress 2.7 and is it worth the upgrade. I have to say wholeheartedly YES it is worth the upgrade!

WordPress is free, but the time and effort to install it is not. The first time I installed it, it took under 2 hours. So, why is it worth the under around two hour time investment?

  1. Once you upgrade to WordPress 2.7 you will never need to do a manual upgrade again. WordPress will upgrade the application itself. That alone is well worth the trouble.
  2. With WordPress 2.7 your plugins can be upgraded automatically with one click. Wow, that’s another good reason to make the installation worth the trouble.
  3. The site navigation, has moved from the top to the left and offers drop down options. No more poking around trying to find where to update settings for a plugin.
  4. Improved image upload. For me this is one of the biggest new features. My Flash based upload function stopped working when I upgraded to Flash Player 10. Installing WordPress 2.7 fixed this plus gave me some nice new options for images such as adding a caption and very simply image upload interface. I know that my blog writers will now easily be able to add a photo to a blog when they want from the 2.7 platform unlike some earlier versions of WordPress that really need someone who understands source code to go in to to view source and remove broken code that keeps an image from showing up.

All in all, I think that WordPress 2.7 is an excellent upgrade even to version 2.6.1 or 2.6.2. Once you’ve installed it, I think that you’ll agree it is well worth the several hours it takes to install it.