WordPress: How To Automatically Create Post Excerpt / Summary

WordPress provides you the capability to write an excerpt for your post. A post excerpt is displayed as a summary of the post in front page and archive pages. It is also used in RSS feeds where summary option is enabled.

To write a post excerpt you can click on Optional Excerpt section (below upload section) which opens up to show a text area for you to write an excerpt. However it is cumbersome to use. Also it is tiring to write an excerpt for every post when just the first paragraph of the post may suffice.

In most well written posts the first paragraph can also serve as the excerpt of the whole post. To facilitate that WordPress provides a more button which allow you to place a magical more tag ( <!–more–> ) anywhere in your post content. All content before the more tag is regarded as post excerpt. If you are lazy or if you hate to do repetitive task then like me you will search for an alternative. Let’s look at a WordPress plugin which will do this automatically for you.

Evermore is a WordPress plugin that automatically displays short previews of your posts on your home page. Each preview includes a link to the full post. Evermore is simple to use — just install it and it starts working straight away. If you want, you can also customise the length and appearance of the previews.

Evermore has the same effect as putting <!–more–> in every post to create a short preview of the post. Depending on your WordPress theme, the previews will appear on the home page, and also the archive and category pages. By default, the preview contains just the first paragraph, but if the first paragraph is very short then the preview will include the second paragraph too. This behaviour can be adjusted using Evermore’s Options page.

All formatting and HTML tags are preserved in the post preview. If the post already has a <!–more–> in it, then Evermore ignores the post, and the <!–more–> works as usual.

To stop Evermore creating a preview for a particular post, include the magic word <!–nevermore–> somewhere in the post. The magic word won’t appear when people view your post, but Evermore will see it and display the full post rather than just a preview.

I am using this plugin for a long time and I highly recommend it.

You can download Evermore plugin here.

Note: We provide tons of high quality free WordPress plugins and Anaconda, a popular WordPress theme too. Check WordPress Zone for full details of our contributions to WordPress community and developers.