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Grab The RSSHomepage Excerpts WordPress Plugin
I am glad to finally release Homepage Excerpts, a WordPress plugin that I have been developing with a friend for some time already. The plugin has two main objectives. The first one is to make blogs that use full posts on the homepage more search engine friendly. The second one is to give flexibility to people that want to use both full posts and excerpts on the homepage.
Homepage Excerpts for SEO
We are all aware that Google and other search engines penalize websites that contain duplicate content. Ideally, therefore, the content of your posts should be displayed fully in one location only, and that is the single post page.
Most blogs, however, display full posts on the homepage as well, and the posts remain being displayed in full even when they slip out of the homepage into page two, three and so on.
The Homepage Excerpts plugin can be used to reduce this duplicate content while keeping full posts on the homepage. Suppose you have 8 full posts on the homepage. Once you activate the plugin you will have the option to select how many posts to display fully in the homepage. The options will go from 1 up to 8. If you select 8, all your posts on the homepage will keep being displayed fully while all the other posts (the ones on page two, three, four and so on) will turn into excerpts.
Remember that new pages usually take one week or more to get indexed by search engines, so that by the time your single post page gets indexed the post will already be out of the homepage, and it will be displayed as an excerpt, removing the duplicate content issue.
Apart from SEO benefits this change might also improve the user experience. Displaying only post excerpts on the subsequent pages will make it easier for readers to scan them quickly while searching for the post that they are looking for.
Homepage Excerpts for Layout
The plugin can also be used if you want to use an hybrid layout on your homepage, displaying the most recent posts in full and the older ones with an excerpt. On this blog usually I display the most recent post in full while making the others show excerpts, so that the reader can scan quickly through all of them. Some other people might want to display half of the posts on the homepage fully and the other half with excerpts. With the plugin you have complete control over this.
Notice that you can also select if the plugin should extract the custom excerpt from WordPress (the one that you insert manually when writing an entry) or if it should automatically grab the first X words of each post, where X is a number that can be specified on the options panel.
Installation
- Download and unzip the plugin
- Uploade the file homepage-excerpts.php to your plugin directory. (Usually
located in wp-content/plugins/) - Log into the WordPress control panel, then go into “Plugins” and activate the
plugin - Still inside the WordPress control panel go into “options” and then “Homepage Excerpts”
- Update the plugin options as appropriate
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428 Responses to “Homepage Excerpts WordPress Plugin”
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Wow this is just great for SEO. I think I’ll install it immediately
If you have any problems using it or suggestions for upgrades let me know.
Daniel, I have a different view. Putting a full page in home page and then same post as single post is duplication by itself.
why not just use the_excerpt in the wordpress loop instead of the_content. This will just display exceprts.
Home page gets indexed faster and this will create duplicate content when its time your single page gets indexed. I think its better to use exceprts everywhere. The first 30 lines are more than enough to which is showed in exceprts to get it into serach engines
Moreover i had seen posts getting indexed in a day or 2 now. Even matt cluts said about it that google indexing had gone faster now.
Ashish, there is a percentage of readers that don’t like post excerpts in the Homepage, that is why the majority of blogs (including big ones like TechCrunch) still use full posts on the Homepage.
Bloggers that want to keep full posts on the homepage, therefore, can use the plugin to minimize the duplicate content issue.
Also, even if the post gets indexed in two days, it will remain duplicate only for as long as it stays on the homepage, once it goes to page 2 that gets fixed.
Hey cool plugin man, I just installed it. Great job.
innovative plugin, great job!
I definitely appreciate this. My readers are pretty into full posts on the homepage – but I’ve been worried about SEO troubles. I think this plugin helps me maintain a healthy balance. Thanks a lot!
Eric Grey
BMM member
For a french version, you can have a look here
Nico, I will ask you to not offer the download of the plugin directly from your blog. I welcome anyone writing about it, but please just put a link to this page.
Sorry about this, but it is the only way I have to control how many people are downloading it and to keep the code intact.
Daniel I’ve always manually set things up so my most recent posts shows in full and then after that it’s the excerpt on the home page. I add the -more- comment.
I think I’ll like you’re plugin better as a solution since the manual approach means going back into each post and adding the comment after publishing the next post.
It looks worth leaving WordPress.com for.
I have to achieve something similar in a very hacky way by using CSS display:none; for all the posts except for the first post, and then getting rid of the navigation options off of the first page.
Great idea! I’ve been concerned about duplicate content but I’ve been reluctant to move to partial posts on my main page. This definitely opens up some opportunities.
Great plugin! My only problem with it is that it doesn’t display a link at the end of the full post to comment or at least to view them. In fact, the full post cuts abruptly at the end of the article, and that’s it. I would be nice to be able to add a link at the end to comment and customize that text from within the plugin’s CP.
Michel, I think what the links you are talking about (or the lack of them) are coming directly from your theme.
The plugin will display whatever links your theme has specified with full posts and excerpts.
Let me know if you are referring to something else.
Daniel,
Congratulations on the first plugin! I think it will be helpful for thousands of WordPress users, and hopefully it will give you a lot of backlinks too.
Thanks Steven, 250 downloads so far. The plugin was born out of a problem I had, so it is good if other people will benefit from it as well.
Fantastic plugin – worked perfectly!
I’m with Ashish on this Daniel. Homepages get very little traffic, so it’s better to go with a simple solution like just displaying excerpts. It’s what you do with your category pages, so why all the hassle on the homepage?
Also, displaying full posts on could actually be bad for SEO! Some robots only index a limited amount of words, then displaying full posts will mean that some of your content won’t get picked up!
Wow, very sweet plugin! Thanks a lot. It really helps.
nice one..this is going to be useful for me..
I have been searching around for a good plugin for exerpts and what a coincidence that your’s is out at just the right time. Thank you Daniel!
Hi Daniel,
Great plugin. I had this same idea but instead got it manually hard coded into my blog http://www.designsojourn.com. I can control via php calls the number of full posts and the remaining older posts as just titles below.
However my question is what about RSS feeds? Will the conversion into excerpts affect the RSS feed as well?
I originally had all my posts as excerpts, but at the request of my RSS readers I removed the excerpts and run full posts on the front page. But I am now a victim of copyright thief and am thinking of switching back.
Anyways, I disagree with Everton, my home page is my entry point, and having excerpts means one more click away for my readers.
Thanks again I will use it on my others blogs.
Works great! A couple of suggestions: you might want to give users the option of trailing excerpts with a [...] so it doesn’t end so abruptly, and maybe place a line break before the “Continue Reading” link for a cleaner look.
Hi Daniel,
I’ve got it up at my blog http://www.designsojourn.com but there is a bug the “Use custom post excerpt?” is not picking up the “more” tag. Not sure if its me or the plugin, but do check it out.
thanks!
dt, the custom excerpt option is supposed to pick the text that you enter on the “Optional Excerpt” field when writing a post on WP, and not the more tag.
Thanks for the input everyone, I am working on putting a trailing […] at the end of the excerpts so that it you will look nicer.
Regarding the space between the excerpt and the “Read more…” link, I think you can customize it manually via CSS.
Everton, I agree with you and Ashish. However, many bloggers prefer to have full posts on their homepage regardless of any SEO problems, since most of their readers like it that way (and you cant argue with the fact that a blog should be built for the readers and not for the search bots).
That is where the plugin comes into play, it help these bloggers limit the diplicate content issues while STILL displaying full posts.
@Daniel: The plugin works like a charm. I had no problems using it.
Great plugin! – I installed and activated it yesterday. My site gets a fair amount of traffic to the front page so I’ve always displayed full posts there. It’s great to have a way to address SEO concerns on subsequent pages. Thank you!
Nice plugin
downloading it
Thanks for the great plugin and to Michael Marine to pointing to you.
Thanks Daniel, I will look it up more at the wordpress site.
sorry but this plug dont take care about the “more” field in my posts, i want to show 4 full post ok, but i want them full until it come the “more” tag. i dont want them completly full. any solution?
sorry for my english, hope you see what i mean. thx
ppgc, currently the plugin is not compatible with the more tag, you either show posts in full or you show them in excerpt. But you can select how many words the plugin should pick from the post to put in the excerpt.
The plugin has been updated so it does not cut excerpts abruptly, now it adds a [...] after the excerpts.
I am going to try this plugin. I tried a different plug in some months ago but it did not work properly. Thanks.
Awesome – thank you so much. I will definitely be using this.
Nice one Daniel! A great idea.
Wow, just what i have been looking for!!!
finally.
Cool idea for a plugin!
I have to admit I chop/change between full and excerpted posts on the homepage, depending on the content that it’s going to display (I have a 2-column that squishes images, so for the sake of aesthetics, it’s best to include that after ‘more’ tab) I have no idea if my visitors prefer full or excerpted posts though – is there an easy/straightforward way of finding this out short of doing a survey?
Thanks
Check the discussion we had here for some insights: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/post-excerpts-on-the-homepage/
Looks and works great, except…
a number of my posts are very short, less than the number of words used for the excerpt, followed by a youtube embed. The plugin seems to ignore the video, so it shows what it thinks is the entire post with no [Continue Reading...], but doesn’t have the embedded video shown. It is still there if you open the post.
Great plugin idea, and it works perfectly. However, I want to raise the same concern that PPGC raised above about the compatibility with the “more” tag.
I want to leave the first several articles fully exposed (as your plugin is designed for), but once in a while, I get long winded, and while I may want more than the excerpt displayed when the article in initially posted, I might want to break it further down.
But, I do understand your logic.
I will try to upgrade it with compatibility with the more tag. Thanks for the input guys.
Excellent plugin. I am using it on my arts blog now, to keep more posts (excerpted) on the home page for users arriving via SE expecting to see outdated but indexed content. Goodbye “more” tag. I can’t wait to look at site traffic now, to see if search terms get folks to what they seek on home page (perhaps fewer 0 zero seconds visits?).
Thanks!
Hi Daniel,
Love the plugin.
The only problem I’ve found is that I don’t seem to have a menu item for it under Options. I only need the menu because I want to show 2 posts in full on the home page.
Thanks
Jim
Hi Daniel,
False alarm I’ve found the menu item it’s under Options/Reading
Thanks
Jim
Great Plugin – Nice job, works Perfect!
Hi Daniel,
Excellent plugin!
I have been looking for this sort of a plugin for quite some time now as I was not in favour of changing the theme code to achieve this.
I have a few suggestions, though:
1. In the Options -> Number of posts to be displayed fully, could you please have the option from 0 to 10 so that we can have the option to have all posts as excerpts. I would actually prefer to have all posts as excerpts on the home page.
2. I would prefer if you could extend this excerpts facility to Category, Archives and Search Pages also. Because, duplicate content can occur in these pages also.
Thanks
Regards
Raj
Hi Daniel,
This is in continuation of my earlier comment about having the same facility for other pages like Archive, Search and Category pages.
The purpose of my suggestion is that if we can show the custom excerpts on these pages too, then the question of duplicate content will never arise.
Thanks
Regards
Raj
V.K., regarding your point 1, the number of posts that the plugin shows is related to how many you display in the homepage.
If you currently have 5 posts in the homepage it will ask “how many to display fully, from 1 to 5?”
If you have 10, it will ask from 1 to 10 and so on.
I will keep in mind the second suggestion, could be a good one indeed.
Very nice plugin. I find that I’m writing rather long posts. Your plugin is handy because it automatically excerpts the posts. A couple things I’ve noticed, however:
- I’m lamenting the loss of the formatting in my posts on the homepage with this plugin. Unfortunately it may be enough for me to turn it off and manage it manually. I played around with the PHP a little bit but anything other than what you’re doing (stripping tags) would likely be too onerous for a filter. If you can think of a way to preserve formatting, I’d be all over that.
- The admin page should be titled “Homepage excerpts options” instead of “General options” (minor nit).
Thanks again for the plugin, though.
David
Oops. The admin page should be titled “Homepage Excerpts Options”, not “Homepage excerpts options”, to remain consistent with other options pages.
Thanks David, I will keep that on the to-do list for next versions.
Great plugin, Daniel.
One thing I’ve found isn’t being applied to my homepage, is the length of excerpt. I want to show a little more text than at present, but updating the 30 words to 50 or 60 doesn’t seem to have an effect.
Have you come across something similar?
Off-topic, I’m publishing my prize draw winners in a couple of hours. Thanks again for the kind donation.
It’s sorted now. Sorry about that buddy.
This plugin ROCKS! This was exactly what I was looking for. I just wish there was an option to make an excerpt of the latest article as well, but a bigger excerpt. So, in the case your latest article is quite long, you could split it up.
Any way to keep the images in the excerpt?
Hi Daniel,
I’ve been on your site most of the day, reading your valuable posts. I have been researching robots.txt and duplicate content, and you have covered both subjects very well.
I downloaded your Homepage Excerpts WP plugin, and it’s working perfectly. That was one thing I had been looking for, and luckily I landed on your site, and took the time to read some of your older posts.
Thank you for the great plugin, and for sharing your knowledge with the rest of us. It’s most appreciated.
Brett, there is no support for images yet. I will try to work this out on future updates.
This is a fantastic plugin! I’m using it on a non-profit blog I helped put together. My only concern is that a lot of the posts have images that I’d like displayed on the homepage, but the plugin seems to be set up so that the images aren’t displayed no matter how many words are in the excerpt. Is there any way to tweak this? I noticed a similar comment earlier (about YouTube videos) but didn’t see a reply.
Thank you very much for this plugin. I had been trying for the past week to figure out how to have my first post on my blog page show up in full while the rest were shown as excerpts and your plugin solved that problem perfectly! Once again, I am extremely grateful. Keep up the excellent work.
is there any way that I can use tag on the first post?
by the way, this plugin is great I’ve been looking for this for almost a month now.
Hi, great plugin but there are 2 things: the “more” tag is disabled (is it possible to re-enable it trough the plugin editor?), and it would be nice to add a resized image alongside of the excerpt.
Thanx
If you want to have all the posts on your homepage display as excerpts change the code that says
for ($i=1;$i
Hey, this is really great plugin. I remember those mistakes of mine when even PDF print versions of articles allowed to be indexed…
I like it and I am gonna try this.
How do you turn all the posts on the home page to show only excepts? I write long articles and would like to keep my home page brief.
This is a nice wordpress plugin..Will soon try it out on my college’s wordpress blog..
change the line of code that says “for ($i=1;$i
Great plugin! Now, if only it would allow option for images and the “more” tag, it would be perfect. Any chance of an updated version coming any time soon?
Thanks
It doesnt work for me, it only works on the first old 2 Posts of my intire blog, the rest stay full posts…no idea why…
Hey, I’m not sure but it seems that this plugin makes my feeds partial feeds. In WP settings I’ve chosen that full text is shown in my feed but they are still partial texts.
Is there a way to configure this plugin so that full text would be shown in the feed rather than partial text?
Great plugin idea! Thanks
Daniel,
Outstanding plugin!
One question…
Is there any way to allow the excerpt to include a post’s opening pic?
For example, if a post began with a left-justified 150 X 150 photo, is there any way for the photo to be included in the excerpt?
Thanks
Joe, yeah, you need to set the options of the plugin to use the custom WP excerpt (the one you can insert below the text editor), then just add the picture code there.
Thanks a lot for the great plugin.
Is it possible to make set number of posts to display fully to “0″. So all posts in the front page will be post as excerpt.
Yeah, you just need to change the code so that the minimum number of posts displayed fully is 0
I will try to update it with “0″ as an option.
You can also tweak your WP theme files to achieve that easily though.
If you want me to, I can send you a file that has 0 as an option.
Please do Dan, else this will sit on my to-do list for a couple of weeks…
OK thanks to Dan the plugin is now updated and you can select 0 as an option.
Hey Daniel,
great plugin, any chance to fix this problem Paul (43) told you. When you have a very short text and after that a video, it’s not showing the link.
Thanks
Alex
Thanks for the plugin! This, and an improved robots.txt file, seems to be helping improve Google’s indexing of my site.
I like the plugin, but I’m not certain about how it works when I set it to use the first X words instead of a custom excerpt. It seems to strip all the formatting from the text, so that links in the excerpt are no longer links, and so forth. Is there a way to set it do an excerpt based on the number of words but have it keep the formatting in the excerpt?
Just wanted to say thanks for sharing. I am a complete novice and WordPress (and bloggin for that matter) and this was exactly what I wanted. Evne better it was easy enough for me to actually activate. Cheers Daniel.
If you want to keep your text formating and any html, images and videos, you will need to use the custom excerpt option, and include the part of the post that you want to appear on the homepage on the “Optinal Excerpt” field that you have below the WP text editor.
I’m using this in the latest wordpress and it doesn’t appear to be doing anything…
Glen, I tested it until version 2.1.3 and it was working.
Not sure if 2.3 introduced anything that could clash with the plugin, but I doubt.
Did you set all the options?
Yeah I set all the options
So install, activate, set options and save
And doesn’t show any full-posts
In #85, you said that “the plugin is now updated and you can select 0 as an option.”
I downloaded using the link in the post and it still doesn’t give me 0 as an option–only 1-10. Did I miss something somewhere?
Great work Daniel! Thanks!
Homepage Excerpts is a great plugin. Unfortunately it breaks password protected posts in the BlixKrieg theme. I posted my first password protected post today and found the problem. I am using version 1.0 of Homepage Excerpts. I had to disable the plugin, but look forward to re-installing when the problem is fixed.
Thanks for the great work,
Zack
Wanted to let you know that Homepage Excerpts conflicts with the Amazon Machine Tags Plugin (which allows bloggers to include cover image, title, and link to Amazon products). Apparently, both plugins add a filter to the_content, and Homepage Excerpts prevents Amazon Machine Tags from working on the home page.
@Dan, it should have the 0 option there already, I will double check in any case.
Finally, yeah there might be conflicts with other plugins, but it should be a rare case.
Hello, I’ve just read your post and installed your useful plug-in on my Blog. I’ve heard about the search engine penalization for duplicate content but I’ve not seen it written about so thanks for the info.
Jas
Jason Slater Weblog
http://www.jasonslater.co.uk
Does anyone know if this plug in works with the Pop Blue theme (http://www.blogohblog.com/wordpress-theme-pop-blue/)? It doesn’t seem to on my site.
Though i really did not think much in terms of the SEO part, coz i why would SE peanilize me as both the pages are on my website and i am sure now SE’s recognize which is a blog and which is not. Never the less, this is a very good plugin from the readers point of view. Thanks
@Paul on September 11th, 2007 12:14 pm
I get the same problem. Perhaps in a next update of the plugin this would be resolved?
Awesome plugin man. Just what the doctor ordered. Thanks a lot and continue developing such useful plugins. Appreciate it.
It’s works!!
Nice plugin, I will use it on my blog. Thanks
Hey Daniel,
as Dan said in comment #94, there is still no option to select 0.
For everybody else, switch
for ($i=1;$i
to
for ($i=0;$i
Alex
Thanks for the plugin. I was really looking it for my shopping blog!
Thanks a lot!
Thanks Alex.
@ Daniel Scocco, my pleasure
Saying that search engines take a week to index the content is absolutely wrong. As far as Google’s indexing of blogs is concerned, it is as fast as 2 minutes from the time of publishing
hi, take a look at the homepage of my blog:
http://www.emigrant.be/blog/
starting from the second post i want to show the excerpts, but the excerpts still include my flash-movies.. is there a way to get rid of the movies in the excepts?
thanks
@Vikrant, it depends on dozens of site-specific parameters. TechCrunch or the NY Times might get indexed after 2 minutes. I doubt that a small blog will, though.
@Gert Leroy, use the option to use the WP optional excerpt, and then for each post you paste just the text you want below the text editor on the “Optinal Excerpt” area.
hello Daniel, even when i use the option to use the WP optional excerpt, the posts still show the movies. i use mediacaster to embed my flash movies into wordpress.
http://www.semiologic.com/software/publishing/mediacaster/
is there a conflict with the mediacaster plugin and yours?
another thing i have noticed:
for embedding youtube videos into wordpress you can use the Youtube Brackets plugin. if you do so, the video will be shown as well in the excerpts using your plugin. However, if you use the WPvideo plugin, the videos don’t get shown.
Is there any way to fix this? thanx
If you use the WP optional excerpt and put some text there, only that text you inserted will be showed in the pages.
hello Daniel, that is true for the Youtube videos. It is not true for the mediacaster videos. I have added an optional excerpt for my last 3 posts and still the videos get shown
settings:
Number of posts to be displayed fully: 1
Use custom post excerpt? Yes
If not using post excerpts, grab the first X words from the post: 25
see: http://www.emigrant.be/blog/
Hey Daniel. Neat plugin. I was wondering thought what’s to be changed if lets say i want to display only excerpts on my home page and not even a single full post.
Oh, i figured it out myself. I had to change $i=1 to $=0 on line 59.
Correct Dan, this should have been implemented on the plugin by now. Somehow it is now, I will check it out.
hello Daniel,
is there any news yet about the use of the mediacaster plugin together with yours? i can’t get the movies out of the excerpts..
thanks
Gert, that is something that we can’t fix right now. It would involve checking what is the part of the plugins that is clashing and fixing it (i.e. a lot of time).
Sorry about that.
I just fixed the option to have all posts as excerpts though, so just download this new version if your old version still had a limit of 1.
新装的wordpress 2.51，不知好不好用啊。先下载个试试。
Anyway this could also excerpts posts on archives/categories page?
Dan, not right now. This would be more complicated to do from a single plugin though.
Note: in WP version 2.5
# Still inside the WordPress control panel go into “options” and then “Homepage Excerpts”
should be
# Still inside the WordPress control panel go into “settings” and then “Homepage Excerpts”
Great plugin. Thank you very much for taking the time to create and share it with the WP community. The time to create is one thing. I’m sure the time to answer everyone is just as time consuming, so double thanks.
ps: I’ll add my vote on showing images …
OK Daniel, since the clash with the mediacaster plugin can’t be fixed (for now) i would like to show the first post fully and the rest only the title and the footer. So no excerpt at all. That would be a way to work around the fact that my videos get shown. Is there any way to do that?
thanks
Gert
good!
what are the main advantages of a wordpress blog instead of nucleus or drupal?
Teşekkür ederim bu güzel eklenti için, blogun seo suna katkı da bulunacak
… (Tükrçe – Turkish)
Thank you very much this plugin… (English)
@Gert, yes, but you would need to tweak some PHP code.
awesome SEO plugin.
But in a few months every wordpress blog uses this and other plugins sow they will become useless i think…
Grea plug in definitely it will be useful when it comes to me putting a blog on wordpress which will hopefully be soon, still contemplating whethers its worth starting another site yet.
I have 7 article per page, i don’t get it, i tried 1 article to be displayed fully but still showing the article as excerpt.
forgot my site is eligio.org, i’m using wordpress 2.5 version.
@123: Another vote to extend to archives/category pages. Great plugin nonetheless! TIA
Hi there,
Thanks for the plugin. I installed it without any problems, but for odd reasons it does not show the first post full. They are all excerpts.
Also, in line 59 how can I use the title post as anchor text instead of “continue reading”.
Your help is much appreciated.
Hi Daniel,
I am a noobie in bloggin thingy just downloaded the plugin andit works like a charm bt i had set the nor words to take as 60 as i had edited the php script… now the prob is its cutting short half way of the sentence and it makes no sense of it .. Please tell me how do i add excerpts tag in ma posts so tht i can select tht onyl this sentence has to come as excerpts on ma homepage..
thanks and regards
SId
Very helpful. I will use it on my blog. thanks.
Could anyone help me with tweaking the PHP code so the images stay on the excerpts? That would be great help.
Contact me on my blog or email me at gerard AT slashdox DOT com. Thanks!
@Spanish SEO, you would need to open the php file of the plugin and modify the “continue reading” message to whatever you want.
@Sid, best way to solve this is to make the plugin grab the optional excerpt field, so you can add anything you want to go to the homepage there.
@G, just use the optinal excerpt field on wordpress, and put the image code there.
I ll try and let u knw if it works or nt..thanks
i’ve setup it my wp blog. thx a lot!
good!
wanderfull!
thanks for the plugins
Daniel
Thanks for the plug-in, it was exactly what I needed. I do have a problem though. I have set controls to display the top two posts in full and everything else shows excerpt and continue reading.
My problem is that links to other blogs, newspapers and the like disappear when the continue reading option kicks in. Do you have any code suggestions that keep links to other sites working after your plug-in does its magic?
Thanks … Jolyon
Here’s the problem that I am having:
For some reason I can’t use the excerpts feature on the theme that I have. I can only use the ‘more’ tag. But I want to use the excerpts feature on my homepage.
Will this plugin allow me to do that?
Note: I don’t want full posts on my homepage. I just want excerpts.
wow. I only find this now.
Thanks.
Its really fantastic plugin. Its really help us. Thanks you.
Great plugin. However I cant seem to excerpt the categories/archives. Dan I saw how to excerpt archives on youtube but I dont even have a archives.php file on my theme. how can I excerpt archives and categories?
GREAT tool! The “more” tag in WordPress kept breaking my homepage. This tool works perfectly.
Thanks, Steve
thank for you..
thanks for you..
I tried to change things in the theme files, but I don’t inderstand php very well. I started searching the web and I found your plugin and I’m using it! Thank you very much!!!
thanks.
A thousand thank-yous! This is exactly what I was trying to accomplish with my menial coding skills. You have saved me hours of hair-pulling and head-beating. Bless you.
*skips away singing a happy tune*
This is a good plugin, but it does not work for Chinese… It still displays full Chinese text on every page. If the text is in English, it works perfect, though.
I don’t know why, but the full post option is not working. I want to display 1 full post and the rest excerpts. I went into options and it still doesn’t work, I’m still seeing all excerpts.
thanks for excellent plugin..Just installed on my blog..
Wow, was looking for something like this since long. I am glad I stumbled here.
Great plugin. Works wonderfully on my site – exactly what I needed. My theme gives the option of excerpts, but not the option of keeping the first post full length.
I would like to add my votes to those who would like this to extend to archives and category pages.
Thanks for your work on this plugin!
http://www.engberts-kaya.com
Greeeat plugin, i stumble immediatly.
thanks a lot.
Thanks for this. I’m in the process of converting from Joomla to WordPress – I’m finding a lot of valuable plugins.
I really like the concept of this plugin. I have been struggling with this issue, as I often write long posts, and it seems a perfect solution. But I had to deactivate the plugin because when using a no. of word cutoff (not custom excerpt), I lost formatting I really want to see. Specifically, I use a lot of h2 headings, and they displayed as regular text in the automatic excerpts. Any suggestions of how to fix this? I’m not very technical, so can’t figure this out on my own, but I can certainly get in and edit the plugin code if you suggest a change.
great plug!
why does it strip out hyperlinks in posts on home page?
Great plug-in. I have one question though. Is it at all possible to include a post excerpt and an image? I think that my readers are very image focused so I would like to have an image to pull them to the post plus a quick excerpt- the post themselves are often tutorial based so they tend to be image heavy and long- so i don’t like to display them in full. any suggestions?
sharing for thanks. a lot of nice.
This is great, I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time. I still cant believe wordpress doesnt include an automatic option like this is the original package.
Thanks a lot!!!
Good job man, I really like it! Install is a fuzz, just install and run.
Many thanks,
Justin
I love your plugin. It’s simple and easy to install!
I share Michelle’s sentiment: Is it possible to include an IMAGE on the homepage excerpt? It seems to strip it off.
Let me know how to do this.
Thanks!
Absolutely one of my favorite wordpress plugins to date!
I have installed the pludin on webmastershouse.com , I think its useful.
But I already have READ MORE button on my theme. How can I remove continue reading option ???
amazing! this is the exact plug-in i was looking for. thank you!
Great plugin. Thanks so much for developing this.
Thank for your plugin that has improve my seo.
Awesome plugin, I always use it with new WP installations.
Well it works and that what you want with a pluggin. Thanks for coding it as i cant do with it
Thanks for this – saved my sanity!
Definitely a must have plugin. Thank you so much for this.
Salamat!
I am not getting the meaning of :
Number of posts to be displayed fully:
Pls explain it
Hey guys I did the same think by editing the code on my index page. So in essence it shows full post on my home page and excerpts on the rest of the page.
My problem is this, how do you make it where the home page has a description of the site at the top and then the articles at the bottom?
Please help.
Hi, Nice plugin but…
Except of full posts showing in the homepage, I think it had better to put the excerpt code instead the content manually.
I have tested your plugin and my conclusion was that it’s only necessary for people that want to let some full posts at home. Correct me if I am wrong.
Thanks.
all seo plugin plus your plugin is all i need to give seo skill to my blogs, thanks
Great plugin. Was looking for something that could do exactly what this does – make proper wordpress excerpts on the homepage.
Thanks!
Thanks for the plug-in! I have downloaded and tried it. It is really useful tool for website owner.
Great idea! I’ve been concerned about duplicate content but I’ve been reluctant to move to partial posts on my main page. This definitely opens up some opportunities.
Definitely a must have plugin. Thank you so much for this.
Excellent plugin, I’ve started using it on a brand new coupon website we’re putting together.
Really allows us to display the content on the homepage much better.
I installed Homepage Excerpts, but it doesn’t seem to be working. I set it at 2 posts, No to customer excerpts, and 25 words.
Could my theme be overriding the plugin?
Great plugin. I had problems installing it. It will work, but on the top of my page it now shows the following text:
Installation 1. Uploade the file homepage-excerpts.php to your plugin directory. (Usually located in wp-content/plugins/) 2. Log into the WordPress control panel, then go into “Plugins” and activate the plugin. 3. Still inside the WordPress control panel go into “options” and then “Homepage Excerpts” 4. Update the plugin options If you have any doubts or problems using the plugin please refer to its official page: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/homepage-excerpts-wordpress-plugin/
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/…/wp-content/plugins/readme.txt:10) in /home/…/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 850
I seem to have resolved my issue by deleting the contents of the “readme.txt” file. Strange.
Great plugin! Been looking for something like this for ages.
Great plugin, I just installed it and it is exactly the one I was looking for. Thank you for your smart help.
Great plugin – thanks a stack
Was wondering though – if one of my posts has an image in it is there anyway for me to display the image as part of the excerpt?
Awesome Plug-in,
Thanks for providing it.
I have a question. Is it possible
to remove the dates from the excerpts?
I know dates can be removed from the posts themselves but
can i do the same for the excerpts on my home page?
Thanks for your time
Thanks for a great plug-in!
/Jonas
I misfollowed a step in installation now my website has an error at the very top. It display’s the plugin’s installation advice. Not sure how I can remove it atm, already deleted the .php for the plugin.
Please advise
Works great! A couple of suggestions: you might want to give users the option of trailing excerpts with a [...] so it doesn’t end so abruptly, and maybe place a line break before the ?
Wow this is just great for SEO. I think I’ll install it immediately
Great plugin! Been looking for something like this for ages.
Love the plugin. Is there a way to include the thumbnail photo with the excerpts?
Looks good. Seems to solve the duplicate content issue. Thanks!
Hi Danial
Thanks for Homepage Excerpts, I was searching for this & i submit a question on wordpress forum & DP, I want Summary of post on homepag instead of full post so i found ur site & activate Homepage Excerpts on my site, it is working perfectly but dear it is working on homepage & archive pages only, not working on category pages. When i click on any category it open with full posts.
Please Improve it more. Its first time i am on ur site now i will visit when i got time your site & learn more…
Thanks for the plugin. I’ve been following the different coding versions on the web, and so excited to see this as a plugin. Count me in for another vote for recognizing the “more” tag. I think having that would make it even better!
What a fantastic! I`ll try it
For those interested in how to do the same on each archive/cateogry page you can follow this simple instructions:
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/how-to-make-category-pages-display-post-excerpts/
option of trailing excerpts with a [...] so it doesn’t end so abruptly, and maybe place a line break before the ?
i love your plugin. thank you.
- using an tag in the custom excerpt field
- works great on home page
- on permalink page the excerpt text that is after the img tag in the custom excerpt field is showing up at the top left corner of the browser (right after the tag) with (“/>) trailing.
any ideas how to fix?
- i’ve triple checked my html tags.
- it doesn’t happen if i don’t use html
This is a great plugin and I have used it on several sites of mine.
Why not add a donation button? Think it is worth donating to as it is a great plugin.
Keep up the great work.
Kozan.
Hi, I have installed this plugin & activated it but I can see no-where I can modify the ‘Home-Page Excerpts’ in “Options” as mentioned. I have been in every category and found nothing applicable
Our version is 2.8.4 and theme is the standard ‘fsimple’.
Please can someone direct me more precisely, thanks!
Rebecca
I’ve just installed the plugin and it’s working great! Many thanks.
Hi – Is this plugin available thru the WordPress site? I can’t seem to find it. I downloaded a plugin a few months ago that had an iFrame hack in it, so needless to say I’m a bit hesitant to grab this.
Let me know.
I love this plug in! It beats doing it post by post…thx!
Home page excerpts is excellent plugin form my site as visitor can see which post he wana read in 9 posts.
i like it & found after a long search here.
Thanks
Hi!
Great plugin, just what I was looking for as I know little about coding and this helps a lot. I have installed and activated the plugin, however the post and excerpts are all showing in my “journal ” page instead of the home page. I simple wanted to have my latest post and maybe one excerpt but it is not. I have the Gears wordpress theme. Any ideas as to what i can do? Also, in the options section I cannot choose how many excerpts I want to use. Is this the case?
thanks for any feedback!
Hi Daniel
Seems like a great plugin for helping to stop duplicate content.
Sorry to ask but why is it not in the WordPress plugin directory?
I’ll probably give it a try anyhow.
I have yet to try this out tonight…i suspect that it will have an influence on the homepage.
My problem is I’ve been trying to do this for the subnav bar and Recent Posts sidebar as well, where clicking on these areas take you to the full post immediately, thus bypassing the excerpts by default. My website is structured in such a way where I only have one post per category, so excerpts are pretty redundant that only results in unnecessary additional clicks for the viewer.
I have been trying to find a code modification or plugin for this in the last few days but have been unsuccessful. Someone commented about extending this plugin to the category, archive etc pages, and I think that is precisely the thing I’m looking for.
Thank you.
The wordpress excerpt plugin, thats fantastic!
One question/concern….dup content wise. Here is my situation. I have a wordpress blog where I have a sticky post that is a sales letter basically. I want to leave that in full post mode, yet make all the rest of the front page excerpts.
I see I can do that with this plug in,however, my question/concern is. When I leave that one post in full mode,that means it is duplicate content because it is also in full mode in the single post area.
I suppose I would need to noindex and/or nofollow that single post view?
Thoughts? Thanks
Hi Daniel
Thanks so much for a brilliant plug-in. I was starting to lose hope that I’d find a simple solution to my overcrowded landing page but your plug-in is perfect. Installed in 3 minutes or less. Thanks again!
This is a great plugin. It solve my problem. Just one question: is it possible to display images too?
Thanks
You have some great plugins on your post. Your insight and expertise would be a welcome addition to our new community, i hope you will consider joining, and thanks for sharing!
Your plugin is absolutely awesome, not only because it actually works and allows you to show your excerpts, but also because it adds flexibility so you can really pretty much do what you want with the content in your homepage.
Thanks for the great plug-in!
Thanks for bringing this solution to my website, who carried the truth is time for something like that.
amazing! thanks for this amazing pluing. that is exactly what i was looking for. the only problem i have is: i’d love to stlye the exceprts differently from the fullshown post. i want them to be smaller in fontsize & the entire exceprt should be a bit less of opacity. how could i achieve that?
thanks for the help
Thanks for a really useful plugin, just what i was looking for with some really useful suggestions for future development. Keep up the good work.
Great plugin, Daniel!!! I had the same issue as you for the same reason. I am using the Anonymous Elegance theme and the plugin is working beautifully. I fully show the 2 most recent posts with all others excerpted. I already rank very well for my site but will let you know how the plugin affects my Alexa ranking.
Thank you!!
Hello, I tried to install this and got the following error:
Unpacking the package.
Incompatible archive PCLZIP_ERR_BAD_FORMAT (-10) : Unable to find End of Central Dir Record signature
(Scanned the comments above and didn’t see a similar comment. Maybe I missed it?)
Please advise. Thanks!
Thanks for a really useful plugin, just what i was looking for with some really useful suggestions for future development. Keep up the good work.:)
Can anyone help troubleshoot this plugin? I’ve installed it on my site but it is not working. My theme is custom, so I am wondering if I need to add a function or something into the theme for it to hook to? It would really give our site a more professional look.
This is a great plug in. I agree with all the comments and buried in the comments is the answer about images being in excerpts – by putting the image html code in the excerpts section of the wordpress editor.
Thank you!
I might be good to find a way that will put a url at the end to comment and also personalize this text message through within the plugin’s Control Panel.
Do you have any experience with WP membership plugins? I am looking around for independent experience and testimonies about Wishlist and WP eMember, to name two of them.
Just installed on my blog, sweet stuff! Thanks, Daniel!
In your loading instructions, you state after activating the plugin, and while in the control panel go to options. I am using WP version 2,9,2 and can not find Options in the plugin. Am I blind. Please help.
I installed this on a client website, and for some reason, I can’t get it to show full posts at all. It doesn’t matter what settings I use – I get all excerpts on the home page. Any suggestions?
Is there anyone offering support for this plugin? I’ve had it installed on my site for months but it doesn’t work.
I too am having a hard time. I am new to WordPress. I downloaded the plugin just fine. But I don’t know how to Uploade the file homepage-excerpts.php to my plugin directory. (Can’t find my plugin directory) and then when I log into the WordPress control panel, I can’t find “Plugins.” Can you help???? I am stuck. Thank you!
This was the plugin I was looking for,Can someone suggest me some good plugins for showing a small post thumbnail alongside the excerpts shown in each posts in the home page.
I want a small custom thumbnail picture to be displayed alongside my post details in the home page and when someone clicks on Read More,they go to the real post,thanks
This was so easy to install. We’re glad DigitalPoint.com sent us here.
In the entire 3 minute process, all we needed was our 2 button mouse.
Please thank your friend as well for helping with the plugin.
411 NY
PS. We will change “Continue Reading…” to “List Event…” to match the section of our site.
Very nice plugin,
But is there a way to remove all or from the first xxx characters ?
Looking at plug-in’s source I don’t understand how the original or are kept.
The strip_tags should have removed them all and in fact if I do a “echo $output;” just before the “return $output;”, the echo show one full line of the first xxx charecters (no or ), but once wordpress get the “return $output” result then it finally get the original tags.
But as I am new to WP may be there is something I don’t understood about how add_filter works ?
using wp 2.9.2
regards.
oups… look like the comment field strip out all html tags… so here is my comment again with html tags between quotes instead of
Very nice plugin,
But is there a way to remove all “p” or “br” from the first xxx characters ?
Looking at plug-in’s source I don’t understand how the original or are kept.
The strip_tags should have removed them all and in fact if I do a “echo $output;” just before the “return $output;”, the echo show one full line of the first xxx charecters (no “p” or “br” ), but once wordpress get the “return $output” result then it finally get the original tags.
But as I am new to WP may be there is something I don’t understood about how add_filter works ?
using wp 2.9.2
regards.
I think WordPress, at one time, had an Options menu item, but it has since been removed in updates. I see this in plugin instructions all the time, so it must be old information.
If you go to ‘Settings’ you’ll see where to edit the Homepage Excerpts plugin. Click on the down arrow to the right of it in your control panel menu and you’ll see a menu item for Homepage Excerpts.
For all those who are worried about losing the formatting, here is a solution…
The solution is too simple, I found this after a lot of research. All you need to do is just edit the plugin as follows.
1. Login to wordpress and Deactivate the plugin
2. Goto “Editor” listed under “Plugins”
3. Select the “Homepage excerpts” plugin
4. Now search for the line which says $output = strip_tags($output);
5. Just delete that line or comment it …
thats it..Now you can get all those formatting in your excerpts…Enjoy…
Take care with this, strip_tags is a php function that remove as much html tags as possible but this mean it will fake the word count (in my previous comment I said I was new to WP but I am PHP developper) in the plugin php source before explode function you have :
output = strip_tags($output);
explode(‘ ‘, $output, $nr_word);
count($words);
this mean that all html tags are removed, then full text is exploded into an array using space as separator for each array entry, then the number of array entries is counted so this will give you the words count.
If you do what you say, removing strip_tags, this will leave hml tags make wrong word count, for example if you set 1 word count and your text begin with a word that is enclosed between a BOLD tag pair with a space separator before the word, then you’ll get an array with BOLD tag as first entry as “word number 1″, but not your real word that will be at position 2 in the array.
Then once the text is recontructed, only the first word will be showed and this is a BOLD tag so you’ll not get you real word and…worst…is may fake all the rest of your page.
This is a great plugin and I’m surely use it on one of my blogs. Because I’m new to the bloging world I want to find a plugins that will really help me to make my blog looks better and promote it in the web. I heard a lot about SEO but I don’t really know how to optimize my website. Thank to your plugin I’m one step ahead with SEO and optimization.
Hello,
I really like this plugin. I have it set to show excerpts for all articles except the 1st on my homepage. It shows the 1st full length, even if I have an “Insert More” tag to break up the article.
I would really like the ability to use the insert more tag to inspire people to click through and open the actual article rather than reading it all on the home page.
In some cases, I’ve had people link to my homepage instead of the actual post, which is not best for SEO.
Is there an easy way to accomplish this?
Hi Daniel
Great plugin for helping to stop duplicate content, very useful if you have a lot of articles and if someone else is using your article,
Thank you
Marios
Have there been any updates to this plugin since you posted this article? Currently, I have been using the “Read More” and looking for something to create the snippet automatically.