Excerpt Editor provides a convenient place for creating and editing all WordPress excerpts. It can also add custom excerpts for pages (not possible without a plugin). Version 1.0 contains many new features: option to append excerpts from the most recent posts or from the sub-pages to all Posts and/or Pages, option to replace the content with the excerpt on the Home page, all archive pages and/or all tags pages. This eliminates content duplication (SEO).

Currently the interface is only in English, but the excerpts can be in any language supported by WordPress. The plugin also includes .pot file for easy translation.

Changelog:

Version 1.2

• Updated for WordPress 2.6.
• Renders (or hides) all registered shortcodes properly when auto-creating excerpts.
• Doesn’t append the “Continue reading” link at the end if the post is shorter than the specified excerpt length.

Version 1.1

• Updated for WordPress 2.5.
• Removed auto-creation of excerpts on saving or editing.

Version 1.0

• Includes translation functionality. Speed improvements when appending excerpts from sub-pages and/or posts. When appending excerpts from sub-pages, only the page’s children are included (not sub-children, sub-sub-children, etc).

• Added option to replace the content with the excerpt on the Home page, all archive pages and/or all tags pages. This eliminates content duplication (SEO).

• Added option to append excerpts to Posts and Pages.
• Fixed: problems displaying the *Read More* link.
• Improvements to the admin page.

Version 0.3.2

• Fixed: when editing Pages, WordPress would delete the custom excerpts.
• New option: if *Read More* link is used, it can contain comments count.
• New option: display the *Excerpt* box when writing/editing Pages.

Version 0.3.1

• Fixed: properly append the “Read More” link when auto-generating excerpts.
• Now using nonce fields when deleting or saving excerpts.
• The code is organised in a class for better compatibility with other plugins.
• A few other small bugfixes and cosmetic changes.

Version 0.2.1

• Fixed: properly remove <script>, <![CDATA[ and html comments when auto-creating excerpts.
• Other small bugfixes and cosmetic changes.
• New: Auto-create excerpts when publishing new Posts and Pages (WordPress 2.1+ only).
• New: Use the “More” tag to create the excerpts.
• New: When displaying posts without an excerpt on the “Home” or “Archive” pages (depending on your theme), or sending RSS feeds, auto-create the excerpt from the content either using the “More” tag or from the first 55, 70, 100, 130 words. Optionally keeping the HTML tags (WordPress 2.1+ only).

Usage

Editing: That should be pretty straight-forward. Log in WordPress and go to “Manage – Excerpt Editor”. The excerpts are shown in the large text area. If no excerpt exists for the current Post/Page, the first few sentences from the content are loaded, ready for editing. Posts can be selected from a drop-down list, also there are buttons: “Delete”, “Reload from the content”, “Next”, and of course “Save and get the next”.

Editor Options: Excerpts can be selected by month, by type (Post or Page) and by date. The length can be determined by the “More” tag or by drop-down list – 35, 55, 70, 100, 130 words. There is an option to retain some of the HTML tags when loading excerpts from the content. However when the excerpts are used for META descriptions, they should be text only.

Display and RSS Options: The Excerpt Editor has an option to replace the standard 55 words, plain text auto-excerpt that is created by WordPress when needed for Posts without excerpts. The replacement can be customized in length, can contain HTML tags and optional “Read More” link at the end. That link has css class of “read-more” and the text can be changed.

Installation

Standard WP quick and easy installation:

1. Download.
2. Unzip.
3. Upload to the plugins folder.
4. Log in WordPress and activate the plugin.
5. Go to “Manage – Excerpt Editor” to use it.

Upgrading

1. Log in WordPress and deactivate the plugin.
2. Upload (ftp) the new version to the plugins directory, overwriting the old one.
3. Activate the plugin and go to “Manage – Excerpt Editor” to set your preferences and to use it.

Advanced settings

When auto-creating excerpts from the content, you can choose to keep some html tags. WordPress will try to close any open tags, but may put the closing tag in the wrong place. Also pages with only links (a sitemap, for example) will have to be edited by hand, as each link is counted as only one word, so the excerpt will contain 40-50 links. If you are using the excerpts as META descriptions, deactivate all tags.

Does this plugin work on WordPress version…

Excerpt Editor has been tested on WordPress 2.2.3, 2.3 and 2.3.1

I have … plugin installed that uses the excerpt, will there be any conflicts/incompatibilities?

No conflicts/incompatibilities have been reported so far.

Does Excerpt Editor support languages other than English?

Currently the interface is only in English, but the excerpts can be in any language supported by WordPress.