[wp-hackers] Re: Idea: Rename the Excerpt to something accurate

[Will Anderson]

The problem with auto filling the excerpt is that if the user then changes
something in the post, the excerpt will maintain the old content, so if the
theme uses the_excerpt, it won't have the updated information.Better to only
have content in the Excerpt if the user puts it there. That way they know
they need to update it.
Doing this doesn't really provide any extra functionality since WordPress
automatically pulls the post summary if the real excerpt is empty. I'm
afraid the only thing it would do would be to confuse users.

(This is just my perspective of course. Maybe this could be implemented to
avoid these problems).

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:36 AM, Jane Wells <jane at automattic.com> wrote:

>
>  Re: 3. Idea: Rename the Excerpt to something accurate (Demetris)
>
>
> I think Demetris brings up a good point, and have thought about that myself
> before, how the auto-excerpt and a manual summary being called the same
> thing can be confusing. On the other hand, I also agree with the points of
> the others who've already responded about people being used to the label
> Excerpt and it not being a huge deal.
>
> Of all the things that are still clunky or need some love and finesse in
> upcoming versions, I think this is probably a lowish priority, but something
> that I think might be a cool solution would be if once the post was
> Saved/Published, the Excerpt box was populated with the auto-excerpt text.
> The user wouldhave the option of overwriting it with a manual summary or
> whatever. We could then include a UI element to allow them to default it
> back to auto-excerpt, and show an indication of whether the text in the box
> was the auto-excerpt or hand-crafted. I make this suggestion without having
> taken my usual first step of asking Ryan or Andrew 'is this possible' so if
> I'm suggesting something that would be technically problematic, I apologize
> in advance. It would be a way to  make it very clear to users what the
> Excerpt is/does/can do without getting into the issue of users wondering the
> difference between Excerpt and Summary (if we were to rename one).
>
> Thoughts?
>
> jane
>
>
>
> --
> Jane Wells
> http://jane.wordpress.com | http://automattic.com
>
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-- 
Will Anderson
http://www.itsananderson.com/