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

[Lynne Pope]

2009/3/2 Peter Westwood <peter.westwood at ftwr.co.uk>

>
> On 28 Feb 2009, at 23:42, Lynne Pope wrote:
>
>  I'm all for improved functionality.
>>
>> Over the years the key things my clients have wanted from the_excerpt are:
>> 1. control over length (both characters and words);
>> 2. HTML formatting (achievable only if formatting filters are removed
>> now);
>> 3. control over the "more" - few like the [...] but not everyone knows how
>> to write a function to change this.
>>
>
> This is in general available at present by unhooking filters and replacing
> wp_trim_excerpt.
>
> It could be improved if the_excerpt took some arguments and I am sure a
> patch that improved this would get favourable attention ;-)


Agreed 100%.


> 4. ability to select whether to include the_excerpt above the post content
> or not, by use of a radio button.
>
>
This isn't the sort of thing that merits a core option - this is all about
> how you write a theme and whether or not you are creating a specific theme
> or a generic theme.
>
> If this option was to exist it would be part of a themes options page.


Those who have asked me for this have all been using different themes and
each of them wanted the ability to include the_excerpt, or not, on a
post-by-post basis. It's easy enough to do globally with a theme and can
also be done by using the <!--more--> tag. But the point they raised when I
suggested this was that it's a feature of other web apps so they had
expected similar functionality from WordPress.

I don't use this myself but its come up often enough to be interesting.
Nobody has taken up my suggestion yet to add this to the ideas forum though
;)

Lynne