By WPKube

January 19, 2024

Advanced Excerpt Plugin

Control the appearance of WordPress post excerpts

This plugin adds several improvements to WordPress’ default way of creating excerpts.

Keeps HTML markup in the excerpt (and you get to choose which tags are included)
Trims the excerpt to a given length using either character count or word count
Only the ‘real’ text is counted (HTML is ignored but kept)
Customizes the excerpt length and the ellipsis character that are used
Completes the last word or sentence in an excerpt (no weird cuts)
Adds a read-more link to the text
Ignores custom excerpts and use the generated one instead
Theme developers can use the_advanced_excerpt() for even more control (see the FAQ)

Most of the above features are optional and/or can be customized by the user or theme developer.

Banner image credit – chillihead

Original plugin author – basvd

Useful Resources

What is WordPress
Fee Themes and plugins

Installation

Use WordPress’ built-in installer
Access the “Excerpt” menu option under Settings

Screenshots

The options page
An example of an excerpt generated by the plugin

FAQ

What’s an excerpt?

A short version of a post that is usually displayed wherever the whole post would be too much (eg. search results, news feeds, archives). You can write them yourself, but if you don’t, WordPress will make a very basic one instead.

Why do I need this plugin?

The default excerpt created by WordPress removes all HTML. If your theme uses the_excerpt() or the_content() to view excerpts, they might look weird because of this (smilies are removed, lists are flattened, etc.) This plugin fixes that and also gives you more control over excerpts.

Does it work for WordPress version x.x.x?

During development, the plugin is tested with the most recent version(s) of WordPress. It might work on older versions, but it’s better to just keep your installation up-to-date.

Is this plugin available in my language?

Advanced Excerpt is internationalization (i18n) friendly.

Does this plugin support multibyte characters, such as Chinese?

Before 4.1, multibyte characters were supported directly by this plugin. This feature has been removed because it added irrelevant code for a ‘problem’ that isn’t actually specific to the plugin.

If you require multibyte character support on your website, you can override the default text operations in PHP.

Can I manually call the filter in my WP theme or plugin?

The plugin automatically hooks on the_excerpt() and the_content() functions and uses the parameters specified in the options panel.

If you want to call the filter with different options, you can use the_advanced_excerpt() template tag provided by this plugin. This tag accepts query-string-style parameters (theme developers will be familiar with this notation).

The following parameters can be set:

length, an integer that determines the length of the excerpt
length_type, enumeration, if set to words the excerpt length will be in words; if set to characters the excerpt length will be in characters
no_custom, if set to 1, an excerpt will be generated even if the post has a custom excerpt; if set to 0, the custom excerpt will be used
no_shortcode, if set to 1, shortcodes are removed from the excerpt; if set to 0, shortcodes will be parsed
finish, enumeration, if set to exact the excerpt will be the exact lenth as defined by the “Excerpt Length” option. If set to word the last word in the excerpt will be completed. If set to sentence the last sentence in the excerpt will be completed.
ellipsis, the string that will substitute the omitted part of the post; if you want to use HTML entities in the string, use %26 instead of the & prefix to avoid breaking the query
read_more, the text used in the read-more link
add_link, if set to 1, the read-more link will be appended; if 0, no link will be added
allowed_tags, a comma-separated list of HTML tags that are allowed in the excerpt. Entering _all will preserve all tags.
exclude_tags, a comma-separated list of HTML tags that must be removed from the excerpt. Using this setting in combination with allowed_tags makes no sense

A custom advanced excerpt call could look like this:

the_advanced_excerpt('length=320&length_type=words&no_custom=1&ellipsis=%26hellip;&exclude_tags=img,p,strong');

Does this plugin work outside the Loop?

No, this plugin fetches the post from The Loop and there is currently no way to pass a post ID or any custom input to it.
However, you can start The Loop manually and apply the plugin as usual.

Changelog

4.4.1 (January 19th, 2024)

Fix – PHP 8 issue with “creation of dynamic property” being deprecated

4.4.0 (February 1st, 2023 )

New – Option to generate an excerpt from the manually created excerpt (instead of showing full manual excerpt)

4.3.9 (April 13th, 2021)

New – Option to enable adding the “read more link” for custom excerpts as well

4.3.8 (December 28th, 2020)

New – Multilanguage compatibility for the “read more” text. The shortcode [advanced_excerpt_text] is used. Example [advanced_excerpt_text lang=”en_US”]English[/advanced_excerpt_text][advanced_excerpt_text lang=”de_DE”]German[/advanced_excerpt_text]

4.3.7 ( July 10th, 2020 )

New – Option to link the whole excerpt to the single post page
Fix – Issue with “sentence finish” when there is a number with decimal points
Fix – Updated POT file for translations

4.3.6 ( June 1st, 2020 )

Fix – Issue with undefined index PHP notice

4.3.5 ( February 6th, 2020 )

Fix – Issue when excerpt ends in a foreign character

4.3.4 ( December 17th, 2019 )

Fix – Sentence finish option not working properly if . ? or ! are followed by another character such as ” for example

4.3.3 ( October 5th, 2019 )

Fix – Conflict with “WPTouch” plugin
Fix – Conflict with “bbPress” plugin

4.3.2 ( September 24th, 2019 )

Fix – Conflict with “The Events Calendar” plugin

4.3.1 ( June 21st, 2019 )

New – Option to disable the functionality for WooCommerce products

4.3.0 ( June 14th, 2019 )

Fix – Conflict with Sassy Social Share plugin

4.2.9 ( May 27th, 2019)

New – Filter for developers to change the read more text. The filter is advanced_excerpt_read_more_text
Tweak – The read more text option now accept shortcodes

4.2.8

New – Screen reader text is now optional, can be enabled in the options
New – Added option to remove the “read more link” if the full post content is shown
New – Title can be included in the “read more link” by adding {title} to the option

4.2.7

New – Option to open “read more” in a new tab
New – Added screen reader text for “read more” link

4.2.6

New “Finish” option that counts exact characters including blank spaces.

4.2.5

Fixed the “remove shortcodes from excerpt” functionality

4.2.4

Compatibility tested for latest version of WordPress ( 4.9.6 )
Minor tweaks

4.2.3

Fix: The “Remove all tags except the following” wasn’t excluding tags as expected
Fix: Call remove_all_filter() on the the_excerpt hook to improve excerpt rendering
Fix: Only honor the “Only filter the_content() when there’s no break (<!–more–>) tag in the post content” setting when hooking into the_content filter
Improvement: Improve backwards compatibility by reverting back to using get_the_content() for the base excerpt text
Improvement: Added the advanced_excerpt_skip_excerpt_filtering filter allowing users to skip excerpt filtering on a per excerpt basis

4.2.2

Fix: The the_advanced_excerpt() function was not working on singular page types (pages / posts)

4.2.1

Fix: Undefined index errors when using the the_advanced_excerpt() function
Fix: Not excluding tags when using the exclude_tags argument in the the_advanced_excerpt() function

4.2

Feature: Toggle excerpt filtering when there’s no break (<!–more–>) tag in the post content
Feature: Toggle excerpt filtering for the the_excerpt() and the_content() functions
Feature: Toggle excerpt filtering on certain page types
Improvement: Added HTML5 tags to the allowed tags list
Improvement: Options are now automatically removed from wp_options when the plugin is deleted from the dashboard
Improvement: Added several WordPress filters, allowing developers to extend/modify the default functionality of the plugin
Improvement: Additional strings were made i18n friendly
Improvement: All options are now stored in one row in wp_options rather than one row per option
Improvement: Several UI elements have be reworded and styled differently to improve user experience
Fix: Now works with themes using the_content() on archive pages (i.e. WordPress default themes and others)
Fix: Notices/warning were appearing when the options were saved while having a checkbox option unchecked
Fix: The “Read More” link was being incorrectly appended into certain HTML tags, e.g. table tags and list tags

4.1

Fix: Template function with custom options works again
Fix: Data before header bug (retro-fixed in 4.0)
Feature: Template function also works with array-style parameters
Removed multibyte support
Removed PHP 4 support (WP 3.2+ users should be fine, others should update)
Better code testing before release!

4.0

Feature: Brand new parsing algorithm which should resolve some running time issues
Feature: Options to finish a word or sentence before cutting the excerpt
Fix: A few small bugs

3.1

Fix: A few bugs with custom and character-based excerpts

3.0

First major release since 0.2.2 (also removed the 0. prefix from the version number)
Feature: Shortcodes can be removed from the excerpt
Feature: Virtually any HTML tag may now be stripped
Feature: A read-more link with custom text can be added
Fix: Word-based excerpt speed improved
Fix: Template tag function improved
Fix: Better ellipsis placement