February 25, 2023

Read More Excerpt Link Plugin

Create "Read More" link after post excerpt instead of ellipsis [...] Also modify excerpt length.

Try it out on a free dummy site here => https://demo.tastewp.com/read-more-excerpt-link

When WordPress makes an excerpt from your post content, it crops the content and adds an ellipsis […] to the end. This plugin changes the ellipsis to a Read More link to the full post content.

You can change the Read More link text to anything you wish from the Read More Excerpt submenu on the WordPress Settings menu.

Also from the Read More Excerpt submenu, you can specify the excerpt word length (WordPress defaults to 55 words).

Additionally, you can force the Read More link to show even when an excerpt is entered or when a read more tag is added to the content. This is turned on from the Read More Excerpt submenu with the Show More Frequently checkbox.

The Read More link uses the class read-more-link, so you can stylize the link any way you wish.

Installation

For an automatic installation through WordPress:

Select Add New from the WordPress Plugins menu in the admin area.
Search for Read More Excerpt Link.
Click Install Now, then Activate Plugin.

For manual installation via FTP:

Upload the read-more-excerpt-link folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
Activate the plugin from the Plugins screen in your WordPress admin area.

To upload the plugin through WordPress, instead of FTP:

From the Add New plugins page in your WordPress admin area, select the Upload Plugin button.
Select the read-more-excerpt-link.zip file, click Install Now and Activate Plugin.

Optional Settings:

To change the Read More link text, visit the Read More Excerpt submenu on the WordPress Settings menu.
You can also change the excerpt word length from the same Read More Excerpt submenu.
To show an ellipsis “…” at the end of a truncated excerpt (but before the “Read More” link), check the Include Ellipsis after Excerpt checkbox.
To show the Read More link even when an excerpt is entered or when a read more tag is added to the content, check the Show More Frequently checkbox.

Screenshots

Read More Excerpt Link Settings.
Read More Excerpt Link turns this...
To this!

FAQ

How do I change the “Read More” link text to something else?

In the WordPress Settings menu, select the Read More Excerpt submenu, where you can modify the default Read More text link.

How do I change the length of the excerpt?

WordPress defaults to an excerpt length of 55 words. You can change this from the WordPress Settings menu, select the Read More Excerpt submenu where you can modify the excerpt word length.

Why isn’t “Read More” showing on all pages?

Normally, WordPress doesn’t show a read more ellipsis if an excerpt is entered as part of the post. Also, WordPress doesn’t show the read more ellipsis if a read more tag is placed in the content before the set excerpt legnth (defaults to 55 words). To change this, from the WordPress Settings menu, select the Read More Excerpt submenu where you can active the Show More Frequently option. This will force the Read More to show whenever there’s post content.

How can I stylize the “Read More” link?

Here’s a suggestion:

a.read-more-link { font-size: 0.9em; text-transform: uppercase; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; } a.read-more-link:before { content: "("; } a.read-more-link:after { content: ")"; }

Why isn’t the “Read More” showing at all?

There’s also some over-zealous themes that re-write complete sections of WordPress code for no good reason. Elegant Themes is a good example of a theme company that makes highly bloated themes that re-write much of the WordPress normal operation. Basically, some themes totally ignore the perfectly working WordPress auto-excerpt and create their own. When themes do this, the Read More Excerpt plugin is ignored as the theme no longer calls the standard WordPress excerpt functions (which Read More Excerpt is hooked into). Other than making modifications to your theme, there’s nothing any plugin can do when themes don’t use the WordPress hooks and hard-code new functionality instead.

It displays “Read More” but without a link?

This is rare, but can happen when a theme is not strictly calling the get_the_excerpt() function but doing something with the result (like stripping HTML tags). If you know how to create a child of your template and make slight modifications to that child you can easily correct this. Start by looking at the theme’s archive.php file and following any get_template_part() calls from there. It’s best to not make changes directly to an off the shelf theme, as updates will override any changes you make. Creating a child theme is a better method of making changes to an off the shelf theme.

Changelog

v1.6.1 – 2/25/2023

Nonce added to prevent CSRF vulnerability.

v1.6.0 – 2/24/2023

Added nonce for CSRF protection, verified working with WordPress v6.2

v1.5 – 2/1/2021

Updated contact email address, verified working with WordPress v5.6

v1.4 – 5/13/2016

Option to include an ellipsis “…” at the end of a truncated excerpt (but before the “Read More” link).

v1.3 – 4/1/2016

Won’t show the read more excerpt link if the post has no content (otherwise it would link to a blank page).

v1.2 – 3/14/2016

Added option Show More Frequently to the Read More Excerpt submenu under Settings.
Added descriptions to settings fields.

v1.1 – 3/10/2016

Added Read More Excerpt submenu to the Settings menu.
From the Read More Excerpt submenu the Read More text link can be modified.
From the Read More Excerpt submenu the excerpt word length can be modified.

v1.0 – 3/9/2016

Initial release.