Shape excerpts for archive content
Easy Custom Auto Excerpt Premium is a WordPress plugin for controlling how posts are shortened on home, search, archive, and custom archive pages. It builds on the excerpt workflow by adding options for image presentation, post-level exclusions, and the appearance and structure of the read more button.
The plugin can generate excerpts according to character length or paragraph position. It can use a real excerpt when one has been written, use a read more setting where applicable, or automatically generate an excerpt when the post has neither. These controls are intended for sites that want a consistent preview of longer posts without manually editing every archive display.
Premium customization options
The Premium version adds several ways to refine the visual result. Image excerpts can be positioned to the left, right, or center, or displayed with a float-left or float-right setting. Image width and margin can also be adjusted to suit the layout of the surrounding content.
- Disable excerpts on a specific post.
- Choose from 10 read more font types.
- Set a custom read more font size.
- Select from more than 40 read more button themes.
- Customize the read more button HTML.
These options can be used together with the plugin’s excerpt controls, including text alignment, custom read more text and buttons, image preservation, real excerpt preservation, and excerpt output on RSS feeds. The excerpt method can be based on the first, second, or third paragraph, or on a character count.
Practical excerpt settings
Paragraph mode cuts content by paragraph, while character mode cuts content according to the configured excerpt size. The paragraph options can show one or more paragraphs from the beginning of the content. Additional settings can strip shortcodes and remove empty HTML tags from the excerpt.
For example, a site can use a paragraph-based excerpt for a magazine-style archive, or a character-based excerpt when archive cards need a more consistent length. Image position, width, and margin settings can then be adjusted to fit the design, while the read more styling provides a clearer continuation link.
Theme compatibility
Easy Custom Auto Excerpt works with themes that call the_content() or the_excerpt() on home, search, and archive pages. It does not support themes that use custom functions to display excerpts, including Total, OceanWP, Writee, and Customizr.
Installation and setup
- Install the plugin.
- Open Excerpt > Settings in the WordPress Administration.
- Choose the excerpt method, excerpt size, display locations, alignment, image settings, and read more options.
- Use the Premium controls to refine image placement, button styling, post exclusions, and custom button HTML.
- Save the settings and review the resulting excerpts on the selected pages.
To remove the read more link, the instructions specify entering a hyphen in the read more text field. The available settings make the plugin suitable for blogs, archives, and other WordPress layouts that need configurable post previews.
