Thread: WP Hack: Change the Post Excerpt Length

Writing custom excerpts for posts can be a pain, so why not just change how long they're supposed to be? This is how:

Changing The Default WordPress Excerpt Length

No plugin required!

I used to use a plugin, but now I will give this a shot.
Thanks

I would not recommend this!

You will have to do this every time you update your WP installation. It is better to write a custom function in your functions.php

PHP Code:

function limit_content($ctolimit, $clen = 280)
{
    $cut = substr(strip_tags($ctolimit), 0, $clen);
    $sensible_cut_position = strrpos($cut, ' ');
    return substr($cut, 0, $sensible_cut_position);
} 


and then you call it like this:

PHP Code:

<?php echo limit_content($ctolimit,$clen);?>

$ctolimit - text to limit (can be get_the_content()
$clean - number of characters to limit, default value is 280, but can be set to whatever you like. The $clean parameter is optional.

The function returns only text without tags.

This simple function does not break words, and the number of characters is more like a maximum for string length. This function searches for the last occurrence of a space (assumed word end ) at the end of the given text, and returns the cropped text.

Originally Posted by Hrvoje

I would not recommend this!

You will have to do this every time you update your WP installation. It is better to write a custom function in your functions.php

PHP Code:

function limit_content($ctolimit, $clen = 280)
{
    $cut = substr(strip_tags($ctolimit), 0, $clen);
    $sensible_cut_position = strrpos($cut, ' ');
    return substr($cut, 0, $sensible_cut_position);
} 


and then you call it like this:

PHP Code:

<?php echo limit_content($ctolimit,$clen);?>

$ctolimit - text to limit (can be get_the_content()
$clean - number of characters to limit, default value is 280, but can be set to whatever you like. The $clean parameter is optional.

The function returns only text without tags.

This simple function does not break words, and the number of characters is more like a maximum for string length. This function searches for the last occurrence of a space (assumed word end ) at the end of the given text, and returns the cropped text.

Awesome. I was looking for a function that would do this but hadn't found one! Thanks.

Question: why use PHP "hacks" when you can use manual excerpts? Excerpt « WordPress Codex

Originally Posted by Hector

Question: why use PHP "hacks" when you can use manual excerpts? Excerpt « WordPress Codex

Manual excerpts take time and some of us are lazy.