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Excerpt not showing up in Vigilance

  1. elizabethjennings
    Member

    I'm drafting a new blog, and started with Structure theme, which wasn't quite right, so switched to Vigilance. The Excerpt function in Structure worked great, but in Vigilance the whole post is showing up. Ideas?

    To clarify: The Excerpt field appears on the Post>Edit page, but the the full post and not the excerpt appears on the blog itself. I'd prefer not to have to use "more...," as I'd like to customize the text of the excerpt.

    Thanks!

    The blog I need help with is elizabethjennings.wordpress.com.

  2. timethief
    Member

    The excerpt function is "dead" in most themes but not to worry. You can use "the more tag" to split text and create front page excerpts. See here > http://en.support.wordpress.com/splitting-content/more-tag/

  3. 1tess
    Moderator

    The excerpt function is different from the simple "read-more" option because you can customize what will appear in the excerpt. You can have pictures, photos, and text which you can compose yourself.

    http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/the-excerpt-function/

    As you can see in that article, some themes will allow you to customize what your readers will see on your homepage. There are other themes which will show custom excerpts in categories and archive.

  4. elizabethjennings
    Member

    Thanks for the quick replies! Yes @timethief, I know about the "more", but wanted the excerpt function for the reason that @1tess mentions: a custom, catchy intro that is different than the first few lines of the post. It functions as intended in Structure, but not in Vigilance.

    Appears that excerpts don't appear in EITHER the main post or in Categories in Vigilance. Disappointing, in part because as I understand it, it would help with SEO if showed in Categories. Will have to use the less-handy "more" function. Thanks to both of you!

  5. timethief
    Member

    @Elizabeth
    OOPS! I didn't realize you already knew about "the more tag". You could send a request to the theme Team that the excerpt function in Vigilance be enabled but that of course will take time to happen even if they do agree. Here's the link > http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/ You're welcome. :)

  6. 1tess
    Moderator

    YOu are right, that vigilance does not support custom excerpts…

    I don't know about SEO, but the custom excerpts are looked at and read by my regular readers, via email and I think RSS (set to summary). At least I think that about RSS (I could be mistaken and only the first few lines are seen…?)
    I like comments or direct contacts from people.

    But I'd note that the site linked to your name is marked as a private blog, so searches won't look at your blog. No "juice"! You don't want it.

  7. sl1k
    Member

    Thread moved to the themes forum...

    -sk

  8. timethief
    Member

    We are getting some members now who appear to be concerned about SEO but in fact the SEO on this WPMU platform is excellent. When one moves a wordpress.com blog content into a wordpress.ORG install that becomes evident as you see your PageRank fall. Gone is the Google juice from the wordpress.com site backlink which ranks at 9/10. Gone is the Google juice from the wordpress.com tag pages at about 7/10. There's no way your humble domain is going to outrank those simply because it's on it's own domain.

    The most important SEO factors are on page and off page and that's where the savvy blogger can make a difference. Currently natural linking patterns, long tail and internal linking are very important and yet I still see those who blab on and on about meta descriptions even though they are not being used by Google and have not been used for some time and Matt Cutts states they will not be using them. Here's very interesting bit worth reading > http://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq--crawling--indexing---ranking#pagerank

  9. elizabethjennings
    Member

    Thanks! Yes, new blog, not public yet.

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