Title: Modifying Excerpt Format
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# Modifying Excerpt Format

 *  [jzader](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jzader/)
 * (@jzader)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/modifying-excerpt-format/)
 * I am using an the excerpt tag inside The Loop, on a page outside of my WordPress
   blog. I need to modify my output in the following ways.
 * (1) I would like to make the excerpts shorter, e.g., 100 words.
 * (2) I would like to remove the `<br />` tags that are not getting stripped out
   from the excerpts. (I wonder if this is because of my recent import from MoveableType.
   I get the impression that the tags should all be getting stripped out, but they
   weren’t for the posts I imported.) I want a clean, short paragraph for each excerpt.
 * And (3) I would like The Loop to list only the most recent 5 posts rather than
   the 10 that seem to be coming through by default. I’m assuming I have to modify
   the `while` statement somehow, but I can’t find any examples of this.
 * Any suggestions or links to more information would be greatly appreciated!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

 *  [moshu](https://wordpress.org/support/users/moshu/)
 * (@moshu)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/modifying-excerpt-format/#post-245118)
 * For #1 – you may want to try this plugin: [http://guff.szub.net/the-excerpt-reloaded](http://guff.szub.net/the-excerpt-reloaded)
   #
   2. If it’s caused by MT import… I am clueless. Otherwise I am sure the plugin
   will help. #3. Did you try to set the number of posts displayed in the admin 
   panel > Options > Reading?
 *  Thread Starter [jzader](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jzader/)
 * (@jzader)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/modifying-excerpt-format/#post-245148)
 * #1 & #2 – Looks like the plugin will be helpful… I’ll give it a shot. Thank you!
 * #3 – Since this code is being used outside my blog folder, I’m sure that changing
   settings in the admin panel will affect what I don’t want to affect (the main
   blog page) rather than what I want it to affect (the main page of my site).
 * Any other way to control how many posts are shown on a page outside the blog 
   itself?
 *  [tomhanna](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tomhanna/)
 * (@tomhanna)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/modifying-excerpt-format/#post-245150)
 * I think you could use the [query_posts](http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/query_posts)
   template tag and set posts_per_page to whatever number you want.
 *  Thread Starter [jzader](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jzader/)
 * (@jzader)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/modifying-excerpt-format/#post-245275)
 * tomhanna: Thank you, the `query_posts` template tag worked perfectly.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

The topic ‘Modifying Excerpt Format’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [Modify](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/modify/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 4 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [jzader](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jzader/)
 * Last activity: [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/modifying-excerpt-format/#post-245275)
 * Status: not resolved

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