Title: Why change excerpt functionality
Last modified: August 30, 2016

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# Why change excerpt functionality

 *  [graftedin](https://wordpress.org/support/users/graftedin/)
 * (@graftedin)
 * [10 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/why-change-excerpt-functionality/)
 * Why can’t you leave this alone? Instead you’ve added different read more text
   than the default. AND then I can’t override the default excerpt with something
   like Advanced Excerpt.
 * Now I got to dig in to your code to figure out how to put this all back to normal.
 * [https://wordpress.org/plugins/feature-a-page-widget/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/feature-a-page-widget/)

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  Plugin Author [mrwweb](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mrwweb/)
 * (@mrwweb)
 * [10 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/why-change-excerpt-functionality/#post-6862265)
 * [@graftedin](https://wordpress.org/support/users/graftedin/), I’m sorry to hear
   you’re having trouble with the plugin. It sounds like you’re just upgrading to
   the 2.X version now? You’re right that the templates have pretty radically changed.
   These new templates 1) are much easier for new users to customize, 2) should 
   be less-likely to change and easier to maintain in the future, 3) allow the use
   of template tags in the templates. I decided those major benefits outweighed 
   the downside of overhauling the template; however, I know that means a bit of
   work for people like you who used old templates. I apologize for the inconvenience.
 * Regarding Advanced Excerpt, I just tested Feature a Page Widget 2.0.6 with Advanced
   Excerpt 4.2.3 on WordPress 4.4. (all latest) and HTML formatting worked as expected.
   However, it does seem like not all the features work quite as expected. Which
   parts of the Advanced Excerpt are you trying to use?
 * FYI, to have an auto-generated excerpt (rather than the custom one), you just
   need to use [the `fpw_auto_excerpt` filter](https://gist.github.com/mrwweb/bebf4cbdcf50d4eadd46).
 * Finally, the read more link is handled to improve accessibility and allow people
   to easily target only the widget output. If you want to change the “Read More”,
   there’s a filter for that too: [`fpw_read_more_text`](https://gist.github.com/mrwweb/b1001f45e94b3c604791).
 *  Thread Starter [graftedin](https://wordpress.org/support/users/graftedin/)
 * (@graftedin)
 * [10 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/why-change-excerpt-functionality/#post-6862267)
 * I think you missed what I was getting at. WP already handles the excerpt. There
   is no reason for you to overwrite that functionality. Just leave it alone so 
   I can use other plugins to do it.
 * I was trying to change the read more text with Advanced Excerpt and I need tags
   left in and the max chars increased.
 *  Plugin Author [mrwweb](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mrwweb/)
 * (@mrwweb)
 * [10 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/why-change-excerpt-functionality/#post-6862275)
 * [@graftedin](https://wordpress.org/support/users/graftedin/), if you take a look
   at the templates you’ll see that they do use `the_excerpt()`. The custom read
   more and hiding auto excerpts are added to the plugin to allow for highly-requested
   options and encourage writing custom excerpts, respectively. Judging by feedback
   I’ve received, this setup works well for most people.
 * I’m not quite sure why those Advanced Excerpt features aren’t working once `fpw_auto_excerpt`
   is turned on. I’ll try to find some time to investigate that further soon and
   release a fix if I can find one.
 * Again, thanks for the feedback.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘Why change excerpt functionality’ is closed to new replies.

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 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [mrwweb](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mrwweb/)
 * Last activity: [10 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/why-change-excerpt-functionality/#post-6862275)
 * Status: not resolved