Foodie them blog page not showing post excerpts on certain posts

[jchick]

Hi,
I have the Foodie theme installed and on any page where there is a list of posts any posts with excerpts written via the post dashboard only show the excerpt and not a read more button. You can see the issue here: http://www.akitcheninvegas.com. You can see the problem with the post titled "Shepherd’s Pie".
Thanks in advance for any insight.
John

http://www.akitcheninvegas.com

[David Chu]

John,
Good question. You will, on occasion, be directed to get help with this from the vendor. But I get asked to work on, fix, and modify Foodie a lot. I'm kind of a food specialist (not only that, but I've also been a food blogger). Besides, I think this is more of a general WordPress issue, so it's a grey area.

I've run into the problem you describe various times. It has much to do with what WordPress considers an "excerpt". This gets a little tricky, because the stock WP excerpt is cleansed of various types of HTML. So if you have something like a photo (which can have lots of HTML code), for instance, it's somewhat of a mystery where the excerpt will begin and end, and whether it will work at all.

Anyway, something easy for you to try: Go to Genesis.... Theme Settings, and scroll down to Content Archives. I'm guessing that you have "display post excerpts" selected there. Instead, try selecting "display post content". Then you'll see a setting for "limit content to...". For that, pick a figure, such as maybe 200 or 300 characters.

If you use that, your theme may behave better, even if Posts have images all over the place. 🙂 Essentially, the content type of setting is more precise and predictable. Same idea applies to some Genesis plugin widgets settings, btw, such as Featured Posts.

Let's see if that does it for you.

Dave

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Dave Chu · Custom WordPress Developer – likes collaborating with Designers

[MoodyRiviera]

David Chu provides great advice...you also might want to consider visiting the forum at the theme developer's site...I've heard they have excellent tech support.

http://shaybocks.com/foodie/

*MoodyRiviera*

[jchick]

That worked like a charm! Thank you both for your help. Much appreciated!

[jchick]

I have an update - unfortunately it didn't really work. While the posts are showing excerpts now, they are not showing the manual excerpts text that was entered when the post was created - it's just showing the first 300 characters of the post. Is there any way to get the manual excerpt to show?

[David Chu]

The whole excerpt thing is quite complex, and may be set up differently in each theme. Here are some quick examples.

• The theme will grab the first 55 characters from the Post, stripping out formatting HTML
• If you fill in the excerpt area on the Post editor, it will use that instead.
• A programmer can code the theme to get a different sized excerpt, and could even code it to retain formatting HTML

That's very general, and often works. BUT... if a plugin is involved, or custom theme settings are involved, some (or all) of that may be thrown out or overridden. The plugin and/or theme settings often show up when you try to use a widget. So these are beyond the control of the user, and can really only be changed by the theme developer. I've written lots of code for people who want something changed in their excerpts, and it can be straightforward or pretty hairy, depending on what's requested.

So Moody is right... short of hiring someone, you'd best ask the theme developer. But honestly, what you're asking for, kind of having your cake and eating it, too, is most likely a custom coding request in the end, and they may not want to do that without extra payment.

Good luck,
Dave

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Dave Chu · Custom WordPress Developer – likes collaborating with Designers

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