Displaying truncated posts or excerpts on archive pages with Genesis Framework

Themes using the Genesis Framework observes the excerpt and read more features of WordPress, but give you additional options to control the display of your content on archive pages:

Truncate post content. This option displays the first X characters of your post.

Display excerpts. This option displays the post excerpt if you have set one, or will automatically generate an excerpt for you.

These can be set from either:

  1. Appearance → Customize → Content Archives panel (screenshot)
  2. Genesis → Theme Settings → Content Archives options box (screenshot)

Truncate post content

Choose the Display: Entry content option. Specify a number of characters before your post content should be truncated. You can also choose to include the Featured Image if you like. Click the Save Settings button to proceed.

Your posts will now be automatically truncated like this:

Displaying post content limited to 200 characters without featured image

Display Excerpts

Alternatively you can change the drop down option to Display: Entry excerpts to only display the post excerpts. Click the Save Settings button to proceed.

With this option, posts that have manual excerpts will display the excerpt. Posts without manual excerpts will display an automatic excerpt, which is generated from the first 55 words from the post.

Setting a custom excerpt

Note: If you don’t see the Excerpt options box, make sure that it is enabled in your Screen Options.

Here is the result if you choose to display post excerpts:

Manual excerpt vs automatic excerpts

See also: What are excerpts and how to use them

Back to: ClickStart Website Handbook > Genesis Framework