#62 by installs
One Click Demo Import
Import your demo content, widgets and theme settings with one click. Theme authors! Enable simple theme demo import for your users.
- Installs
- 1+ million
- Rating
- 4.3 (79)
- Updated
- 6 months ago
Advanced Excerpt
Control the appearance of WordPress post excerpts
- Active installs
- 80,000+
- #541 of 1,000
- Downloads, all time
- 1.6M
- 1,621,915
- Downloads, 30 days
- 11.7K
- 3.4K in the last 7
- Rating
- 4.3 / 5
- 101 reviews
- Last updated
- 3 months ago
- Aug 1, 2026
- Version
- 4.5
- 30 releases
Upkeep and compatibility
| Last updated | August 1, 2026Updated in the last year |
|---|---|
| Tested up to | WordPress 7.0.8Older than WordPress 7.1.4, the current release |
| Needs WordPress | 3.2 or newer |
| Needs PHP | 7.4 or newer |
| First published | August 28, 2007 |
| Support, last two months | 0 of 1 threads resolved (0%) |
Reviews
4.3 / 5 from 101 reviews
| 5 stars | 74 |
|---|---|
| 4 stars | 10 |
| 3 stars | 4 |
| 2 stars | 4 |
| 1 star | 9 |
Downloads, last 30 days
What the author says it does
This plugin adds several improvements to WordPress’ default way of creating excerpts.
- Keeps HTML markup in the excerpt (and you get to choose which tags are included)
- Trims the excerpt to a given length using either character count or word count
- Only the ‘real’ text is counted (HTML is ignored but kept)
- Customizes the excerpt length and the ellipsis character that are used
- Completes the last word or sentence in an excerpt (no weird cuts)
- Adds a read-more link to the text
- Ignores custom excerpts and use the generated one instead
- Theme developers can use the_advanced_excerpt() for even more control (see the FAQ)
Most of the above features are optional and/or can be customized by the user or theme developer.
Banner image credit – chillihead
Original plugin author – basvd
Useful Resources
- What is WordPress
- Fee Themes and plugins
The opening of the plugin's own description. The full text, installation notes and changelog are on its WordPress.org page.
Questions the author answers
What’s an excerpt?
A short version of a post that is usually displayed wherever the whole post would be too much (eg. search results, news feeds, archives). You can write them yourself, but if you don’t, WordPress will make a very basic one instead.
Why do I need this plugin?
The default excerpt created by WordPress removes all HTML. If your theme uses the_excerpt() or the_content() to view excerpts, they might look weird because of this (smilies are removed, lists are flattened, etc.) This plugin fixes that and also gives you more control over excerpts.
Does it work for WordPress version x.x.x?
During development, the plugin is tested with the most recent version(s) of WordPress. It might work on older versions, but it’s better to just keep your installation up-to-date.
Is this plugin available in my language?
Advanced Excerpt is internationalization (i18n) friendly.
Does this plugin support multibyte characters, such as Chinese?
Before 4.1, multibyte characters were supported directly by this plugin. This feature has been removed because it added irrelevant code for a ‘problem’ that isn’t actually specific to the plugin.
If you require multibyte character support on your website, you can override the default text operations in PHP.
Can I manually call the filter in my WP theme or plugin?
The plugin automatically hooks on the_excerpt() and the_content() functions and uses the parameters specified in the options panel.
If you want to call the filter with different options, you can use the_advanced_excerpt() template tag provided by this plugin. This tag accepts query-string-style parameters (theme developers will be familiar with this notation).
The following parameters can be set:
Latest changelog entry
- Fix – Security issue (credit to Mustafa Ahmed)
- Tweak – WordPress 7.0 compatibility
Screenshots
The options page 
An example of an excerpt generated by the plugin
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Where this page's numbers come from
Read from the WordPress.org plugin API on , when WordPress 7.1.4 was the current release. WordPress.org rounds active installs into buckets. These are the directory's figures, not my verdict, and I haven't tested this plugin.