I liked the idea of using Juggledad's multicolumn/custom page template as a landing page for posts. This post encouraged me to do a bit of experimenting.

This JD landing page would have material above the posts by putting in a 'show_page_text' custom field with "yes" in the field value. Below this text and perhaps a divider graphic, the posts would appear in blog style.

When I experimented with the idea, the posts broke off with a "continue reading" link, but not where planned them to be with "<!--more-->". For some reason, the page just decided where those breaks would come. How could I ensure that the page would use a "<!--more-->" tag where I wanted it?

Regards,

Alan OldStudent
The unexamined life is not worth living—Socrates
Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto—Violeta Parra

Using a manual excerpt instead of the read more worked for me.

Originally Posted by lmilesw

Using a manual excerpt instead of the read more worked for me.

Hi Larry,

I haven't thought much about or even used excerpts, manual or otherwise. It seems that Juggledad's multicolumn/custom page template uses automatic excerpts. After reviewing your response, I did a bit of research to learn about excerpts. I'm listing the pages I visited below.

My site relies quite a bit on the visual impact to get across a message important to me, and when I put in the "<!--more-->" tag, I am careful about where it goes as a deliberate part of design.

As I researched into manual excerpts, the process of using them to the same effect as my "<!--more-->" tags seemed quite fiddly to me. I really don't want to add more plugins, which come and go out of existence, and I'm hesitant to hack the functions.php.

So what would be the best way to get Juggledad's multicolumn/custom page template to honor the "<!--more-->" tags I insert instead of generating automatic excerpts or forcing me to add manual excerpts to every post? That would seem to be a much elegant solution.

Here are a few of the references I consulted:

• WordPress Codex on Excerpt
• WordPress Development Stack Exchange on HTML in excerpts
• Boutros AbiChedid on preserving HTML tags in excerpts without a plugin
• Another Boutros AbiChedid on preserving HTML tags in excerpts without a plugin
• Stack Overflow on HTML tags in an excerpt
• Aaron Russell on the_excerpt() template tag

Regards,

Alan OldStudent
The unexamined life is not worth living—Socrates
Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto—Violeta Parra

If the more tag is before the excerpt word count is reached, it should be honored, so if the excerpt count is 55 (the default) and the <!--more--> is at word 60 the break will be at the 55th word. If the more tag is at word 40, the more should be honored.

Originally Posted by juggledad

If the more tag is before the excerpt word count is reached, it should be honored, so if the excerpt count is 55 (the default) and the <!--more--> is at word 60 the break will be at the 55th word. If the more tag is at word 40, the more should be honored.

Hi JD,

How do I change it so that it always uses the <!--more--> value instead of the automatic excerpt value? Can I enter a 0 in the Atahualpa configuration: "ATA>Configure EXCERPTS>Excerpt length"?

Regards,

Alan OldStudent
The unexamined life is not worth living—Socrates
Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto—Violeta Parra

you could enter 9999 in "ATA>Configure EXCERPTS>Excerpt length" but then why ever use excerpts? Just set all the pages to use 'Full Posts'