Adds a “Continue Reading →” link to Hand-Crafted Excerpts on Archive Pages (i.e. Blog Pages). Excerpts are optional hand-crafted summaries of your content, that show up on Archive Pages, RSS feeds, etc. Hand-crafting these summaries give you a SEO as well as click through advantage.
The “Excerpt” field may not display by default on your edit post page, if not, click “Screen Options” at the top of the page and check “Excerpt”.
Mainly for use with StudioPress since StudioPress adds continue link to auto generated excerpts but not hand-crafted, but should work with other themes as well. Just note that this only modifies output for posts you’ve entered text into the “Excerpt” field, and, for themes that display the “Excerpt” field on Archive Pages.
I’m a huge fan of the WordPress themes from StudioPress. However, even the best theme will have little tweaks you’d like to make. That’s why I created this plugin. The StudioPress themes do not add a “Continue Reading” link or button to Archive pages when you’ve filled in the “Excerpt” field, and you’ve set the theme options to use the “Excerpt” field (Genesis->Theme Settings, Content Archives section. However if you leave this setting on the default of “Entry Content” and specify a character limit, you’ll get “auto-generated” excerpts and most StudioPress themes will add a “continue reading” link.
As I mentioned above, there’s a big advantage to hand-crafting these “Excerpt” summaries even though it adds extra time and effort. On an archive page, such as the blog listing or author listing page, that summary acts as an ad to entice the reader to click through and keep reading your article. Auto generated just grabs the first x characters of your content and that may or may not be what you want. Take the extra time and effort and “do the work”… it will pay off in the end if you do it correctly.
You can download the plugin from here: WordPress Continue Reading Link Plugin for Excerpts
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