“Latest Posts” block – cannot set excerpt length

  • Unknown's avatar
    sharonde · Member ·

    The Latest Posts block defaults to 55 words for the excerpt. There is an option to change this, but it does not work for me. Any tips?

    Also, the block “Blog Posts” does not show – has this been removed? I can get Latest Posts to display the posts I want, so just curious about the Blog Posts block

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • csabarakasz · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    The Latest Posts block defaults to 55 words for the excerpt. There is an option to change this, but it does not work for me. Any tips?

    Could you send me the post or page that is affected by this issue? I tried to replicate your situation but it worked for me. It might be just a temporarily cache issue that would be solved with a few refresh button.

    Also, the block “Blog Posts” does not show – has this been removed? I can get Latest Posts to display the posts I want, so just curious about the Blog Posts block

    It has not been removed. It shows up for me as “Blog Posts” when I am testing it.

  • Unknown's avatar
    sharonde · Member ·

    Thanks for your response.

    Here is one example – I have set the max number of words in the excerpt to 20 (for testing purposes). It works correctly in editor mode, but always shows more words on the updated page. I have refreshed cache multiple times to no avail.

    Here is the page where it is set to 20 words: https://sdehayes.com/recent-posts/

    And I still get “no results found” when I search for the Blog Posts block. This isn’t a big issue, because Latest Posts can be configured to pull just certain categories.

    (I am running the Chronicle Theme on the Business Plan)

  • csabarakasz · Staff ·

    Thank you for the link and the additional information.

    After looking at your page, I did some more testing and I actually was able to reproduce the error. I will add the modlook tag to this thread to call Staff’s attention to this issue.

    I also wanted to mention that on the Business Plan you have access to 24/7 live chat support with full-time Staff here: https://wordpress.com/help/contact. Of course, you are always welcomed to post here in the public forums a well where both volunteers and staff will help you as soon as we can.

  • Unknown's avatar
    sharonde · Member ·

    Hey thanks again for the response.

    Yes, I have had great success with the WordPress.com support staff chat. This is just something that isn’t critical, and I wondered if anyone else had the issues. I thought maybe there was some other setting that might be overwriting the excerpt length…

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    Here is one example – I have set the max number of words in the excerpt to 20 (for testing purposes). It works correctly in editor mode, but always shows more words on the updated page. I have refreshed cache multiple times to no avail.

    From what I can see this is an issue related to your theme, which may not have been designed with 100% blocks compatibility. If I preview the same page using the default TwentyTwenty theme for WordPress, it shows the shortened excerpts as expected:

    Click to view image

    Chronicle is an older theme that was developed before there was such a thing as a “block editor” so while it is compatible with blocks, it will never be as compatible as one that was designed with blocks in mind. I’ve reported this display issue to our themes team, but it may be some time until it is addressed since they are currently focused on launching new themes for the block editor.

    Also, the block “Blog Posts” does not show – has this been removed? I can get Latest Posts to display the posts I want, so just curious about the Blog Posts block

    I noticed that a few plugins we install on all sites (by default) were deactivated on your site for some reason. The “Blog Posts Block” is controlled by one of the deactivated plugins in this case, which is why you did not see it. I reactivated the “WordPress.com Editing Toolkit” plugin, and you should now see the blog posts block as expected. Here you can see at this link I selected it for a test page: https://d.pr/v/7IV2mu

    Yes, I have had great success with the WordPress.com support staff chat. This is just something that isn’t critical, and I wondered if anyone else had the issues.

    I should probably clarify that this is the support forum for free sites without an upgrade, and while we do help with any WordPress.com site owner that is posting here, we do not see or deal with Business sites all that often. I definitely understand your thinking, but for the best results it’s a good idea to turn to chat since staff at that place deals with Business sites all the time. You don’t have to chat just when you have an emergency, it’s for any questions you have no matter how small, and is a perk of your Business plan that I am sure many other site owners wish they had.

    Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions.

  • Unknown's avatar
    sharonde · Member ·

    Thank you very much for the helpful reply.

    I will check with my theme support, they have been helpful on some other issues.

    Thanks for clarifying the use of this forum as well.

  • The topic ‘“Latest Posts” block – cannot set excerpt length’ is closed to new replies.