Latest version is 2.3, released on 12 February 2009.
Evermore is a WordPress plugin that automatically displays short previews of your posts on your home page. Each preview includes a link to the full post. Evermore is simple to use — just install it and it starts working straight away. If you want, you can also customise the length and appearance of the previews.
Blog home pages are often too full. By default, WordPress displays the last ten posts on the main page; visitors have to do a lot of scrolling to see if there’s something interesting. With Evermore, visitors see a short preview of each post; they can easily scan your posts, find something interesting, and become hooked.
Example
For an example of Evermore in action, see my site Bennettarium.
Installation
- Full download instructions are at the end of this article.
- Log in to WordPress Admin. Go to the Plugins section and activate Evermore
Using the plugin
Evermore has the same effect as putting <!--more--> in every post to create a short preview of the post. Depending on your WordPress theme, the previews will appear on the home page, and also the archive and category pages. By default, the preview contains just the first paragraph, but if the first paragraph is very short then the preview will include the second paragraph too. This behaviour can be adjusted using Evermore’s Settings.
All formatting and HTML tags are preserved in the post preview. If the post already has a <!--more--> in it, then Evermore ignores the post, and the <!--more--> works as usual.
Advanced usage
To stop Evermore creating a preview for a particular post, include the magic word <!--nevermore--> somewhere in the post. The magic word won’t appear when people view your post, but Evermore will see it and display the full post rather than just a preview.
To change the length of the preview that Evermore creates, log in to your WordPress administration console and go to the Settings, then click Evermore. You will see the Evermore configuration screen where you can set the following options.
- The number of paragraphs each preview should contain
- The minimum length of the preview
Sometimes, the first paragraph of a post can be very short (just a short sentence, or a picture). This option allows you to add extra paragraphs to make the preview a more reasonable length. - Where to put the “read more” link — either at the end of the last paragraph, or on a new line by itself
Evermore does not change your saved posts. If you wish to display full posts on your home page again, simply go to your WordPress administration console and disable the Evermore plugin. Everything will be back as it was.
Notes
Evermore has been tested successfully with WordPress versions from 1.5 to 2.7, and should also work with newer versions as they are released.
If you find any problems, please let me know by leaving a comment at the bottom of this page.
Alternatives
Some clever people have written other plugins that do similar things. Evermore is simple and useful, but if you feel it’s not quite right for you, you could try looking at these others.
- Auto More takes a slightly less robust approach. It actually writes the
<!--more-->into your post when you save it. This means it would be difficult to take it out later. It also doesn’t work so well with more complex formatting. But it may work for your purposes. - the_excerpt Reloaded offers a customisable version of the
the_excerpttemplate tag. You have to edit your theme to use it. - Fancy excerpt is effectively an upgrade to the
the_excerpttemplate tag. It requires no theme editing. However, it will break text in the middle of a paragraph, and it still strips HTML tags from the excerpt. - Post Teaser is like a very fancy Evermore. You can configure the number of words to include, and add an estimated reading time and a word and image count. If Evermore is too simple for your needs, try PostTeaser instead.
Please leave a comment if you know of other similar plugins.
Download
Download Evermore from the WordPress Plugin Directory. Don’t forget to check out all the other plugins available here — there’s bound to be one that you will find useful.
I write these WordPress plugins because I enjoy doing it, but it does take up a lot of my time. If you think this plugin is useful, please consider donating some appropriate amount.
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Full WordPress plugin list
- Code Markup — Quickly paste code samples into your posts -- you can even include HTML markup in the code sample.
- Evermore — Automatically display a short preview of your posts on the home page and other multiple-post pages, along with a link to the full post.
- FixBack — Ensure trackbacks and pingbacks are sent with the correct link back to your blog.
- Less — Less is no more. It has been renamed to Seemore and moved to its own Seemore plugin page.
- Plaintext — Allow your readers to download source files (e.g. PHP, HTML, ASP) as plain text.
- Safe Title — Use HTML in post titles in the default WordPress theme (or any other theme).
- Search Meter — Find out what people are searching for on your blog, so you can write what your visitors want to read.
- Seemore — Change the (more...) link so it jumps to the full post, not just the part after the link.
- Top Cat — Specify a main category for your posts, and use template tags to display posts differently according to their main category.
Hi Bennett .. Have you had time to sneeze yet?
Sorry; still no sneeze.
No matter how many times I emigrate, it always seems to take a long time and a lot of organising… Maybe, maybe in the next couple of weeks.
No problem Bennett .. when you have time, if you have time .. I redesigned my site yesterday … so, if you click on my name and see the site .. you will see what I was talking about – having the evermore kick in after 1st paragraph … mostly titles.
Take care …// HART
Hi,
I see “Read the rest of this entry” on the main page, but not on the Category pages! It just shows “[...]” with no link. Can you help me? Thanks in advance.
If a file in your theme uses
the_excerpt(), you will see [...] with no link. If it usesthe_content()then you’ll see the link, and Evermore will work. So if you have a file category.php in your theme, open it and changethe_excerpt()to
the_content('Read the rest of this entry »')()The same trick work on other files such as archive.php and even index.php.
Hi Bennet ..
I hope all is well (and Paragraph 2 or 3 capabilities is still on the ‘plate’)
Take care .. // HART
[continued] //…. or perhaps you might be willing to lend the modified version of the script as seen (i believe) on this page? http://www.thunderguy.com/bennett/2005/07/19/julius-caesar-william-shakespeare/ I like how it looks after the 2nd paragraph and ties in the title. It’s been a month almost, since your post on the 20th … it would be nice to know if you will be working on something like that in the future, or will be unable to work on something like that for a long timel, or even still – that you will never will be working on modifications of this kind … I’d hate to go back and edit over 600 posts just to make it look pretty on the cover page… that’s the beauty of using your evermore i.m.o.
Hart, the Bennettarium page you refer to uses the plain old Evermore plugin, but for that post I simply used a manual
moretag at the beginning of the third paragraph! The shortened title is done with a customised title tag from a special Bennettarium-specific plugin. I tell ya, the plugins you see here are only the tip of the iceberg!I emailed you my More Evermore plugin a few days ago. Did you not get it? Let me know.
Works great. Thanks. My only problem is that it doesn’t work with postie (email posts). Email posts show up in their entirety.
Wallee, Evermore detects paragraphs by, amongst other things, looking for consecutive line breaks. So this would be two paragraphs:
But this is only one:
Maybe adding extra line breaks to your email posts will help. If not, could you give me a link to a post so I can see the problem? Thanks!
Hi Bennett… I finally responded to your Nov 19th message via email – sorry it took so long. I did receive MoreEvermore, but it was part of the email itself. Can you please send as an attachment .txt file please? Thanks in advance! // HART
I need to show only title and clicking on it show all the post for this site: http://www.modellehostess.it I hope this do it, if not, I like it too! thank you!
Thank you very much for making this plugin available. It’s exactly what i need. Using on my site http://www.picture-perfect-memories.com
excellent !!! i was looking for this same plugin !!!
Bennett, thanks for the plugin, I always use the More tag but some of my other users (who are less then familiar with WP) often forget, post a massive article which makes my site look a mess. A plugin for the N00bs. Thanks
Hi Bennett,
Just installed evermore and less on my site. Don’t know why, but still doesn’t work. I’m still getting full length rss feeds. Although I check “summary” in WP, and activated both your plugins!
I actually just want the title, and a summary (
Hi, I like the plug-in and would really like to use it for my blog. I tried activating it but it messes up the layout: the pics in some of my posts appear to the right of the post title instead of somewhere under it. I tried moving the pic from the first paragraph, for example, to the third paragraph, but the pic still appears on the front page. I don’t know how to fix this.
I’m using the connections theme, wordpress 2.0.1. My url is http://www.barakocafe.com.
Gil, Evermore isn’t designed to work on RSS fields.
Issy:
Hmmm. Well, this just sounds completely weird. The only thing I can think of is that there might be a problem if an image appears at the beginning of a post; Evermore would then show just the image with a (more…) link, and then the image might intrude on the title of the next post. To see if this is a problem, try disabling Evermore and then creating a post that consists only of a picture. If this causes layout problems, then the problem is not Evermore; it’s your theme’s style sheet. I think the problem could probably be solved by some CSS work on your theme. (Maybe by adding
clear:bothto the style forh2.post-title.)Good luck. If you need a hand with anything, please let me know.
Hi again Bennett,
Thanks for your reply. You’re right–there’s something wrong w/ my CSS, but I don’t know how to fix it. I’ve gotten the plug-in to work w/ my page, but I can’t wrap text around the images or align the images left or right (I have to use clear:both). And I’ve got to put the image in the first paragraph. This is weird because when the image is in the third paragraph, for example, Evermore cuts the post after the image. I’m using modern by ulf pettersson. My blog is at http://www.barakocafe.com. I’d appreciate any help.
Hey Bennett, great, great plugin. Thank you for all your hard work!
I’m looking to modify the plugin so that the breaks happen after the second paragrah. Any way you could email me the more evermore plugin? I’d really appreciate it.
Again, thanks!