show content excerpt in mini list posts widget

[Aengus B]

Hi,
I’m wondering if its possible to show an excerpt of content from a post in the Mini List post widget display – at the moment it shows just featured image and title. I’m comfortable with editing php if its required

thanks,
Aengus

Topic

[Jason Bobich]

Hello Aengus,

There isn’t any kind of feature for this. You’d have to actually customize the function that controls the mini post list. This function is called themeblvd_get_mini_post_list and can be found in /framework/frontend/functions/parts.php.

Here’s how to edit a function from your Child theme: http://dev.themeblvd.com/tutorial/editing-framework-functions/

How to retrieve the excerpt within a WordPress loop: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_the_excerpt

[askwpgirl]

Hey Aengus,

I did this for a site recently. You can contact me at:

http://askwpgirl.com/about/

I can send you the code I stuck in my functions file. Or, perhaps better yet, you might really like this plugin:

http://www.pjgalbraith.com/2011/08/recent-posts-plus/

It gives you all kinds of great options for displaying your recent posts, including excerpts, etc.

Angela

• This reply was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by askwpgirl. Reason: added cool recent posts plugin
• This reply was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by Jason Bobich.

[askwpgirl]

Hi Aengus,

I sent this to you in an email, but I thought I’d share here. What I did on the site, I now remember, is instead of using the TB Mini Post List Widget, I just put the TB shortcode for a post list in a Text Widget:

[post_list thumbs="hide" post_content="excerpt" numberposts="2" orderby="post_date" order="DESC" offset="0" link="true" link_text="Read Our Blog" link_url="http://mysite.com/blog/" link_target="_self"]

This worked brilliantly. I found the details about all the post list options on the Jump Start Demo site on this page:

http://www.themeblvd.com/demo/jumpstart/features/shortcodes/shortcodes-display-posts/

I love that all the shortcodes will work in a Text Widget, but you do need to add this function somewhere in your child theme’s functions file to allow shortcodes to be parsed in Text Widgets:

add_filter('widget_text', 'do_shortcode');

Angela

[tgolas]

Hi Angela,

Thank you very much for this info. With it, I’m able to make it work ALMOST the way I need it… I’m trying to create a simple Events List in a text widget, but want to hide the meta, show the thumbs “small,” and limit the number of excerpt characters (so I can show the start and end dates of the performance and maybe a short description). Can you tell me how to enhance your shortcode above to do this?

Many thanks.
Terri

[askwpgirl]

Ah! I see your conundrum. So, what I’ve done in these circumstances is used this amazing plugin called Recent Posts plus.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/recent-posts-plus/

check out these screenshots:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/recent-posts-plus/screenshots/

Sweet!!! You can specify the excerpt length and thumbnail size. It rocks!

[tgolas]

THANK YOU!!!

[Author]

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