07 Jul 09 Changing WordPress Default Theme Front Page To Show Post Excerpts Only

This is one of those things that tends to get under my skin. Web sites with long pages showing far too much information on the front page. Realistically I think the best approach is to give users access to plenty of information, but not necessarily having them bombarded with it. For the WordPress Default theme (the one based on Kubrick) this is done by showing only post excerpts as opposed to the entire thing.. You can follow the steps below to this affect:

1. Open up the index.php page of the theme. You can do this one of two ways.
   1. Manually: locate the folder wp-content/themes/default and open the index.php file
   2. WordPress Admin: look under the Appearance menu and select Themes. Once here select the Main Index Template page from the list on the right hand side of the editor.
2. On the 20th line (or thereabouts) you will find the text: < ?php the_content(‘Read the rest of this entry »’); ?>
3. Replace this text with the text <?php the_excerpt(); ?>

That’s it. One note though, I would always comment out any changes I have made so that should something go wrong I can always switch back. If you want to comment it out instead of replacing it then you would use < ?php //the_content(‘Read the rest of this entry »’); ?>