WordPress 3.1 saw a few changes in the way that certain menus and options are displayed in posts and pages. Former versions of WordPress simply included an excerpt field below the title and body areas of posts and pages by default but in 3.1 it disappeared!
Excerpts aren’t something everyone needs or uses but for certain themes they really come in handy. One of my favorite themes for example, relies on the excerpt field to populate an advertisement slider widget on the homepage. If I leave the excerpt field blank that slider ends up blank… So for everyone else out there who is trying to figure it out, here’s the solution to displaying the excerpt field in WordPress. Use the “Screen Options” tab at the top right corner of the screen next to “Help” and then click the checkbox next to “Excerpts”.
- On a post or a page in WordPress find the Screen Options tab in the upper right corner and click it
- A drop down menu will appear with a checkbox next to “Excerpt”
- When you click that checkbox the excerpt fields options will appear lower down on the page!
