Wordpress plugin for facilitating adding a post descriptions

[catherine-279388]

Could anyone recommend a plugin for creating wordpress post descriptions.  There is a confusingly large selection of choices in the wordpress plugins directory.

[aarondicks]

The most simple method of doing this is by adding into your template file where you'd like the first 40 words followed by a More >> link.

This can also be added into the loop, for example on an archive page. If you need to display the excerpt on a home page, or anywhere out of the loop, this should be combined with the WP_Query class to call posts from the WP DB.

Reply to this post if you need more help! I develop all of my sites from the ground up in Wordpress.

Regards

Aaron

[catherine-279388]

Hi Aaron, thanks for you reply.  I must admit it went over my head a bit.  I've only just started in Wp.  I need to be able to add a description to the post for SERPs and to meet the criteria outputted by my query to the SEOmoz onpage optimization tool.  I don't want any fancy stuff (or my head will explode).  Equally I don't want to add plugins for every problem I meet.

I've added  some code in the header to create a generic description from a tagline I entered in General Settings, just as an experiment.  It (the generic description) now appears in my blogs header, which I definitely don't want.

Is adding a facility to add a unique meta description (not displayed) very technical?  If so maybe I'd be better off adding yet another plugin.

Thanks again

Catherine

[pivotpointsecurity]

A great WordPress plugin for all things SEO (including the Meta description) is WordPress SEO from Yoast.

[aarondicks]

Catherine, I see what you're after now, my first answer may not have answered it correctly.

The best route and probably the easiest thing you're after is an SEO plugin - I'd reccommend the 'All in one SEO' plugin. It allows for you to customise title tags and descriptions for individual posts, and add rules for formatting title tags of post types, categories etc.

Just install it from the backend under Plugins > Add New and check out the settings pages to active it. Then, on each individual post, check the bottom of the page - you'll see an additional meta box with additional options which are all self explanatory.

Hope this helps

Aaron

[catherine-279388]

Thank you I will

Regards

Catherine

[DavidKonigsberg]

I agree- add "all in one seo plugin"

[pivotpointsecurity]

Why do you prefer the All In One SEO plugin over the others?