Custom Excerpts from Pages – not Posts

[palpatine]

Hello All,

I'm using the Featured Page widgets on the Outreach Pro theme (not sure if the theme matters), on the Home Page home-bottom widgets (not sure if that matters either) and would love to be able to use custom excerpts, instead of just a character limit which seems to be the only option available on the actual widget.

It looks like posts have this option via the screen options drop-down at the top of the admin panel, but not pages. Seems a bit silly, right?

Does someone have a "non-coder" friendly way to accomplish this task?

Or, if it's simple code, I'm good at cut and pasting 😉

Thanks in advance for any input.

-Aaron

[stinkykong]

I've faked this by creating duplicate pages with the "excerpt" as the content. This page redirects to the destination page and is set with canonical link sent to destination page (Yoast SEO plugin) and also set to no-follow. I found this to be a reasonable method given the fact that there are relatively few featured pages.

Another method to consider would be to use posts anyway, perhaps with their own category so to keep separate.

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Web Design by Websentia Web Services
http://websentia.com

[palpatine]

Hey stinkykong (Ha, I feel funny typing that),

Thanks for your reply.

Your method of faking it with duplicate pages with the excerpt I want to use is pretty creative. So, basically you perform the redirect using a canonical link? Would you mind giving me an example of how to do that (unless I cover it below)?

Also, are you sure you need the Yoast SEO plugin to accomplish this? I'm pretty sure that there are redirect and canonicalization options right on the Genesis Pages, correct? I see a field that is titled "Custom Canonical URL", so could I just use that instead? And what exactly would I put there, just the link to the actual full (not faked) page of content?

Lastly... if I nofollow the faked page, is the excerpted content on the home page still crawlable by the search engines?

Thanks again,
Aaron

[Erica M]

What I ended up doing (using the Corporate Theme), was to set up the Genesis Featured Page Widget this way:

Filled in the title.
Selected the page.
Checked to include the featured image, which was already associated with the page.
I left the Show Page Content box unchecked.
Left Content Character Limit and More Text blank.

This will show a header and the featured image only.

Then I added a Text widget in the same section, with no title, and the custom excerpt.

The disadvantage to this method is you don't get to use the automatic More Text link, but you can still navigate to the page because the featured image links to it. Or you can manually link to the page.

Note that, for the Featured Page Widget, if you check the Show Page Content box and leave the character limit field blank, you can instead use a More tag on the page (even mid-paragraph) to establish the cut off point for the excerpt that's included in the home page widget. That's only if you want the excerpt to match the beginning text on the page. The advantage to this is if you want them to match, you can change the text in one place and the change will show up in both places.

But you asked about a custom excerpt, so that's probably not what you want.

[stinkykong]

First of all, I always use the Yoast SEO plugin but much of this is doable using what comes with any Genesis theme, I just don't recall what. In you page editing screen you may need to check you "screen options" (the top right drop down menu) to see that all you need is visible in the editing screen.

Below your content editing box, you'll find a handful of options. I use a permanent redirect and set the url to the destination page. Using the Yoast plugin, there is an advanced tab that offers the options for permanent redirect, the canonical url (which tells search engines which page holds the relevant content and this should also be the destination page). You'll use the same featured image from the media library if you use one.

Screenshot Link

Hope this helps.

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Web Design by Websentia Web Services
http://websentia.com

[palpatine]

Hey stinkykong and Erica,

Thanks for your suggestions. I'm sure I can figure it out now.

@stinkykong: I'm still curious though, if I redirect the "fake" page to the destination page, will the content that is pulled into the featured page widget on the Home page still be crawlable by the search engines?

Seems weird that there has to be all these workarounds. It would be nice if this was just a standard feature, like on a post page. Or, even if there were a plugin or something that would allow you to fill in a custom field for custom excerpts or something.

Anyhoo, thanks again you guys for your creative solutions.

-Aaron

[stinkykong]

Setting the page to "no-follow" for meta robots tells Google not to index that page.

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Web Design by Websentia Web Services
http://websentia.com

[palpatine]

Setting the page to “no-follow” for meta robots tells Google not to index that page.

Right... I get that, but what about the excerpt of that page, that is showing up on the Home page via the Featured Page Widget? Is that content "nofollowed" as well?

Thanks,
Aaron

[stinkykong]

What is disallowed is not the content but rather the url of the page itself. While the page itself will be disallowed from the search engines, the excerpt displayed on you home page will be read as part of your home page content. Search engines should not send people to your redirecting pages. If they do, the readers will be redirected to the destination page.

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Web Design by Websentia Web Services
http://websentia.com

[palpatine]

Yo stinkykong,

Thanks man. I was thinking about it a bit more myself and realized that it was probably a silly question. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't overlooking something.

I really appreciate you taking the time to address it for me.

Your new site is BADASS btw.

Have a good one,
Aaron

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