Blog excerpts (also called journal excerpts or summaries) give your readers a taste or teaser of a full blog post. If you write longer posts, or if your posts are heavy with images or videos, showing excerpts instead of the full post makes it easier for viewers to browse your content in one place. When readers see a teaser that grabs their attention, they can click Click to read more... to read the post in full.
- To see the excerpt for any blog post, open the blog post editor and click Summary.
- Posts that don't have excerpts will show the whole post on the blog landing page.
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Before you begin
If you click the Define Excerpt icon in the blog post editor when no text is highlighted, it deletes the post's excerpt.
Enable excerpts
Enable excerpts in your Journal Page's configuration area.
- In Structure mode, click Configure This Page.
- In the Presentation Options section, ensure Display Excerpts in Journal is checked.
- Click Save Page Configuration.
Option 1 - Excerpt part of your blog post
To use part of your blog post as the excerpt:
- Highlight the text you want to set as your excerpt.
- Click the Define Excerpt icon.
The text you highlighted is added to the Summary area. If there's text there already, it'll be replaced.
Option 2 - Add a separate excerpt
To set your excerpt with different text than your blog post:
- Click Summary.
- Type your excerpt into the Excerpt field.
Click Summary again to go back to the post editor.
Tip: This field accepts HTML. Adding code to your site is an advanced modification that falls outside of the scope of Squarespace support.
Edit an excerpt
Once you've added an excerpt, click Summary in the blog post editor to edit it.
Click Summary again to go back to the post editor.
Tip: If you excerpted text from your blog post body, changing the body text won't change the excerpt.
Delete an excerpt
There are two ways to delete an excerpt in the blog post editor:
- Click the icon - With no text highlighted, click the Define Excerpt icon.
- Summary tab - Click Summary and delete the text manually.
Once you've deleted an excerpt, the full post text will appear on the blog landing page.
Include an image
One option for including an image is to add it to your blog post and include it when you highlight and click the Define Excerpt icon (see Option 1).
You can also add the image URL to the Summary area (see Option 2) using the image URL and an html image tag. Note that adding code to your site is an advanced modification that falls outside of the scope of Squarespace support.
Tip: Add an image to your blog post and click HTML to copy its html.
