OK, I’ve read up a bit on this. The following are two ways to achieve what you want.
Adding <!--more--> tags—simple manual method
You can use <!--more--> tags in posts (even at the end of the post). This will work with Customizr if you select “Display the full content” in Appearance > Customize > Pages & Posts Layout AND you select “Full text” in Settings > Reading. However, it’s a bit of a pain, because:
– You have to edit every single post and make sure you have the <!--more--> tag in the right place (even at the very end of the post, when the post is short), otherwise the (More…) link will not show and—worse—the whole post content will show on the list. Placing all these <!--more-->s may not be an issue for a new site, but it is an issue for an older site with many posts.
– The link takes people to the point in the post where the introductory text finishes. Some people don’t like this and find it disorienting. (A minor issue.)
– It means that you have to use the text inside your post as the excerpt text, rather than be able to add a different excerpt. That is, the text shown on your blog list must be the beginning of the text in the article. This is not always appropriate—if you’ve studied journalistic writing, you might be able to pull it off, but most of us cannot do this for all articles.
Another way is as follows:
Adding code in functions.php—bullet-proof more complex method
(0. Remove any <!--more--> tags that you have placed in posts.)
1. Select “Display the excerpt” in Appearance > Customize > Pages & Posts Layout. (WordPress’s own Settings > Reading setting doesn’t seem to matter at this point.)
2. Add the following to the functions.php in your child theme (if you’ve never done this, read here first):
// Add a "More..." hyperlink after post extract in blog list
add_filter( 'the_excerpt', 'my_excerpt_with_more', 20 );
function my_excerpt_with_more( $content ) {
return $content . ' <a class="read-more pull-right" href="'. get_permalink() . '">More...</a>';
}
The main advantage of this method is that you don’t have to interfere with your blog posts to make the “More…” link work. It will appear on every post.
Another advantage of this method is that you can add individual excerpts for posts, so you don’t have to use your post’s own text as the introduction. To do this, select Screen Options (up on the top right of the edit page) and check the Excerpt checkbox. This will place a box at the bottom of your posts where you can enter a completely different text to appear on the blog list.
Problems you might have:
1. On anything but short posts, the […] may appear at the point where the text is cut off. This is generally fine, as it indicates to people that the text has been cut off. However, if it bothers you, then you can enter a separate excerpt for those posts. You can even remove the […] with more code, but if you do this, then your readers will be left with a hanging sentence, so it’s really not a very good idea. Better to live with them and craft a better excerpt in these cases.
2. You may not like the formatting of the “More…” link.
a) I added the “pull-right” class to the “More…” link. This makes it right-aligned. You can remove this if you want it left-aligned.
b) If you want the link to be on the same line as the text, then you can add the following line to your functions.php:
remove_filter( 'the_excerpt', 'wpautop' );
It will remove all paragraph formatting in your excerpts, though, so watch out for unintended consequences.
