WordPress provides several methods for displaying blog posts on the front page of your blog, each with their own positives and negatives.

Method #1 – Split Posts

These use the <! –more–> tag (without the space) to mark a place in the post where it is “split”, and will then offer a link for the reader to click through to read the full post.

Pros: lets you choose where the post is split.  Keeps longer posts from pushing other content too far down the front page.

Cons: also applies the split to your RSS feed for that post, which some readers will not like as they prefer to read the full article within their RSS reader.

Method #2 – Excerpts

Excerpts are short summaries or teasers of content, and can be displayed on the front page of your blog in one of two ways:

1) By using the_excerpt() tag in your WordPress theme, normally within the loop.  This will show by default the first 55 words of the blog post.

2) By specifying an excerpt while writing your post.  If an excerpt is specified in the Write Post admin page it will be displayed by the_excerpt() instead of the first 55 words of the post.

Pros: keeps long posts from pushing other content further down your front page.  Lets you display many post titles and teasers on your front page at once.

Cons: can require more effort if you want to manually type an excerpt that is different to the opening 55 words of your post in order to be more enticing to readers.  If your excerpt does not entice the reader to click through to the full post the rest of your carefully written blog post will go unread.  Often means visually attractive post elements such as images are not shown on the front page.

Excerpts are used to good effect on such popular blogs as ProBlogger and BloggingTips.

Method #3 – Full Posts

Full posts are those that are shown in full on the front page of your blog by including the the_content() tag in your WordPress theme.

Pros: the entire post is shown on the blog front page which makes it easy for readers to read your entire blog post.

Cons: very long blog posts can push other content too far down the page where it will be missed by readers.

Which is best for your blog?

Each of the three methods described above offers its own positives and negatives.  Often times the choice comes down to what kind of blog you are writing.

Excerpts work well on blogs with lots of medium to long blog posts as it keeps as many post titles “above the fold” (in view of the reader when they first arrive on your site) as possible, while still offering a summary of the content within the post not limited to just the post title alone.  Excerpts also have the advantage that you can write a different excerpt for your post that is stronger and more enticing to the reader than the opening passage of the blog post itself.

Full posts have their own advantages and are well suited to blogs that post less frequently (say one every day or two) or that use images and other visuals to attract readers.  Full posts are often used in conjunction with the <! –more–> tag so that the writer can choose which posts are long enough to justify splitting them, and which ones are short enough to just show in full.

Consider what kind of blog you are writing and how you want to draw visitors in to reading your blog posts so that you can choose the right strategy for your blog.

Tagged as: Blogging, WordPress, Writing