Why have excerpts instead of full posts on your home page

Some reasons you might want to show excerpts instead of full posts on the home page include:

• It can be difficult for readers (new and old) to get a quick overview of your latest articles when they have to page down a couple of times to get to the next article headline.
• Search engines don’t like duplicate content on your website. So it’s better to have your content on single pages as opposed to both home and single pages.
• The fact that a user has to click on an article to read it means that you get feedback on which articles your readers like. If they read the entire article off the front page, you don’t know if they read the article, or closed their browser immediately after loading your homepage.

Why have full posts instead of excerpts on your home page

On the other hand,

• Some people believe the “no duplicate content” rule to be overblown.
• Having full content on the home page makes it easier for people to read without constant clicking.
• Having full content on your home page instead of excerpts means you get full content in your RSS feeds as well, which many of your readers may find handy.
• Having full content on your home page means more text which often results in some combination of keywords which can be a match for a user’s Google query. I don’t know if that’s the kind of random traffic you want, though.

Before you switch

In the end, I decided to go with excerpts because my digital how-to’s were getting to be longer than 6 pages (i.e., six times pressing the Page Down key in a typical-sized browser window). Having to page down six times just to see what the next article’s title is seemed to me to be too much to ask readers to do. With excerpts, you can now page down just five times to see all the latest articles.

But before you do anything, be sure to make a full backup of your WordPress installation, including the MySQL database.

Creating single.php and editing index.php to show excerpts

OK, the file that WordPress uses to generate the home page is called index.php. You can also have a file called single.php that generates the “single pages” which display a single blog post per page. If you don’t have a single.php, WordPress uses index.php for double duty.

But since we want the home page to look different from single pages, we have to have a separate single.php. Just copy the index.php file as-is to a new file called single.php.

Now, we have to edit index.php. Do this with a text editor, or from WordPress administration (Appearance: Editor). If you use the WordPress Editor, look for Main Index Template.

Look for text that says the_content():

<?php the_content(); ?>

Replace it with:

<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

That’s it!

Click here to read this entry

OK, but now after reading the excerpt, the reader has to now go back to click your blog post title to actually read your full post.

Let’s make it easy by adding a link that reads “Read the rest of this entry”:

<h3><a class="more-link" title="Read the rest of <?php the_title(); ?>" href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">Read the rest of this entry ...</a></h3>

Note that I wrapped the link in h3 tags to make the link larger, more visible, and easier to click. This is what it looks like:

Read the rest of this entry …

Save the file and reload your homepage to verify the changes.

Thanks to Pro Blog Design for this excellent tip.

Excerpts in RSS feeds, and tags, categories, and archive pages

Note that by making these changes, your RSS feeds, and tags, categories, and archive pages will show excerpts as opposed to full posts.

You can get fancy by coming up with various combinations of having or not having full posts vs. excerpts on the front page, RSS feeds, tag pages, etc. with various other edits or plugins, but that’s the basics.

You can also show your entire latest post (or latest x number of posts) in full with the rest as excerpts. Again, that’s for later.

Default excerpts

By default, WordPress shows the first 55 words of your article as an excerpt. It also strips all tags and formatting and just shows plain text.

Some people use plugins to show full sentences and not break in the middle of an excerpt.

But I actually prefer the default which does break sentences. Think about it: if your phone conversation gets cut off, don’t you call back to listen to what the other party was saying? A break in a sentence actually makes me want to click the link just to complete the sentence.

Excerpt word count

If you want to check what 55 words amounts to, you can (among other methods), use the wc command in Linux (which is most likely what your web host provider is using). At the command prompt,

• type wc -w:
• paste your first paragraph or so right into the command shell
• press Enter
• press Ctrl+d

js@webhost:~/$ wc -w

wc responds with the word count:

Some of my posts have been getting longer and longer, especially how-to's. It's hard to scan the front page for articles, and I thought it was time to switch from full posts to excerpts on the home page.
 
Why have excerpts instead of full posts on your home page
 
Some reasons you might want to show excerpts instead of full posts on the home page include:
66

66 is the word count.

Resources

Display Post Excerpts Only in WordPress

Template Tags/the excerpt « WordPress Codex

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What Is SSH?

SSH is the Secure Shell protocol, which is a way for two computers to talk to one another without anybody being able to decode what is being said even if the interloper were able to access the raw network communications between the two computers. This is similar to the way web browsers use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to talk with e-commerce and other secure websites.

SSH is mostly used for shell access (typing commands for a remote server to execute) and for authenticating SFTP (Secure FTP), which allows downloading and uploading files to and from remote computers.

Password Annoyances

Usually, you’ll type in a username and password to authenticate yourself to the remote computer. But that gets boring real quick. Often you’ll be tempted to set an easy password, just to make it easier to type in again and again. Yet that’ll obviously decrease your security.

Add in the fact that many SSH clients tend to get stuck or boot you out if you don’t continuously use the connection, and that means plenty of password-retyping.

Solution: SSH Public Keys

The answer is SSH public-key based encryption. Public-key based encryption relies on two pieces of information: One, a secret and private key which you keep in a secure location (i.e., your home directory), and the other, a public key which you place anywhere you want to log in to.

The key is actually a long number, but it’s usually expressed as a series of number and letters when written to your hard drive.

I won’t go into the details of public/private key encryption here, but let it suffice to say that the remote server, encrypts a some data with your public key. The only way to decrypt that data would be if you had the private key, which your local computer does. After it does the decryption, the remote computer is able to trust that you are really you.

Passwordless Login

OK, since the only thing you need to log in to a remote computer is a private key, you don’t need to enter the password associated with your remote username. Hence, you’ve achieved passwordless login.

Now, since the private key can be used to log in to any one of your remote accounts, you might want to protect it. You can specify what is called a “passphrase” for it at the time your create your private key. That might seem slightly paradoxical, since having to enter a passphrase for your private key instead of a password for your remote server doesn’t seem like an improvement.

There are ways to have a passphrase, and also not have to enter it in again and again, but that’ll be the subject of another post. For now, anyway, if your personal computer is secure, and you want things to be easy, just don’t specify a passphrase.

Creating a Private Key

To start using SSH public key encryption, you need to create a private key.

Note: be sure SSH is installed for your operating system. It will usually be installed by default on Ubuntu (and just about any other Linux/Unix based system).

To create a private key, use the ssh-keygen program. Type ssh-keygen in a terminal:

js@buntu910wd:~$ ssh-keygen
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/js/.ssh/id_rsa):

When prompted for which file you want to save the key in, just press Enter for the default.

If you want to have passwordless logins, don’t enter a passphrase when prompted. Just press Enter twice:

Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:

ssh-keygen creates the key and then tells you where it saved it:

Your identification has been saved in /home/js/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/js/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

Your public and private keys are saved in a hidden folder called .ssh in your home directory. The ssh-keygen program sets permissions to allow only yourself to read the private key, but if you want to be sure, just do an ls -l:

js@buntu910wd:~/.ssh$ ls -l
total 12
-rw------- 1 js js 1675 2009-12-25 16:29 id_rsa
-rw-r--r-- 1 js js  395 2009-12-25 16:29 id_rsa.pub
-rw-r--r-- 1 js js 2210 2009-11-27 19:07 known_hosts

Note: id_rsa is the private key. Guard it well. If someone is able to copy that key, he will be able to log in to any of your remote accounts.

id_rsa.pub is the public key. No one can log in to your remote accounts just by having your public key, but there’s no reason to spread it around, either.

Installing the Public Key

To use your public and private keys, you have to install the public key on each remote server you want to access without a password.

The way that SSH works by default, it looks for public keys in a file called authorized_keys in the .ssh directory. The public keys are are just long sequences of text in a single line.

You can have more than one key in an authorized_keys file (for yourself, or to allow others to log on).

If you’re setting up SSH keys for the first time, you probably won’t have an authorized_keys file on your remote server. So you can just copy the file that contains the public key to a new file calle authorized_keys:

cp .ssh/id_rsa.pub ~/authorized_keys

Then upload the authorized_keys file to the remote computer’s .ssh directory. If you don’t have a .ssh directory on the remote computer, create one:

mkdir ~/.ssh

Important: Be sure you upload your public key, and not the private key. The public key has a “.pub” file extension.

Then, set the permissions on the authorized_keys file to allow only your account access to the file:

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Log in Without a Password

Now go to a terminal and log in to your account:

ssh johnsmith@example.com

If all goes well, ssh shouldn’t ask you for your password, like so:

js@buntu910wd:~$ ssh johnsmith@example.com
johnsmith@example.com's password:

Since sftp uses the same authentication mechanism as ssh, you can use the sftp program without passwords, as well.

Summary

1. Create a private/public key pair with ssh-keygen.
2. Copy the id_rsa.pub file to authorized_keys.
3. Upload the authorized_keys file to the .ssh directory in your home folder on the remote server.
4. Set permissions to only allow your user to access the key files.

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Gravatars are so-called “Globally Recognized Avatars” which allow you to show your choice of image (photo, drawing, whatever) alongside the comments you make on your own or others’ WordPress blogs.

You might find it handy to have multiple e-mails associated with your Gravatar account:

• to avoid every blog out there from knowing your main e-mail (remember, WordPress is often hacked).
• to avoid allow you to section off the damage if one of your e-mail addresses becomes compromised. If you get spam addressed to a given address, you can block just that one e-mail.
• to post to different categories of blogs with different pictures. For example, a dignified picture for responding to work-related blogs, and a fun one for personal comments on various blogs.

To start, go to gravatar.com, log in and select “Add an Email Address” from the “My Account” menu.

Gravatar Add Email: Start

Gravatar asks you for the e-mail to add:

Gravatar Add Email: Specify Email

Enter the e-mail address you want to add, and hit Enter. Gravatar doesn’t add the e-mail automatically, but rather sends a confirmation e-mail to the address you entered. This is to prevent people from associated e-mail addresses that they don’t own:

Gravatar Add Email: Confirmation Email Sent

Go to your e-mail account, and go to the confirmation link in the e-mail that Gravatar sent you:

Gravatar Add Email: Confirm Email Address

Gravatar will activate the e-mail for use with Gravatar and then ask you to select an image to use with that e-mail (if you have more than one image):

Gravatar Add Email: Email Confirmed, Choose Image

Select an image, and confirm it:

Gravatar Add Email: Confirm Image

OK, now you’ve added another e-mail to use with your Gravatar account. And you can keep your main e-mail (that you used to sign up with Gravatar) private.

Resources

Blogs covering adding multiple e-mail addresses to a Gravatar account include the WordPress blog and Leonid Mamchenkov.

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To get simple message box functionality, you have to specify a number of options:

JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(parent,
    "Message",
    "Title",
    JOptionPane.INFORMATION_MESSAGE,
    icon);

This shows a dialog with your message plus a look-and-feel defined icon which varies depending on the option selected. For example, a question mark icon is shown for JOptionPane.QUESTION_MESSAGE. The various message types are shown below for the default Swing Metal look-and-feel:

Java Swing MessageBox: PLAIN_MESSAGE

Java Swing MessageBox: INFORMATION_MESSAGE

Java Swing MessageBox: QUESTION_MESSAGE

Java Swing MessageBox: WARNING_MESSAGE

Java Swing MessageBox: ERROR_MESSAGE

Note: the icon can be null if you don’t want or need an icon. You should specify a parent component (such as a JFrame) if you want the dialog to be modal with respect to that component. If you don’t mind that the user can click on something else and ignore your dialog message, leave it null.

If you want to get a response from the user as opposed to simply having him click OK, use the JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog() series of methods.

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