creating a summary post and keeping within the border

If you go there, on the latest post, toward the end of the post, you’ll see that its going past the right dotted line. Is there a way to fix this?

Your main problem is you pasted the copy directly from MS Word, which inserts its formatting codes into your copy, and overrides your theme’s stylesheet.

When you want to paste from word, use the Paste from Word button. If you only see one row of buttons on the editor toolbar, click the last button on the right. That opens a second row. One of them has a W in it – Paste From Word. Click it and paste your text in there. That will strip out the Word formatting codes you don’t want.

So remove the copy you already pasted in, and add it again using Paste From Word. That will respect your theme’s boundaries.

Also, how do I get it so that only the first few lines of the long blogs show up on the main post page where they can click a link to see the rest of the blog post?

So you understand, that is an all or nothing thing – meaning ALL posts on the homepage will only show the shortened post. There are ways to make it selective, but that involves more coding.

Go into your theme directory in wp-content/themes/{your theme name} – edit the index.php file. Search for the_content( and replace it with the _excerpt(

Then only the first lines of your posts will appear.

Before we tackle the “text outside the dotted red line issue” you have to get the Microsoft Word formatting out of your blog post’s code. When you paste from Word directly into the “Write” area it copies in all sorts of formatting code that can cause a whole bunch of issues when trying to format your text.

To get rid of the the Word Formatting code.

1.Edit the post in question.

2.On the Visual Tab (as opposed to the HTML tab) click on the last icon on the right (it looks like three rows of colored squares). This will expand more options.

3.Click in the write area and select all your text (CTRL+A), then CUT all your text out (CTRL+X).

4. On the new row of options find the icon that has the Word Icon ontop of a clipboard. Click this “paste from Word” option and paste your text into the popup window. Click the Insert button on that window.

5.Check the HTML tab now to make sure you dont see any class="MsoNormal"

6. Save your post.

———- Excerpts————-

To get shortened versions of your posts on your main page.

1.Backup your theme’s index.php file however you see fit. (usually copying, pasting and renaming it to something else will suffice)

2. Open the index.php file in your theme’s folder

3. Inside The Loop replace:

<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry &raquo;'); ?>

with

<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

Hope that helps.

Nice post, stvwlf. You keep edging me out by a few minutes tonight ??

ha! got it working.

much thanks