Why change excerpt functionality

@graftedin, I’m sorry to hear you’re having trouble with the plugin. It sounds like you’re just upgrading to the 2.X version now? You’re right that the templates have pretty radically changed. These new templates 1) are much easier for new users to customize, 2) should be less-likely to change and easier to maintain in the future, 3) allow the use of template tags in the templates. I decided those major benefits outweighed the downside of overhauling the template; however, I know that means a bit of work for people like you who used old templates. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Regarding Advanced Excerpt, I just tested Feature a Page Widget 2.0.6 with Advanced Excerpt 4.2.3 on WordPress 4.4. (all latest) and HTML formatting worked as expected. However, it does seem like not all the features work quite as expected. Which parts of the Advanced Excerpt are you trying to use?

FYI, to have an auto-generated excerpt (rather than the custom one), you just need to use the fpw_auto_excerpt filter.

Finally, the read more link is handled to improve accessibility and allow people to easily target only the widget output. If you want to change the “Read More”, there’s a filter for that too: fpw_read_more_text.

I think you missed what I was getting at. WP already handles the excerpt. There is no reason for you to overwrite that functionality. Just leave it alone so I can use other plugins to do it.

I was trying to change the read more text with Advanced Excerpt and I need tags left in and the max chars increased.

@graftedin, if you take a look at the templates you’ll see that they do use the_excerpt(). The custom read more and hiding auto excerpts are added to the plugin to allow for highly-requested options and encourage writing custom excerpts, respectively. Judging by feedback I’ve received, this setup works well for most people.

I’m not quite sure why those Advanced Excerpt features aren’t working once fpw_auto_excerpt is turned on. I’ll try to find some time to investigate that further soon and release a fix if I can find one.

Again, thanks for the feedback.