Guest Post by Udegbunam Chukwudi
With the buzz surrounding Google’s penalty for duplicate content, more bloggers have resorted to showing only excerpts on the home page of their blogs. These excerpts usually end with a link prompting the reader to click if he/she wants to continue reading the article. These links are created using the wordpress Read More Tag.
Why You ought to Use the Read More Tag
The read more tag can dramatically increase the amount of pageviews on your site/blog. I would have gone further to explain this but Alex of Blogussion has already done an excellent job explaining this with his post; Double Your Pageviews – Pros & Cons of Displaying Partial Posts.
Read More Tag in the Post Editor
How to Configure The Read More Tag Effectively
Wrong configuration of the read more tag could leave you ranking for useless anchor texts such as “Read the rest of this entry” or “Continue reading”. What I’m saying in essence is that you MUST add nofollow to the Read More link. Since I’m a huge fan of the less wordpress plug-in movement, I prefer to edit the file directly. Follow the steps below to add nofollow to the read more tag.
Using FTP, navigate the wp-includes folder of your wordpress installation and download the file, post-template.php. Remember to store a backup of this file should things go wrong along the way.
Depending on which editor you use (I use Macromedia Dreamweaver), open the file and find line 226 or search for the line that has the following code:
$output .= apply_filters( 'the_content_more_link', ' $more_link_text", $more_link_text );
Change the above code to:
$output .= apply_filters( 'the_content_more_link', ' $more_link_text", $more_link_text );
Save the file and upload it back to the wp-includes folder and reload your blog’s home page.
The above tweak would have done two things to your read more link.
- The link would no longer have the #more-postid attached to the end of the url e.g. http://www.ooo.com/goofy.html#more-301 becomes http://www.ooo.com/goofy.html and when you click on the link, the page opens right at the beginning of the post and not at the beginning of the read more tag function. This is helpfully for your readers who find it hard to remember what they just read in the excerpt.
- Checking the link using Zachary Fox’s Firefox Addon, Nofollow, reveals that the link is now a nofollow link.
NOTE: You’ll have to apply the above tweak each time you upgrade to a new version of WordPress. Unfortunately not everybody is as patient as I am so some of you are better off getting this fix using a plug-in though while writing this piece, I googled but couldn’t find a plug-in that does this.
Update: The Custom More Link Plugin does exactly the same job. If you don’t like editing the code, use the plugin.
This article was written by Udegbunam Chukwudi who in his pastime writes about free blogging and make money online tips @ his blog Strictly Online Biz. Topics already covered at his blog include Upgrading & Speeding up wordpress blogs, Making Money through Paid Online Surveys, Google Adsense, Web Hosting Reselling and CPA Marketing amongst others.
This entry was submitted by a guest author. If you wish to contribute, please contact me for my terms.
Good info about read more button and, one thing i like most in this post is, READ MORE IMAGE (really creative post by Udegbunam Chukwudi)
I like it….. 🙂
@Alok: The read more image is by Arun Basil himself. I’m very pleased you liked the post. Below is an update.
I finally managed to find a plug-in that fixes this issue in two simple steps. Download and Activate Custom More Link go the Custom More Link under settings in your wordpress dashboard. Change the default code to
%linktext%save it and check to see the effect on your read more link.Take care.
Oops! The code isn’t showing in my comment. I’ll contact Arun to see if he can add the update. Sorry guys
I believe there is a wordpress plugin for it?? and i’d prefer a wp-plugin fora newbie like me!!
Yes, there is a plugin and it has been added to the post now. its here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cy-custom-morelink/
Great. Now blogger too have added the read more feature.
Blogger is slowly following the path, but it is still behind. I love Blogger for its easiness to use. Blogger is good enough for a casual blogger, not good for one like you. I guess you are moving soon.
I like the first picture ! 😛
Creates controversy and forces the readers to see the full article !
Nice article Udegbunam Chukwudi ! 😉
After reading the article when I saw the first picture, I was a bit confused! But when I went forward everything became clear.
Good informative article Udegbunam Chukwudi!
Arun is too blame for your confusion. LMAO. At least he got you very CURIOUS. Thanks for the compliments. Arun sure did a fine job of illustrating the post.
@S.Pradeep Kumar: Thanks for the encouragement. Arun is quite talented in sourcing pictures that call for attention. lol
@Pradeep and @Udegbunam:
Thats one from my x collections, LMAO
LMAO.
LMAO. Your x collection is too soft. LOL
There are many more collections too, more x’s lol 😉
Metadata canal on wordpress blog will make readers more familiar our blog
Hey, thats a great blog you have there and NYC is my favourite city 🙂
I had no idea about this! Thanks so much, it is so rare to find a blog hat actually gives me info I don’t already have. Subscribing now!
thanx for the info i must try it
i will see if it works
thanks in advance
its first time for me to know such this info
thanks
I used this Pluginn and also used this tag but there is an issue that my page truncated on main page but there is no “Read more’ link is showing can any one help me how to solve this.