Read more does not show up when I write my own Excerpt

Question

On my blog on all my main loops I have it set to show the excerpt instead of the content

If I make a longer post and leave the excerpt text box empty, then wordpress will make it's own excerpt from my post and show the [...] or a custom link at the end. Thats great however if I DO enter my own excerpt into the excerpt textbox, it will show that text but it will not show the read more part added to it.

Does anyone know how I can make it always show a read more?

Answer 1

Perhaps a conditional statement like the following will work. The logic is: "If the post has an explicit excerpt, add a read more link. Otherwise, use default excerpt behavior."

if($post->post_excerpt) {
    the_excerpt();
    echo '<a href="'.get_permalink().'">Read More</a>';
} else {
    the_excerpt();
}

You can use this in combination with Gavin's suggestion to unify the appearance of the "Read More" link.

Answer 2

I know that question was more than 2 years ago but I think here's more correct answer.

function new_excerpt_more($more) {
    global $post;
    return $more . '<a href="'. get_permalink( $post->ID ). '" class="readmore">more &raquo;</a>';
}
add_filter('the_excerpt', 'new_excerpt_more');

Even if your excerpt is filled the "readmore" link will be print after the excerpt paragraph.

Answer 3

Add this in your theme's functions.php:

function new_excerpt_more($more) {
       global $post;
    return '<a href="'. get_permalink($post->ID) . '">Read the Rest...</a>';
}
add_filter('excerpt_more', 'new_excerpt_more');

More info: Make the "read more" link to the post

Good luck!

Answer 4

I know it's three years late, but I found a better solution that it can even help me in the future:

First, clean the default excerpt more to remove the default ellipses [...]:

function clean_excerpt_more() {
    return '';
}

add_filter( 'excerpt_more', 'clean_excerpt_more' );

Then, we get the excerpt and add the link inline, into the same excerpt paragraph! (Most of the solutions above show the link out of the paragraph, in a new line).

function custom_the_excerpt( $excerpt ) {
    global $post;

    if( $post->post_excerpt ) {
        // If the post has manual excerpt,
        // it already has a point to end
        // the paragraph, so we don't want
        // the point + the ellipsis: ....
        // Clean it!
        $ellipsis = '';
    } else {
        $ellipsis = '...';
    }

    // Save the link in a variable
    $link = $ellipsis . ' <a class="moretag" href="' . get_permalink( get_the_ID() ) . '">' . __( 'Read more &raquo;', 'starion' ) . '</a>';

    // Concatenate the link to the excerpt
    return $excerpt . $link;

    }

add_filter( 'get_the_excerpt', 'custom_the_excerpt' );

Edit: A final note. You don't need to modify nothing else. Use the_excerpt(); normally to display the excerpt with the link.

Hope it helps to someone :)