The Page Excerpt plugin gives pages the same excerpt functionality as posts. Excerpts are “optional, handcrafted summaries” that can tease your readers into exploring your content further. After installing this plugin, a new text box will be added to your “Page Edit” dashboard. If you don’t see it, click on “Screen Options” and ensure that the checkbox entitled “Excerpt” is checked. See screenshot below:
Scroll down on your “Edit Page” and you should see the following:
You can add text, but if you want to include images or links, you’ll have to do so with HTML.
So how is the page excerpt displayed?
If you have developed a child theme on the Commons, you can include (and customize) the following PHP code into one of your templates to display page excerpts:
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
But more likely you’ll use “Page Excerpt” in conjunction with another plugin that is available on the Commons – “List Pages Shortcode.” As its name suggests, this plugin lets you use a shortcode to list selected pages (and optionally their excerpts). For more information, see List Pages Shortcode on the Commons Codex.