Changing excerpt length

Product Support

AI-generated summary

Users are discussing how to limit excerpt length in Discourse. Varhall asks if character limits can be applied to excerpts, and david explains that the topic_excerpt_maxlength setting affects only new topics unless posts are rebaked. Varhall seeks help rebaking, and after running rake posts:rebake without errors, finds excerpts still exceed the 100-character limit — even for new topics Varhall. david questions whether the setting is working for new topics. renato suggests the default post_excerpt_maxlength (300) may be overriding the setting. JQ331 and Jeroen_Van_Der_Mark report similar issues, especially with link previews and word limits. nathank reiterates that rebaking is required for existing posts. The core issue remains unresolved: changing excerpt length settings doesn’t visibly affect either new or old topics or link previews, despite rebaking.

1

It’s very nice! Can I somehow limit the number of characters in an excerpt?

2

There is a site setting in discourse topic_excerpt_maxlength . IIRC this will only apply to new topics - if you want to apply the change to existing topics you will need to ‘rebake’ them.

3

Thanks, How i can ‘rebake’ them?

4

This command don’t help me:

$ cd /var/discourse
$ ./launcher enter app
$ rake posts:rebake
5

What happened? Did it show an error?

6

Change in site settings:

image
image806×101 4.27 KB

No erros:

# cd /var/discourse
# ./launcher enter app
# rake posts:rebake
Rebaking post markdown for 'default'
     4805 / 4805 (100.0%)
4805 posts done!
7

And the excerpts are still more than 100 characters? Is the change working for new topics?

8

More 100 characters now, but in settings 100:

image
image1169×872 213 KB

9

Don’t working for new topics too

10

How to solve this problem? Any ideas?

11

Is this the right setting? I noticed my excerpts are as long as 300 characters, which is the default setting for post excerpt maxlength.

12

I have not been able to get this change to work.

I am looking to change the length of the preview excerpt when someone on my forum pastes a link to another topic on my forum. Basically, the length of this (only for posts within my forum):

Right now, the preview is very long (400 characters). I have tried changing both the “post_excerpt_maxlength” setting, as well as the “topic_excerpt_maxlength” setting. Neither made a difference for this–including for new topics created after the setting was changed.

How can I adjust this setting to make the previews shorter when I link to another post on my forum?

13

Same problem here. Is this already fixed for old topics? :slight_smile:

I can’t get it working: https://forum.fit.nl/

I want to limit the excerpt length to 20 words for example.

14

I think that you need to rebake the posts in order for those settings to apply to older ones.