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How to Control Post Excerpts vs. Full Content on Category and Archive Pages in Vantage

24 threads Sep 7, 2025 Theme → Vantage

Content

A common question for Vantage theme users is how to manage whether a category, archive, or blog page displays full post content or shorter excerpts. By default, the theme might show the entire post, which can create long, cluttered pages that are difficult for visitors to navigate. This guide will explain the standard configuration and provide methods to achieve the desired layout.

Why This Happens

The display of post content (full text or excerpt) on listing pages is a core theme setting. Vantage provides a central location to control this behavior for the main blog page, but category and archive pages sometimes follow a different set of rules, which can lead to confusion.

Common Solutions

Solution 1: Use the Built-in Theme Setting (For Blog Page)

For the main blog page, the setting is often found in the WordPress Customizer. Navigate to Appearance > Customize > Theme Settings > Blog. Look for a setting called "Post Content" and change it from "Full Post" to "Excerpt". This is the simplest method but may only affect the main posts page.

Solution 2: Modify the Number of Posts per Page

If the issue is that too many full posts are loading, you can also control the quantity. Go to Settings > Reading in your WordPress dashboard. Adjust the "Blog pages show at most" setting to a lower number, which will automatically paginate your archives.

Solution 3: Custom Code for Category Archives

If the theme setting doesn't affect your category archives, a code solution is required. This involves adding a custom function to your child theme's functions.php file. The following code snippet is a common approach to force excerpts on category archive pages:

function mytheme_filter_archive_content( $val ) {
    if( is_category() || is_archive() ) {
        return 'excerpt';
    }
    else {
        return $val;
    }
}
add_filter( 'siteorigin_setting_blog_archive_content', 'mytheme_filter_archive_content' );

Important: Always use a child theme when adding custom code to prevent your changes from being overwritten during theme updates.

Conclusion

Controlling post display is a key part of designing a user-friendly website. For most users, checking the theme settings is the first and easiest step. If those settings don't provide enough control for category pages, adding the provided code to a child theme is an effective solution. As always, test any changes on a staging site before applying them to your live website.

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