Mandatory Excerpts for WordPress
Causes the excerpt to be required before a post can be published. Supports both editor types (classic and block aka gutenberg).
The facts
- Rating
- 5★ from 1
- Active installs
- 100+
- Price
- Free
- Last updated
- 15 Dec 2025
- Added
- Jan 2020
- Requires WP
- 4.4.0
- Tested up to
- WP 6.9.7
- Requires PHP
- 7.0
- Downloads
- 7,326
Our analysis
AI-assistedMandatory Excerpts for WordPress is a plugin designed to ensure that users create hand-crafted excerpts for their posts. This is important as excerpts are used in various places within a theme, such as on blog pages and archive pages. By preventing the publication of posts without an excerpt, the plugin encourages better content presentation and SEO practices.
The plugin supports both the Gutenberg block editor and the classic editor, making it suitable for a range of WordPress users. It is particularly useful for those who want to enhance the quality of their post summaries and improve their site's overall appearance and search engine optimisation.
Best for: This plugin is best suited for WordPress users who want to improve the quality of their post summaries.
What it does well
- ✓Enforces hand-crafted excerpts for better content quality
- ✓Improves SEO targeting through custom summaries
- ✓Prevents publication of posts without excerpts
- ✓Supports both Gutenberg and classic editors
Where it falls short
- •Limited information on additional features or support
- •No details on compatibility with specific themes
Verdict
Mandatory Excerpts for WordPress is a straightforward tool for ensuring that all posts have custom excerpts, which can enhance both user experience and SEO. It is a useful option for those focused on content quality.
From the developer
theMikeD's own description of Mandatory Excerpts for WordPress, lightly tidied.
An excerpt is a (usually) brief, text-only post summary. It is used in various places of a theme when a summary of a post is needed, such as on your blog page and archive pages for terms.
Excerpts are either manually crafted or (usually poorly) automatically extracted from the main post content. Hand crafted ones are better because
- they avoid things like sentences being cut off in the mid…
- they allow you create an actual summary and not just the first x words from the post content
- they allow you to do better SEO targeting
- they look better
This plugin will enforce the use of hand-crafted excerpts by your users by preventing a post without an excerpt from being published.
Classic editor support is based on the work done by Scott Walkinshaw and other contributors, found here.
Upgrading from a previous version
Use the upgrade link in the Dashboard (Dashboard > Updates) to upgrade this plugin.
License and Disclaimer
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License 2 as published by
the Free Software Foundation.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
The license for this software can be found here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html