W4 Post List vs WP-UTF8-Excerpt

W4 Post List builds the lists that WordPress core still can’t: posts grouped under year, month, category or author headings; category and term indexes; user directories; and combined Terms + Posts and Users + Posts lists. You control the output with a template of plain HTML and simple template tags, so the markup stays clean, semantic and completely yours. Place any list anywhere with the W4 Post List block, the [postlist id="123"] shortcode, or the classic widget. What can you build? Year/month archives — posts grouped under date headings Category, tag or custom taxonomy indexes — with or without each term’s posts listed underneath Author and user directories — list users by role, with avatars, bios and each user’s posts Filtered post lists — any post type, filtered by status, taxonomy terms, custom fields, dates, authors, parents and more Media lists — image and attachment lists by mime type Five list types Posts Terms Users Terms + Posts Users + Posts Query options (Posts) Post type, status and mime type Search keyword Include/exclude posts by ID, exclude the current post Filter by parent, author, taxonomy terms (tax query), custom fields (meta query) and dates (date query) Items per page, with multi-page pagination Group results by Year, month, or month + year Category, tag or any custom taxonomy Author Parent Order results by ID, title, slug, publish date, modified date, menu order, comment count, custom field value, or random Pagination Next/previous links or numeric navigation, with optional AJAX page loading Full control over the output Output is template-driven: every list has an HTML template with template tags like [post_title], [post_permalink], [featured_image], [post_author_name] and [post_meta key="..."]. Start from a ready-made template — cards, archives, category indexes, user directories — and tweak it, or write your own markup for pixel-perfect control. A live preview in the editor shows your changes before you save. If you want a drag-and-drop visual builder, this plugin isn’t that — it keeps you close to your own HTML, which is exactly why themes and developers like it. See the full template tag reference and live examples with copy-paste templates. Lightweight, independently measured WP Hive independently measures W4 Post List at 19 KB memory usage and +0.05 s page-speed impact — better than 99% of the plugins they test. No bundled frameworks, no frontend bloat. Privacy Policy W4 Post List uses Appsero SDK to collect some telemetry data upon user’s confirmation. This helps us to troubleshoot problems faster & make product improvements. Appsero SDK does not gather any data by default. The SDK only starts gathering basic telemetry data when a user allows it via the admin notice. We collect the data to ensure a great user experience for all our users. Integrating Appsero SDK DOES NOT IMMEDIATELY start gathering data, without confirmation from users in any case. Learn more about how Appsero collects and uses this data.

Main features of the plugin: It supports multi-byte language (such as Chinese). It will not produce gibberish as some other excerpt plugins do. The html tags in the original posts, i.e., the font styles, colors, hyperlinks, pictures and such are preserved in the excerpt. For better readability, it displays 300 characters for each post on the homepage and 150 characters for each post on archive pages.