A. Jones

Version 1.7
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This plugin is a very simple plugin the allows you to change the number of words that are displayed in excerpts and to replace the elipsis with text.
The settings for this plugin can be found on the Settings Menu in the Admin Panel. Check the box for the option you wish to manage and enter the value. There are two options: “Maximum number of words to display in an excerpt” and “Read More Text”. You should not use this plugin with other plugins that modify excerpts.
<h3>Arbitrary section</h3>
Need more? Customization is available. Contact sales@shooflysolutions.com for more information.

Simply Excerpts

A simple plugin for exceprts that allows you to change the word count and to replace the elipsis (...) with text. Not compatible with all themes.

Douglas "BearlyDoug" Hazard

Recent Posts Ultimate
This plugin takes the best features of five VERY popular recent posts plugins, tosses in the ability to show posts with or without HTML code and gives you a Shortcode builder (which you can copy/paste anywhere on a page, a post or inside a widget), while allowing custom post types to be used.
You can limit it to certain post types, certain categories, sort it by title or date posted, ascending, descending. You can even select whether you want the featured image shown (as a thumbnail), hide/show the title, link the title, the text, control how many words you want shown in the snippet, etc.
Important note: Not all features mentioned above are in this current version. See below for our planned updates.
While this is the first version of this plugin, it should be robust enough to handle just about any of your needs.
Current Version 1.0.7
<h4>Features:</h4>
<ul>
<li>Shortcode builder allows you to customize most aspects of the post (hide post title, category, date).</li>
<li>Works anywhere you can use shortcode.</li>
<li>Responsive, width-wise. Height of div will adjust automatically.</li>
</ul>
This plugin is not compatible with WordPress versions less than 5.0. Requires PHP 5.6+.
<h4>TROUBLESHOOTING:</h4>
<ul>
<li>Check the FAQs/Help located on WordPress’ Plugin page, or the Support forum on WordPress.org’s plugin area.</li>
<li>The Shortcode Builder has been extensively tested with both jQuery version 1.12.4 and 3.5.1, without any issues. The output, however, does not need jQuery/JavaScript.</li>
</ul>

Simply Excerpts vs Recent Posts Ultimate