How can I get a longer automatic excerpt in Jekyll?

Question

Currently, I include excerpts like this:

{{ post.excerpt | strip_html }}

But this seems to give only the first paragraph. But I would like to get a fixed number of words.

Or better: I would like to define a maximum number of characters and get so many words that

• the number of characters is less than the maximum
• one word more would be over the maximum number of characters

Is there a way to do this with Jekyll (1.3.1)?

edit: <!-- more --> is not an answer! I think excerpting should work automatically and my posts should only contain markup that is absolutely necessary.

Answer 1

The following gives a 75 words automatic excerpt:

{{ post.content | strip_html | truncatewords:75 }}

Answer 2

Actually <!-- more --> is the answer. At least, it works well now.

1. Add this line to your _config.yml:

   excerpt_separator: "<!-- more -->"

2. Then add this to each post in your site:

   <!-- more -->

Hope it will help.