title: read more excerpt wordpress
body: <p>I have reviewed the other posts similar to my questions but I must be missing a something. 
  I have added excerpts to my page like so:</p>
  
  <pre><code>[title size="2"]LATEST ARTICLES[/title]
  [recent_posts columns="4" number_posts="12" cat_id="" thumbnail="yes"  excerpt="yes" title="yes"] [/recent_posts]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am trying to do two things</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>set the length of the excerpt</li>
  <li>make it link to the article (not necessarily a read more link the dots are fine)</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I have tried to add the excerpt manually to the excerpt area (screen options) for the page but that is not overwritting what Wordpress is pulling from.</p>
  
  <p>in my function.php file I am using</p>
  
  <pre><code>add_filter('the_excerpt', 'do_shortcode');
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>which works, but when I tried to add additional code below it does not do anything. Do I need to modify anothe rphp file to get this to register?</p>
  
  <pre><code>`enter code here`function new_excerpt_more($more) {
  return '&lt;a href="'. get_permalink($post-&gt;ID) . '"&gt;' . ' read on ..' . '&lt;/a&gt;';
  }
  add_filter('excerpt_more', 'new_excerpt_more');
  
  function new_excerpt_length($length) {
  return 46;
  }
  add_filter('excerpt_length', 'new_excerpt_length');
  </code></pre>