This will allow a reasonable amount of coding in the excerpt field – sorry no WYSIWYG!

function theme_t_wp_improved_trim_excerpt($text) {

    global $post;

    if ( ” == $text ) {

        $text = get_the_content(”);

        $text = apply_filters(‘the_content’, $text);

        $text = str_replace(‘’, ‘’, $text);

        $text = preg_replace(‘@]*?>.*?@si’, ”, $text);

        $text = strip_tags($text, ‘< p >,< ul >,< li >,< ol >‘);

        $excerpt_length = 55;

        $words = explode(‘ ‘, $text, $excerpt_length + 1);

        if (count($words)> $excerpt_length) {

            array_pop($words);

            array_push($words, ‘[…]’);

            $text = implode(‘ ‘, $words);

        }

    }

    return $text;

}

remove_filter(‘get_the_excerpt’, ‘wp_trim_excerpt’);

add_filter(‘get_the_excerpt’, ‘theme_t_wp_improved_trim_excerpt’);

/* JMC- remove html filters from category descriptions*/

$filters = array( ‘pre_term_description’ );

foreach ( $filters as $filter ) {

    remove_filter( $filter, ‘wp_filter_kses’ );

}

foreach ( array( ‘term_description’ ) as $filter ) {

    remove_filter( $filter, ‘wp_kses_data’ );

}

For HTML

$filters = array( ‘pre_term_description’ );

foreach ( $filters as $filter ) {

    remove_filter( $filter, ‘wp_filter_kses’ );

}

foreach ( array( ‘term_description’ ) as $filter ) {

    remove_filter( $filter, ‘wp_kses_data’ );

}

remove html filters from category descriptions

add_filter(‘widget_text’, ‘do_shortcode’);

allows shortcodes in widgets