How to limit an excerpt in wordpress

Limit the number of words in excerpt without plugins...

Put the following piece of code in your templates functions.php file:

<?php

function string_limit_words($string, $word_limit)
{
  $words = explode(' ', $string, ($word_limit + 1));
  if(count($words) > $word_limit)
  array_pop($words);
  return implode(' ', $words);
}

?>

Next, put the following piece of code in your template where you want to display the excerpt:

<?php

  $excerpt = get_the_excerpt();
  echo string_limit_words($excerpt,25);

?>

Where 25 is the number of words to display.