You can use a page list to do this, and than couple it with the page list template here
http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/page-list-views/...

This will show your summary, title, and thumbnail pic, and has settings for how many letters/characters to show in summary.

You can also add images in your blog entry with the content editor, however the template above helps give the images extra polish.

Thanks - is this for use with a built in blog rather than 3rd party add-on ?

Its for the built in. Make 2 test blog entries, than go to the area you want to show the summaries. Add a page list block there, and set it to show pages under the page you have your blogs in site/blog/ it will than pull that info, and summarize. If you have an image in the content, I think it shows that as well, but can't quite remember. If it doesn't than the thumbnail template will, and will add some extra features to up the presentation.

Truncations on page list is where you set characters. However you can better control your content by only writing the summary you want to show in the blog entry page when you create it, than go visit the page, and add the rest of the entry to blog post more (secondary area on blog entry). In this way you can control the summary as page lists usually will only pull from blog main area (depending on theme)

Instead of cut off sentences in the summary at a certain character limit, you instead can put 1 liners to full stories, and completely control what text is displayed in that summary area (page list).

ProBlog does this with much more control. you can choose to use description or page content for the summary. and then also show or not show the attached thumbnail. IT comes with several example custom blog_list views to boot.

You can also filter by category with ProBlog, and as well have much cleaner tag and categorie lists. And as well a nicer archive view.

http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/problog/...

ChadStrat

The build in blog has two text fields in composer. The first is shown
on the blog listing page, the second is shown after the first on the
blog detail page.

Unless I misunderstand that's what you're looking for, and it's already there.

best wishes

Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz

Thanks to everyone who replied. I decided to go with ProBlog as it had so many useful features. I just edited the view.php for problog_list to get it to suit my layout.