Had some time to read your post now! Good points you’ve made – like how you integrated the URL shortening as a function

I told you the wrong thing before – you see wordpress has 2 different functions for getting the post : get_the_post(); gets the content as a value for example 2 store in a string. the_post(); echoes the value too.

For use in this way, use the_excerpt(); se the example here:
http://pastebin.com/m4f89e722