Custom Page Question

[pussycat1974]

Hello,

I help admin thecurecommunity.freeforums.net/.

I have been recently working with the Custom Page feature, specifically working with it as our homepage. I love the layout options available but when trying to link to a specific post the layout will get stretched so everything on the page will look uneven and not balanced (hope I am explaining myself correctly). Is there a way to place a post within a custom page widget but only specify how much of that post should be displayed or maybe have the ability to move the layouts up or down so that not all of the post is displayed.

You can visit the forum that I am apart of to hopefully get an idea of how our homepage looks now.

[stevecureboi]

Brain Rays!!
Was coming to say the exact same thing.
I think "new post preview" is the best way to describe it.
Currently it displays the whole of the recent post & starts to look clunky when there are attachments or embedded videos.
Something more along the lines of
"I was reading about so & so last night & got to the last chapter when...read more" looks a bit tidier

[pussycat1974]

So maybe if we had the option of putting some type of line or page break within custom page cell that would help, something similar to what word press does.

[millhaus]

Any plans on making objects & variables like $[post] etc available within html boxes which we can put into a widget zone? That woould help us a lot

[Brian]

Apr 2, 2013 6:14:35 GMT -8 pussycat1974 said:

So maybe if we had the option of putting some type of line or page break within custom page cell that would help, something similar to what word press does.

There are a few alternatives.

You'll notice there's an HTML tab available when you're modifying your custom page. You can place a CSS code in there that can limit the size of the container with the post, or possibly a Javascript code that adds a Read more link after a certain amount of characters is reached.

Apr 2, 2013 6:22:51 GMT -8 millhaus said:

Any plans on making objects & variables like $[post] etc available within html boxes which we can put into a widget zone? That woould help us a lot

I don't believe there's anything like that planned at the moment, but we're always open to Feature Requests.

[pussycat1974]

Apr 2, 2013 8:39:23 GMT -8 Brian said:

Apr 2, 2013 6:14:35 GMT -8 pussycat1974 said:

So maybe if we had the option of putting some type of line or page break within custom page cell that would help, something similar to what word press does.

There are a few alternatives.

You'll notice there's an HTML tab available when you're modifying your custom page. You can place a CSS code in there that can limit the size of the container with the post, or possibly a Javascript code that adds a Read more link after a certain amount of characters is reached.

Apr 2, 2013 6:22:51 GMT -8 millhaus said:

Any plans on making objects & variables like $[post] etc available within html boxes which we can put into a widget zone? That woould help us a lot

I don't believe there's anything like that planned at the moment, but we're always open to Feature Requests.

Thanks you for your reply. Not very tech savvy. What would the Javascript code look like?

[Brian]

Is there a specific container on your custom page you want to shorten? The code will be dependent on the ID of the container that holds the content.

The code will be something like this (don't use it, it was just a test on one of my board's descriptions), except it'll have a bit more to it because it'll need to get the thread ID to add Read more to the end properly.

<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function(){
$('#board-10 > .main > .description').html($('#board-10 > .main > .description').html().substr(0,10));
$('#board-10 > .main > .description').append('... Read More');
});
</script>

It should still be relatively short.

[pussycat1974]

The ones that are causing the most problems are ones that where I link to a post. Do you want the post ID's?

[Brian]

Apr 2, 2013 9:49:53 GMT -8 pussycat1974 said:

The ones that are causing the most problems are ones that where I link to a post. Do you want the post ID's?

I could go off of those, or you could tell me exactly which posts on your main page are the problematic ones.

[pussycat1974]

Zone 2 (News from Pap on the forthcoming LatAm tour!)
Zone 3 (The Cure Confirmed to Play Two More Festivals!)

[Brian]

After playing around with code for a bit, I've come up with 3 potential options.

1. Cut it off at a certain amount of characters using the following code. The number in red is the amount of characters you want to permit before the content cuts off. Note that this includes HTML, which makes this method a bit inconsistent since there could be 10 different HTML tags before the bulk of the post even begins. The green text is the unique ID the container uses found in the source of the page, used to differentiate that container from the rest of the page's similar elements. As long as the two containers you have right now remain on the page, these should always work.

<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function(){
    // Left Container
    $('#ZjMvT5r3o4 > .content > .widget-specific-post-content').html($('#ZjMvT5r3o4 > .content > .widget-specific-post-content').html().substr(0,200));
    $('#ZjMvT5r3o4 > .content > .widget-specific-post-content').append('... <a href="'+$('#ZjMvT5r3o4 > .content > span > .thread-link').attr('href')+'">[read more]</a>');

    // Right Container
    $('#TEkW6uTEJA > .content > .widget-specific-post-content').html($('#TEkW6uTEJA > .content > .widget-specific-post-content').html().substr(0,200));
    $('#TEkW6uTEJA > .content > .widget-specific-post-content').append('... <a href="'+$('#TEkW6uTEJA > .content > span > .thread-link').attr('href')+'">[read more]</a>');
});
</script>

2. Split the content after a certain amount of new lines is reached. I haven't made a code for this yet, but it would be moderately more ideal in that it wouldn't cut off HTML. Again, there would still be opening tags without closing tags, so perhaps not the best solution.

3. Request this functionality as a feature! Because I personally think it's a good thing to have. Perhaps even request an option to set how many characters or words before the content cuts off.

[millhaus]

thanks very much Brian, it works fine!

still quite heavy editing whenever the posts change on the frontpage

as you suggested we'll put in a feature request to add a 'summary option' to the tabs display post and recent threads/posts in the custom pages

[Brian]

Cool. Good luck with the feature request.