Summary of Specific Board's Latest Thread

[galelio]

Would it be possible to show a summary of the first post in the latest thread in a specific board on a separate page? The idea is for this to be used to show a preview of a recent changelog or news update! Something that lists the thread name, date it was posted, and maybe 100 characters of the post itself?

[Chris]

Dec 29, 2023 15:24:55 GMT -8 galelio said:

Would it be possible to show a summary of the first post in the latest thread in a specific board on a separate page? The idea is for this to be used to show a preview of a recent changelog or news update! Something that lists the thread name, date it was posted, and maybe 100 characters of the post itself?

Do you have a specific page in mind when you say "separate page"? Have you explored custom pages and the widget that allows you to display the content of a post on the custom page?

If you want to display a preview of the first post in a thread within the scope of the template variable (a page where the variable is available), then the $[thread.short_content] variable should suffice. You can use a conditional to test for a specific thread and then display that. Remember that a post can hold up to 256K, while the preview using that variable will give you about one-tenth of 1K, not the entire post. When viewing a list of threads inside a board on a standard theme you can usually see this variable being used to add the title on a link to a thread so it displays upon hover without having actually to click on the link.

[galelio]

The page I'd like to display the post summary on is a custom page! I don't use any zones/widgets on it but I'd be amenable to trying them out. Using the zone and widget, how would I go about making the post a summary rather than the full text?

[Chris]

It really depends on your definition of "summary". If you mean some AI-regurgitated synopsis of the post's contents, then that would involve some technical hurdles and perhaps some sort of paid subscription to an LLM service. If "summary" means a somewhat truncated preview, then that would be possible in the two approaches noted above.

For the custom page approach, use the Display Post widget to display the particular post in question



You can also use the Recent Threads/Post widget, which will give you the first post in a thread within a particular board; this time, the post changes depending on which thread in the board last got a reply.



Truncation, in this case means limited to first post not full thread.

[galelio]

I think this is exactly what I'm looking for! All I'd really need is to be able to cut off the post once its too big for its container. Text-overflow doesn't seem to reach into the zones