Expand topic on homepage

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AI-generated summary

The discussion revolves around the homepage feature “Show categories and featured topics” in Discourse. taonmatt is looking for a way to add an “Expand>>” button to show more text from the “About” post, which is being cut off. Heather_Dudley explains that this is not possible with a setting and suggests using mouseovers for longer descriptions. JimPas recommends increasing the post excerpt maxlength in Settings/Posting, which can be adjusted to show more text, but notes that the purpose of this feature is to provide a summary. taonmatt appreciates the suggestion and acknowledges the need to refine his summary, likening it to “The Gettysburg Address” rather than “War and Peace”.

1

Hi.

I’m using the homepage feature “Show categories and featured topics” which is great. However Discourse is cutting off the 1st para being shown from the “About” post.

Obviously I can copy-wrangle my text and tighten it up to fit into the space provided but I wonder if there is a way to get an “Expand>>” for this?

Thanks.

Matt

2

Not with a setting.. The category descriptions show in mouseovers and such as well, so the first 200 characters or so is what shows.

3

How much more would you want to show? If after seeing this much of the topic, instead of clicking “Expand”, why not just go to the topic - if it interests someone that much?
If you want to change the maximum number of characters from the default 300 to something higher, you can go to Settings/Posting and scroll down to post excerpt maxlength (Maximum length of a post excerpt / summary) and increase the number. But you should remember… this is a summary, and that’s what it’s meant for. :wink:

4

Hi Jim.

You’re right but I’m sure you’d agree that a summary of, say, “War and Peace” and “The Gettysburg Address” might vary in length. I’m probably aiming more for the latter and my summary could use some word-smithing (among the many dozens of things I need to do to improve my site) in the meantime I wanted a way to just show people the end of the summary. Which you have now given me, thank you for that :smiley:

Matt