With the ‘after last reply’ ones, the timer gets reset when someone replies So if you had ‘1 year after the last reply’ it will stay open for at least a year, but would also continue for another year if someone posted again (eg. a post out of the blue on day 364 would reset the count to the full year again). There is the option to just have a straight ‘this topic will close in 1 year’, which won’t reset when people post more replies.
I thought perhaps having a shorter ‘after the last reply’ timer may solve your issue with not wanting a huge time duration displayed at the bottom. The topic would still stay open for as long as people were replying + the timer duration.
As @pfaffman says, you can hide the topic-timer-info with a little CSS, but I don’t think you can easily make it reveal itself when it gets closer to the due date.
.topic-timer-info {
display:none;
}
Extra details on how to add it to your site
- Go to
/admin/customize/themes - Click on install and then create new
- Give it a name, and select ‘component’.
- Create
- Add it to your theme
- Click on the Edit CSS/HTML button and paste the code into the Common tab
And save. 