Hi, I'm wondering of there is a plugin that automatically creates a "read more" button after a specified amount of text in a blog article?

Or is there a way to automatically do this already within joomla itself?

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Hi ShanDB

No, native Joomla does nto do this.

But there are two popular free extensions you can use:
extensions.joomla.org/extensions/news-display/newsflash/2484
extensions.joomla.org/extensions/news-display/frontend-news/736

These are both modules doing a similar job - they present content in a highly configurable way, including restricting word/character count as you ask.

You might want to display the resulting module in the mainbody of your page [e.g. make up your own module position 'mycontent' and assign your module to this postion, then include the tag {loadposition mycontent} in an article and hook it up to a menu.]

Hope that helps.
Dex

Dex, thanks for your reply. I checked out both extensions and they look very powerfull. Installed and had a play around with them, and they both do what I was looking for - although unfortunately they both destroyed my layout (simply because they need to be used in their own positions, which means I would have to style my layout again etc..)

anyway - while I will certainly look at both extensions again for my upcoming projects, I did manage to create a cool and very simple CSS solution for my problem that I am pretty proud of (I still call myself a newbie - ha!)..


I was already creating my blog posts with a simple template extension (Content Templater), so it was just a case of adding the following to my simple template:

- wrapping my article text in a div of it's own (.myText)

- creating a style for it, with a specified height, and overflow hidden, that only is read on my home page:

- Insert a READ MORE button just below the .myText div

Works perfectly, and so incredibly simple. The template generates every article on the home page with a height of 300px. Click the "read more" and you are taken to the article itself displayed in full!