Selective Expandable posts

Translations by other bloggers: Chinese, Thai

Earlier, I had announced Peekaboo posts which shows post summaries in main page and expands them in the main page itself. But, some people would still like to use the classic way of expanding posts which takes the reader to the post page upon clicking "Read more" link. One of them asked me how to display the "read more" link only for some long posts and not others. I gave him a combination of peekaboo and non-peekaboo code that serves this purpose. As I started getting more such requests, I thought I will post the code for everyone who wants to use. Here's what you need to do.

1. Find the

</head>

tag in your template and add all the code from this page before it.

2. Find this div for the post-body and add the portion of code in red color.

   <div class='post-body'  expr:id='"post-" + data:post.id' >

     <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
        <style>#fullpost{display:inline;}</style>
        <p><data:post.body/></p>
     <b:else/>
        <style>#fullpost{display:none;}</style>

        <p><data:post.body/></p>

       <span id='showlink'>
        <a expr:href='data:post.url'>Read More......</a>
       </span>
       <script type='text/javascript'>
         checkFull("post-" + "<data:post.id/>");
       </script>
     </b:if>

     <div style='clear: both;'/> <!-- clear for photos floats -->
   </div>

3. Goto Settings->Formatting and at the bottom, you will find the text box provided to specify the "Post template". Copy/paste these lines into that text box and save the settings. (Please DON'T type these lines yourself because you might introduce some spaces that will break the functionality)

Type your summary here
<span id="fullpost">
Type rest of the post here
</span>

If you create a new post now, it shows you clearly where to type the summary and where to add the rest of the post. Please note that you could also divide some or all of your old posts into summary and full post by editing them. The "Read more" link will appear only for the posts that have been divided like this.

Note 1: If you are not able to find the lines to change, you may not have expanded the template. Select the checkbox named "Expand Widget Templates", which is right above the template code, to expand it into more code.
Note 2: If you click "Older posts" link, the "Read more" link may appear even for the posts which you haven't divided into summary and full post. This is a known problem which we haven't solved yet.

I hope you will link to Hackosphere in your sidebar. That's the only thing I expect in return ;)