Sherina :: Understanding Blogsome :: August

Si prefieres leer este articulo en espanol dirigete a mi post Entendiendo Blogsome

In the past week I’ve been trying to “pimp out” my blog, adding some new features and putting data in order.

This article is to share with those who haven’t mastered in blogsome just yet and are trying to do some changes in their template. If you have any questions I might have the answer but I strongly recommend to ask the experts at Blogsome Forum if you have a question about your blogsome blog.

Here are some condensed info of the things that I’ve needed and learned to add to my blog.

Add “Read More…” at the end of my article:
Do not mistake it with the option excerpt, I’ll be explaining this shortly. To do this teaser which refers to sentences or paragraphs of a post, you just need to insert the Quicktag after a few sentences to act as a cut off point.

This way when the post is displayed, we’ll see the teaser, followed by a hyperlink (such as Read the rest of this entry…), are displayed. Your visitor can then click on that link to see the full version of your post.

Blogsome by default shows “(more…)”. If you want to change that for “Read the rest of the story…” for instance, you will need to go into your Manage>Files>post.html and find {the_content} and change it for {the_content more_link_text=" Read the rest of the story…”}
Show # of post next to Categories
To show how many post you have in each category and display next to it, you’ll need to go to Manage>Files>index.html and look for {list_cats optionall='0' all='All' sort_column='name'} and change it for {list_cats optional='1' all='All' optioncount='1' sort_column='name'} and you’re all set.
Show # of post next to Archives
This one is pretty similar to the previous one. You’ll need to look for {get_archives type='monthly'} and change it for {get_archives type='monthly' show_post_count='1'}
Show more characters when showing “Most Recent Posts” or “Most Popular Posts”
This one is pretty easy but I wanted to include it anyway, just in case. To do this you just need to go to Manage>Files>index.html and look for the Most Recent Post title. Once that you located the segment you want to modify, keep on reading a couple lines below and you’ll see a line that says {$title|truncate:20:"..."} that is the number you want to change, if you want to show more characters that 20 in a line you can do so, just by changing the number to 50, for instance.
So, what’s excerpt for?
An excerpt is a condensed description of your blog post and refers to the summary entered in the Excerpt field of the Write Post SubPanel (see Advanced Editing). The excerpt is used to describe your post in RSS feeds and is typically used in displaying search results. The excerpt is sometimes used in displaying the Archives and Category views of your posts. The Template Tag the_excerpt() can be used to access the contents of this field.
An excerpt should not be confused with the teaser which refers to the first few sentences or paragraphs of a post.