Short description on listing page ?

[ovidiupal]

at wordpress there is a command that shows only a few caracters from descriptions on homepage and the put;s a link "read more". How can i do that on esyndicate ?

Thanks... sorry for my english

[Michele]

I don't think that there's a way to do that automatically.

The way I would attack it is to create a second description field. Put the 'teaser' description in the original description field to be displayed on the category pages and put the complete description in the new field and edit the view-listings.tpl to display the new field.

[TopWebNames]

Originally Posted by Michele

The way I would attack it is to create a second description field. Put the 'teaser' description in the original description field to be displayed on the category pages and put the complete description in the new field and edit the view-listings.tpl to display the new field.

Hi Michele. This is exactly what I'm looking for for my new directory, "The Best Of The Internet"! I just finished creating a listing for a friend's anthurium farm here in Hawaii. I quickly learned that 500 characters is way too few to describe their very unique business, so I scanned the forum and learned how to increase the number of characters in the description from 500 to 1,000.

Much to my shock, I then learned that the FULL description displays in the listing on the Category page! So, I started looking for how to have a SHORT description for Category pages, and a much longer description in the actual listing. And... you said it just right.

However, I'm not a programmer at all. HOW do I implement this? What actual steps do I take?

Thanks!

Steve

[Greg]

Originally Posted by TopWebNames

However, I'm not a programmer at all. HOW do I implement this? What actual steps do I take?

Thanks!

Steve

Look at what Alex posted in post #7.
Where you see in the code - "SYMBOLS_NUM" - set that to the number of letters/characters you want.

Should work.

[TopWebNames]

Hi Greg. That works just fine, and as I mentiioned in my post, that's what I did. However, what I need to know is:

1 - How to use the current Listing Description as a brief/short Listing Description that only displays on Category pages...

2 - and how to add a much longer Listing Description field that only displays in the actual listings.

Or visa-versa, whichever might work better, or be easier to set up.

Thanks

Originally Posted by Greg

Look at what Alex posted in post #7.
Where you see in the code - "SYMBOLS_NUM" - set that to the number of letters/characters you want.

Should work.

[Alex B.]

That feature is not available, but I can give you a tip how to truncate descriptions for certain number of symbols.
If you need that, just let me know

[jeffrey69]

Thanks Alex. If you don't mind, I will like to know your tip on how to truncate descriptions for certain number of symbols. Thanks

[ovidiupal]

I have made a new field for short description and then i have put the field to show on listings page.
Another way to do it and more easy is from CSS, but i thing is not so good for google, you ca give a style to the description something like this style="height: 20px; overflow: hidden;" ...

[ovidiupal]

Originally Posted by Alex B.

That feature is not available, but I can give you a tip how to truncate descriptions for certain number of symbols.
If you need that, just let me know

What is the solution ?

[Alex B.]

you should edit next files:
./templates/common/regular-listing-display.tpl
./templates/common/featured-listing-display.tpl
./templates/common/sponsored-listing-display.tpl
./templates/common/partner-listing-display.tpl

Find there this code:

	<div class="description">
		{if $config.html_tags}
			{$listing.description}
		{else}
			{$listing.description|escape:"html"|replace:"\r\n":"<br />"}
		{/if}
	</div>

and replace it with this one:

	<div class="description">
		{if $config.html_tags}
			{$listing.description}
		{else}
			{$listing.description|escape:"html"|replace:"\r\n":"<br />"|truncate:SYMBOLS_NUM}
		{/if}
	</div>

Where SYMBOLS_NUM is number of symbols you want to leave. Instead of the rest symbols "..." will be printed