The Morning After: asides question

  • One more item I’m wondering if I can do in this theme. I’m not happy that the asides don’t just disappear after a certain number of them appear, so I’m using the workaround to change them to regular posts. But I’ve got a bigger problem: there seems to be no limit to the length of the post on the front page. The option to include just a portion of the post – as it works on the Latest Post and Featured Posts – doesn’t apply.

    So, CSS gurus, is there any way to limit the number of words in asides? TIA

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Not through CSS there isn’t. Have you tried using the read more tag in the aside?

  • Yep, tried that – doesn’t solve the problem.

    I’ve sent a support ticket in because I think the asides should honor the same format as the other front page posts, which means including limiting the length AND including the “Continue reading” link.

    Thanks for your help.

  • Well, asides were originally conceived as short-form posts no longer than a sentence or two anyway, so it wouldn’t make sense to include a ‘continue reading’ link: if it’s too long to fit on the page it’s not an aside.

    I suppose they could make this clearer by imposing a Twitter-esque character limit, but that seems a bit draconian. I mean, it’s your blog so you have every right to make a long post and categorise it as an aside, but if you don’t want the aside-style formatting I’m not sure why you would.

  • Here’s the thing: wordpress.com is treating the asides as a regular post. It is included in the recent posts widget as such (no way to remove from the list) and they have chosen NOT to have them roll off the front page after, say, five posts or something. Literally, they are forcing ME to treat them as a regular post – in fact, I have to convert them to a regular post to get them off the front page!

    So, if they are going to treat them that way, then they need to make them work properly.

  • One more thing: if I were formatting the theme for asides, I’d:
    1. Contain a link to the frikkin’ post so people could comment on the post
    2. Display only the last X number (user configurable) asides on the front page
    3. Allow user to not include in Recent Posts widget

  • Yes, I think it’s generally acknowleged that the treatment of asides in The Morning After is a bit… eccentric. I agree that it’s unacceptable to force you to edit post types in order to avoid having an infinite number of asides display on the front page. But then, if it worked properly they would probably be making you pay to use it.

  • You’ve been here longer than I but we’ve had themes in the past that worked properly – and they were free. They need to make this theme work, too. Or do away with it.

  • I’m going to tag this and have it moved to the themes forum as this in my opinion is a defect in the theme that needs to be addressed. There should not be an infinite number of asides on the main page (assuming of course that there isn’t some strange high limit like 10 or 20 or 50). I think the asides section should obey the “posts per page” number in settings > reading at the very least, and truthfully should have its own setting.

  • And the asides should obey the theme setting on length of posts.

  • I see this got moved to the theme section but no comments on it from staff as to the problem. I got an email back from support recommending the use of the more tag in asides – obviously sender didn’t try it before sending the response.

  • OK, so I just tried it again – the more tag is working. I guess that’s what I’m going to be using from now on if I continue to use the asides.

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