Faking an lj-cut on your syndicated feed

[azurelunatic]

So I got curious about how to effectively duplicate the effects of an <lj-cut> on your journal's syndicated feed. <lj-cut>s don't show up properly when syndicated; they get effectively skipped, and the cut text is lost, and the stuff hidden behind the cut is unveiled to the world.

But there is a way. I consider it subtle and beautiful in its hackish ugliness.

1. Create a journal entry with the full text of the desired journal entry as seen behind the cut. There is no need to place an <lj-cut> in this entry, although you may wish to if you do not need to see the full text of the entry uncut in your journal.


2. Mark this journal entry as "Dated Out of Order" (which may be called "backdated" on older implementations of the LiveJournal codebase or in your client, if you're using one). This will make the entry not display on your journal's syndicated feed, in addition to not appearing on the friends pages of your readers. You will still see this entry in your journal. There is no need to alter the time that this post displays for this application, although for usability purposes you may want this to display as one minute before the second journal entry. (Having both entries display as the same time will break the previous/next behavior in your journal.)


3. Create a second journal entry with only the text that you wish to have display outside the "cut". This entry will display in your syndicated feed and on the friends pages of your readers. Optionally, you can disable comments to this entry to force your readers to comment on the entry that contains the full text.


4. Create a link inside the second journal entry with a link to the first (Dated Out of Order) journal entry. If you wish, you can format the link to better simulate an <lj-cut>.


5. A proper "fake cut" contains one of the following:
   • <b>(</b> <a href="http://username.example.com/entry1.html"> <b>Read more...</b> </a> <b>)</b>
   • <b>(</b> <a href="http://username.example.com/entry1.html"> <b>Custom text here!</b> </a> <b>)</b>
   
   This renders as:
   • ( Read more... )
   • ( Custom text here! )

Comments

[hcolleen.livejournal.com]

geek

[azurelunatic]

Yes. But also answering the support boards.

[xinef.livejournal.com]

Neat kludge.

[azurelunatic]

Thanks!

This is one of the reasons why I work here.

Bolding the fake-cut text

[pauamma]

I may be missing something, but why not use:

<b>( <a href="http://username.example.com/entry1.html"> Read more...</a> )</b>

(that is, don't bold individually the (, the ), and the text; just bold the whole thing)

Re: Bolding the fake-cut text

[azurelunatic]

I'm a little squeamish about nesting certain tags.

Re: Bolding the fake-cut text

[gameboyguy13.livejournal.com]

Why is that, out of curiousity?

Re: Bolding the fake-cut text

[azurelunatic]

It was my experience in the past that link formatting overrode anything wrapped outside of it.

[qem_chibati]

I just wanted to say thank you for this. It looks like a useful work around! :)

I'm hoping you won't get offended, but I would like to use the information in an InsaneJournal FAQ, that I am currently working on. You can see a draft in progress located here.

[azurelunatic]

Not offended, and go for it! I'm having trouble loading the page, but it should be just fine.