Raw HTML content not rendering in blogroll

[matt.l...@gmail.com]

Hey guys,

We've been working on adding some media to our website (rocultimate.org) but have hit a stumbling block with some of the blog functionality.

We use a blog content block on our home page for announcements and news, etc, and so far the experience has been OK. We've set the blog to post the entirety of each post, and that's served us pretty well for the most part.

Unfortunately, the blog will not render all of a post's content (like raw html blocks, galleries, etc), even when the "Only show post excerpts" option is unchecked. At the risk of sounding overly-dramatic about this, I can say that this is pretty infuriating. There have been a couple times when it would have been great if we could show more than one image within a post, or in the most recent case we've run into, shown an embedded soundcloud iframe on the blog content block. Currently these kinds of items only display if you click through to the post's page.

To take a step back for a moment, I can live with this functionality. It's ok if someone needs to click through... but here comes my other issue: at present, it doesn't seem like there is a way to control what content appears as an excerpt of a post, if we were to turn that option back on. If we could control that content to use for a promo for click-throughs, that would be really awesome. If we had the ability to have excerpt content ONLY appear on the blogroll, and then have separate content for the actual post page, that would be even better.

Is there a way to accomplish this right now that I've just totally missed?

My apologies for the rant-iness (that's a word, right? :-P) and thank you in advance for your help. You guys have done a great job with everything so far.

Matt Leonard

GRADA Outreach & Marketing Director

[Jeremy Kauffman]

Hey Matt,

The issue here is it's really difficult to determine whether it's safe and/or appropriate to display raw HTML content in an excerpt. E.g. the sound cloud widget you're displaying via iframe may work okay, but another iframe that shows a large map may not. This is why we strip out tags like iframes from rawHTML slots in the excerpt, though you should see more "safe" tags like paragraphs, headers, etc. stick around.

I'd say if we wanted to allow rawHTML in excerpts, I think the best way to do this would be to do as you say and specifically create a different content area for the excerpt. Or maybe some way of setting where to start the excerpt and/or flag certain slots as safe or not safe for the excerpt. Regardless, either change isn't one we could make in the short-term, so I'd advocate either showing full content or encouraging users to click through for richer content. If there's a simpler way we could tweak something here we'd certainly try to do it sooner.

Thanks for the feedback!

Jeremy Kauffman

267.777.7592

www.usetopscore.com • @usetopscore

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[matt.l...@gmail.com]

Hey Jeremy,

Thanks for your response. 

I totally understand the risks involved with raw html, especially if it's being used to render cross-domain content. In the wrong hands, that kind of power could create headaches for far too many.

I would love to develop content that would appear only in the excerpt and not in the full article view, to help entice our users to click through to the full article. I agree that the best method seems to be having 2 separate fields for blog posts, 1 for excerpt content only, and 1 for the full article content. This would get that control I'm looking for, and would help keep those issues with potentially insecure or layout-breaking content at bay.

What are the current limitations of excerpts? Do they only show a certain number or characters? Is there a place to control those settings?

Thanks for your help,

Matt

[Jeremy Kauffman]

Hey Matt,

Excerpts show only basic HTML (similar to what you can do in rich text), 40 words, and one image. It'd be pretty easy for us to allow slot-wide editing of the excerpt length (that is, for all posts), if that would be a helpful improvement for you guys.

Jeremy Kauffman

267.777.7592

www.usetopscore.com • @usetopscore

[matt.l...@gmail.com]

Yeah, that would definitely be helpful! Thanks!

-Matt

[Jeremy Kauffman]

Customization of this is headed to the server shortly!

Jeremy Kauffman

267.777.7592

www.usetopscore.com • @usetopscore