[dba-Tech] Question about web-site (tools?) with "continued.." links

[Bryan Carbonnell]

As Jeff said, it depends on what tools are used to create the front
end. But there are 3 different ways that I've come across.

1. A fixed number of characters.
2. A manually placed break in the body of the text.
3. A special handcrafted "intro text"

It all depends on the tools and how you want to handle it.

Ars Technica and nybooks.com both use Wordpress and Rolling Stone uses Varnish.

B

On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 11:35 AM, Arthur Fuller <fuller.artful at gmail.com> wrote:
> I do do much web-site stuff except so far mostly the back-end, so forgive
> me my ignorance of front-end techniques. Suppose I have a front page with
> headlines + first-paragraph of say four articles -- each of which has a
> "continued" or "more" link at the bottom of the lead-in text.
>
> How is this done? Does one do it manually, seeing how much text fits on
> Page One, then finding or creating a new page-segment for the remainder?
> Are there tools and/or templates that create a bunch of frames on several
> pages and let you stream the text from, say, Page One, Frame One to Page
> Three, Frame Two, to Page Five, Frame 1?
>
> I'm kind of baffled how this works, because at layout/revision time who
> knows how much text would be appropriate? Or, in the case of Ars Technica,
> they populate Page One with the headline and a one-sentence summary that
> doubles as the link to the next page. In the case of nybooks.com, they use
> a photo and a title and the first paragraph, and then a <more> link.Rolling
> Stone seems to use a combination of both -- on the left are direct links
> and in the middle a photo, a paragraph and the whole thing functions as a
> link.
>
> I find it hard to believe that these sites employ people to cut and paste
> this all manually. There must be tools that let you flow a large chunk of
> text into one frame, automatically insert a "more" link, and invite you to
> select another frame on another page to continue the flow, and repeat until
> done. That doesn't seem like rocket science to me, so I'm guessing there
> are tools to accomplish this.
>
> Scaling this notion up, how do newspapers like NY Times and Washington Post
> accomplish these tasks? I can't believe a hundred minions in India and
> China do it; the turnaround time plus the time-zone difference would make
> that approach impossible. So how do they do it? And how many people does it
> take to lay out The Sunday Times?
>
> --
> Arthur
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-- 
Bryan Carbonnell - carbonnb at gmail.com
Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a
well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out,
shouting "What a great ride!"