Implementing Read More Link For Your Blog — an archived discussion from the APG vNext support community.
About This Topic
This thread covers implementing read more link for your blog in the context of APG vNext, the ASP.NET forum and community platform. The community includes APG developers and experienced administrators who can help with similar questions.
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Implementing a Read More / Excerpt Feature in APG vNext Blog
The blog listing page in APG vNext displays blog post excerpts — a short preview of each post's content — alongside the post title and metadata. By default, APG vNext generates the excerpt automatically by truncating the full post content to a configured character limit and appending an ellipsis. For blog posts that use rich HTML (with code blocks, images, and formatted content), automatic truncation can produce visually awkward results by cutting in the middle of an HTML tag or producing an incomplete sentence. The manual excerpt feature, available in APG vNext 5.x, allows authors to define a custom excerpt when creating or editing the post.
Adding a Manual Read More Break
In the APG vNext blog editor, position the cursor at the point where you want the excerpt to end on the listing page, then click the Read More button in the editor toolbar (the button shows a horizontal rule with arrows). The editor inserts an <!--more--> HTML comment at that position. Everything above the comment is used as the excerpt on the blog listing page; the full content (above and below the break) is shown on the post detail page. Use this to ensure the excerpt ends on a complete sentence and includes a representative selection of the post content that encourages readers to click through to the full post.
Configuring Automatic Excerpt Length
For blogs that do not use manual read more breaks, configure the automatic excerpt character limit in Admin Panel → Blog Settings → Excerpt Length (default: 300 characters). Set this value based on the typical post length and the desired listing page density. A character limit of 250-400 characters typically produces 2-4 lines of preview text, which is enough to give readers a meaningful preview without making the listing page too long. If posts contain lead images, the image is typically shown before the excerpt text on the listing page — account for this visual space when deciding the excerpt text length.
Custom Read More Link Text
The Read More link text displayed at the end of each excerpt on the blog listing page defaults to Continue reading →. Customise this text in the blog theme template file, typically located at Views/Blog/Listing.cshtml or similar in the APG vNext theme package. Change the link text to match your community's voice — options like Read the full guide, See the complete tutorial, or View the full discussion work better for different community types than the generic default. You can also add an icon (using Font Awesome) to the read more link to make it more visually prominent:
<a href="@post.Url" class="read-more">
Continue reading <i class="fa-solid fa-arrow-right"></i>
</a>SEO Considerations for Blog Excerpts
Blog listing pages with excerpt content are indexed by Google as pages in their own right. Ensure the excerpt content is substantive enough to demonstrate the topic and relevance of each post for search queries — an excerpt of only 50-80 words may result in the listing page being flagged as thin content. For best SEO results, set excerpt length to at least 150-200 words and ensure each excerpt includes the primary keyword phrase of the post naturally within the first paragraph. APG vNext's canonical tag system ensures that the excerpt preview on the listing page does not create duplicate content issues with the full post detail page.
Related Resources
Read More Links and Crawl Efficiency
Blog listing pages with Read More links present an interesting SEO consideration: they contain partial content from each listed post, creating a form of content summary that both helps Google understand the topic of the listing page and risks partial duplicate content with the post detail pages. APG vNext addresses this correctly by ensuring that the blog listing page uses a canonical tag pointing to itself (not to the individual post pages) and that each post detail page uses its own canonical. This prevents Google from treating the excerpt previews on the listing page as duplicate content relative to the full posts. Verify the canonical tag configuration by inspecting the page source of both the listing page and a post detail page and confirming that each page's canonical tag matches its own URL.
For communities focused on long-form content, the read more feature is one of the highest-impact UX improvements available for the blog section — it makes the listing page scannable and digestible while giving each post enough preview to attract interested readers.