Cut Tag Basics (Test Post)
Apr. 25th, 2025 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soc_puppetIt's time to talk about Cut Tags, Dreamwidth's version of "Read More"s!
I'm going to start by demonstrating one, and I'm going to ask you not to click the actual "read more" text for now, so I can demonstrate one of the properties of cut tags. This should be the final post at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
newcomers for April 25th, 2025, so if you've been linked to the post itself, please visit the archive for that date, instead! (Which I will link myself once this post goes up.)
( Read More (or don't) )
That's a cut tag. One of the neat things is that you can put whatever text you want there, instead of just "Read More". The thing I want you to pay attention to, though, is that little arrow next to it:
You know how, on Tumblr, sometimes when you click a "Read More", the link will take you to directly to the page of the post, and sometimes it'll just unfold whatever is under the "Read More" so it shows up on your dash? I'm sure there's some logic to which one it is somewhere, but I have yet to really figure it out. (Not that I've been trying, mind.)
Dreamwidth has it codified so you know what's going to do what: The text itself will take you into the post, anchored to where the cut tag/Read More starts, while the arrow beside the cut tag will unfold the post for you. If you want to read the contents of a post, but don't feel like clicking away from your reading page to so so, click on that little arrow right there!
But wait, there's more! Somewhere on your page layout you might see a section that says, "Expand Cut Tags", with double right-pointing triangles and double down-pointing triangles. Click on the double-down triangles, and all cut tags on your reading page will be automatically opened for you! Pretty neat trick, right? That said, I don't actually know how it impacts this next bit...
This time, please click on that triangle there: ( Read More (yes, please) )
You may also have noticed at this point that cut tags on Dreamwidth can be closed. No more putting the entire remainder of a post under a Read More; you can put the long essay under there, and leave the TL;DR out at the end! This also means you can also include multiple cut tags in a single post, not just one. (And not just the nested kind, either; though you will need to be sure you're closing all of your cuts if you go for nested cut tags but still want some after-text outside of them.)
Dreamwidth users (DWenizens?) tend to apply cut tags to posts that get a little longer, and to hide images that are more than, say, 800 pixels wide. The latter is a holdover from when bandwidth was a lot worse, though last I knew, some places were still running on dial-up, and it's polite to remember them, as well. And both are good for not turning your subscribers' reading page into Color of the Sky. If you've got a post that's more than a couple thousand words long or has a bunch of really big images, you might want to consider a cut tag. Writing that's more than a few hundred words or a dozen lines long (in terms of poetry) is a good choice to put under a cut tag, as are image posts that have multiple large images (if you aren't using preview thumbnails).
That's all I can think of about cut tags at the moment; if there's something I missed or something you have questions about, feel free to bring it up in the comments!
I'm going to start by demonstrating one, and I'm going to ask you not to click the actual "read more" text for now, so I can demonstrate one of the properties of cut tags. This should be the final post at
newcomers for April 25th, 2025, so if you've been linked to the post itself, please visit the archive for that date, instead! (Which I will link myself once this post goes up.)( Read More (or don't) )
That's a cut tag. One of the neat things is that you can put whatever text you want there, instead of just "Read More". The thing I want you to pay attention to, though, is that little arrow next to it:
You know how, on Tumblr, sometimes when you click a "Read More", the link will take you to directly to the page of the post, and sometimes it'll just unfold whatever is under the "Read More" so it shows up on your dash? I'm sure there's some logic to which one it is somewhere, but I have yet to really figure it out. (Not that I've been trying, mind.)
Dreamwidth has it codified so you know what's going to do what: The text itself will take you into the post, anchored to where the cut tag/Read More starts, while the arrow beside the cut tag will unfold the post for you. If you want to read the contents of a post, but don't feel like clicking away from your reading page to so so, click on that little arrow right there!
But wait, there's more! Somewhere on your page layout you might see a section that says, "Expand Cut Tags", with double right-pointing triangles and double down-pointing triangles. Click on the double-down triangles, and all cut tags on your reading page will be automatically opened for you! Pretty neat trick, right? That said, I don't actually know how it impacts this next bit...
This time, please click on that triangle there: ( Read More (yes, please) )
You may also have noticed at this point that cut tags on Dreamwidth can be closed. No more putting the entire remainder of a post under a Read More; you can put the long essay under there, and leave the TL;DR out at the end! This also means you can also include multiple cut tags in a single post, not just one. (And not just the nested kind, either; though you will need to be sure you're closing all of your cuts if you go for nested cut tags but still want some after-text outside of them.)
Dreamwidth users (DWenizens?) tend to apply cut tags to posts that get a little longer, and to hide images that are more than, say, 800 pixels wide. The latter is a holdover from when bandwidth was a lot worse, though last I knew, some places were still running on dial-up, and it's polite to remember them, as well. And both are good for not turning your subscribers' reading page into Color of the Sky. If you've got a post that's more than a couple thousand words long or has a bunch of really big images, you might want to consider a cut tag. Writing that's more than a few hundred words or a dozen lines long (in terms of poetry) is a good choice to put under a cut tag, as are image posts that have multiple large images (if you aren't using preview thumbnails).
That's all I can think of about cut tags at the moment; if there's something I missed or something you have questions about, feel free to bring it up in the comments!
