Limit the amount of words displayed by the Latest News plugin, or recommend an alternative

Question

I am using the Latest News plugin (made by James Piggot, plugin website is here) and I have inserted code that displays 5 of the latest news items in the sidebar area.

It's working fine, and displays all I need it to display. However, I want to be able to display the first few lines of the news article with a "Read More" link after it. There doesn't seem to be a way to do that with this plugin, and instead it displays the entire contents of the latest news item in the side bar.

Does anyone have any experience using this plugin who could help guide me to restricting the amount of the post it displays?

If it can't be achieved using this plugin, is there a plugin out there that I could use that would allow me to do what I need to do?

Many thanks!

Answer 1

If you go into your /wp-content/plugins directory, and edit the latest-news.php file, on line 85 change:

<?php the_content('read more...');?>

... to:

<?php the_excerpt('read more...');?>

Note that modifying plugins is risky, because if you do an automatic update of the plugin after this, your changes will be modified. Because of this, it is advisable to branch your plugin before making changes.

Answer 2

I like the "News-Ticker" plugin by Daniel Sachs. It allows for choice of number of posts, except length, and a lot more options. I had a little trouble with changing the speed/style of the ticker, but other than that it's been great.