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I want to show the latest blog article on my home page, and I want to show both the intro text (the part before "read more") and the main text (the part after "read more"). I can do this with a menu item of type "Single Article". But I'd prefer to use a menu item that will automatically select the latest blog article, so I don't have to remember to manually change the article selection every time I write a new blog article.

Is this possible? It seems that menu items of types "Category Blog" and "Featured Article" will only show the intro text. Or am I missing something?

2 Answers 2

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I don't think there is an out-of-the-box solution.

If you are comfortable doing overrides, and a small bit of coding, then I'd use the Latest Article module, and add <?php echo $item->introtext; ?> and <?php echo $item->fulltext; ?> where you want the text to appear.

If not, there do seem a few third party extensions available that do what you want, eg https://extensions.joomla.org/extension/recent-article/

Always use third party extensions with caution, though, as the code quality can vary massively, and they are a common entrance point for hackers.

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  • Thanks. After spending some time (too much time) on this, I've decided to simply stick with "Single Article", and try to remember to change the selection of the article whenever a new article is created. This has the advantage of easy selection of things like showing creation date or not.
    – RenniePet
    Commented Dec 19, 2017 at 21:45
  • I did try installing the Recent Article extension, but it only shows the intro part of the article, and does not have options for showing creation date, etc And I was stymied by not knowing what my Home menu item type should be. Recent Article is a module, and you select which menu item it should be associated with, but that means that the menu item itself should be a "do nothing" menu item, and a quick search on my part showed people asking "how do I create a do-nothing menu item", and the answers typically being evasive or kludge-like.
    – RenniePet
    Commented Dec 19, 2017 at 21:50
  • You mention that third party extensions "are a common entrance point for hackers". Do you have more information about this? I am using five extensions on my website, and hadn't considered the possibility of them being a security risk. Are there any ways to test if an extension is introducing a security vulnerability?
    – RenniePet
    Commented Dec 19, 2017 at 21:56
  • They are an increased security risk as they are open source (anyone can scan the code for vulnerabilities), often written by a single person (so issues are less likely to be reported or patched as fast as core Joomla), and don't always push their updates out properly (there may be patches released you haven't seen). Googling the extension name and vulnerability will usually show up known issues. Joomla has a list of unpatched ones here - vel.joomla.org/live-vel. If you are using any open source code then regular backups and patching is important.
    – RichardB
    Commented Dec 19, 2017 at 23:47
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I'm the developer of "Recent Article" (above quoted extension), We have updated our extension "Recent Article" with the option to show full article i-e. Intro text and Full Text. If you do not wish to show full article you can limit the intro text to number of characters you want to. Please update the extension for new option.

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