A lightweight solution to taming Read More links in Drupal 7

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There are multiple solutions for showing/hiding, styling, and controlling the location of the "Read More" link for node teasers, including the excellent Read More Link module. In my case I was looking for a light weight, limited solution that allows the content author to suppress the display of a read more link for short articles, without any additional functionality.

The solution? Simply adding a new Boolean field to the chosen content type(s), adding a node display class to the site theme's template.php, and then updating the site CSS after determining the class that the theme assigns to a read more link.

WTF's per minute

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"WTFs per minute" is an amusingly named quality metric suggested by Jody Hamilton in her talk "Lemon Drupal: Diseases and Cures" at BADCamp 2011. While the image of a muttering developer looking incredulously at code and configuration is humorous, client time and cost demands, inattention to process, and a shortage of skilled talent combine to increase the probability of short-term quality problems and their longer-term impacts on cost. One of the key messages of her session - build quality assurance into every aspect of your development process - is good advice for developers and project sponsors alike, Video here. It's time well spent.