So I have this Joomla website going and I'm creating a blog page. All featured articles go into Menu "Blog" no problem. The problem comes when I need to add a "Read More". I know I can do this with the "Read More" button that each article has but I want to make it a universal read more. Either after so many characters or so many words add the "Read More". Is this possible through Joomla's admin panel? If not can I add some PHP in one of the files?
There are lots of extensions on the Joomla! Extensions directory that do this type of auto "Read More" so there isn't a need to hack together something.
Have a look at the sub-section on Article Summary extensions. Also there are components like the foobla Full RSS that produce automatic summary (ie. read-mores) from the article feeds they pull in.