Welcome to the BLOX Digital (formerly TownNews) customer community! Connect with other BLOX Digital customers—and with us—to suggest features, share best practices and ask questions.
Though BLOX Digital representatives often participate in discussions, this is not a customer service site. For immediate help, call 800-293-9576 or submit a support request via our online ticketing system.
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Allow multiple FTP/SFTP accounts to share the same root directory
It seems like a very silly limitation that multiple FTP/SFTP accounts cannot share the same root directory. This is supported by every FTP/SFTP server I have ever run.
Limiting us to a single account per root directory means we have to share access credentials between staff members which is not a good security practice.
Please allow us to create multiple accounts to with the same root path.
Thanks,
Kevin
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Offering page reprints via Fotomoto
Hello,
We are moving from MyCapture to Fotomoto.
In MyCapture, we had an album of page reprints (http://herald-dispatch.mycapture.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=1877902&CategoryID=82823), and I am trying to figure out how to replicate that in Fotomoto.
I'm interested in seeing what everyone else has come up with so far. Obviously, there's a photo gallery option. But I'm curious if anyone has figured out any other presentations.
Thanks!
Andrea
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Hi Andrea!
If you are asking specifically about page reprints, we are in discussions with Fotomoto about this now. We need to test this and make sure the image size is appropriate, and if so, it will be available within e-Edition, or by uploading front page images.
If you are asking about a "photo store" option in BLOX, this is something you can do just by creating a special URL and showcasing photos that can be sold.
Here is an example:
https://www.flex-showcase.bloxcms.com/photostore/?1234
That is done by creating several blocks showing images from the X section that have photo sales enabled.
I then used the "promo button" block to create a link to a search results page to see more of photos from that section. The ps=1 in the search query means to only show items with photo sales enabled.
You can also use other block layouts for this.
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Feature Request: Breaking News Emails - Faster Delivery Time
As a competitive news provider, we pride ourselves in delivering Breaking News to our email subscribers as quickly as possible.
Typically, it takes an average turnaround time of 10 minutes, from sending out an alert through "notifier" to delivery in to a subscriber's inbox. In that amount of time, our readers could be getting the story from one of our competitors.
I realize there are components involved that would not allow an email to be delivered instantaneously, but if the delivery time could be shortened to a maximum of 5 minutes rather than 10, that would be greatly appreciated.
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Webinar | Best practices for growing reader revenue: Part 2
Webinar recording now available
At our May customer webinar, Bridget Sibthorp-Moecker, Director of Audience, and Allie Peters, product manager, for TownNews shared even more expert tips and tricks to help you generate audience revenue.
Topics included:
- Using our built-in promotional tools to reach potential subscribers with your membership offers.
- Best practices for structuring your emails to boost open rates and engagement.
- How to use popup reminders and promo boxes to grow email newsletter signups.
- Simple ideas for reducing friction on your signup forms for more registrations.
- The revenue impact of ads in your newsletters.
- . . . and much more!
Ready to get started? Watch it today!
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Just found out MyCapture photo reprint service is being discontinued...
The last day is June 30. What other photo reprint services integrate with Blox?
If you use another service what do you like/not like about it?
I am officially scrambling, as I did not receive an alert email that they said they sent on April 28.
Thanks!
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The service that TN partners with is Fotomoto. We've been using them for about a year now, and they seem to do a good job. We've had internal people order from them and they've been happy with the quality, and they fill the orders quickly. I've also had to contact Fotomoto support, and they've been quick respond to my questions/issues.
There are 3 different plans and which plan you pick determines the transaction fee that gets deducted from your sale
- Free plan ($0/mo + 22% transaction fee)
- Pro plan ($10/mo + 12% transaction fee)
- Pro Plus plan ($25/mo + 10% transaction fee)
We're on the free plan. You can see the descriptions of each plan at https://www.fotomoto.com/home/pricing
You pick which products you want to offer and what the price is for each.
Because TN has partnered with them, they can automatically be set up to automatically pick up the hi-res version of the photo when someone orders it. However you need to go through TN to do the initial set up to take advantage of this.
There's more information in the TN help https://help.bloxcms.com/knowledge-base/applications/editorial/assets/faq/blox-photo-sales-with-fotomoto-onboarding/article_92e2f4ec-7e39-11ea-9dc8-c31bf63b68ab.html
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scrolling ticker for quick news flash reporting
Give us a scrolling blox that we can do quick post of short term information without having to put together a complete story asset. This would solve the issue of posting just a quick short news flash that would require a user to click to view a short news brief.
Examples would be:
UN-planned road closings due to water main breaks, accidents, down trees.
School closings.
Breaking news stories with more detailed information to come.
Live sports updates (mostly local high schools).
Live weather updates for road closings.
Fugitive and/or jail breaks.
The Breaking News and Weather Alert blox use to have a scroll feature but it has since been removed and replaced with a story title scroll with limited character spaces.
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inefficient repeated advanced search solutions?
Anyone else have this problem? We have writers that use the public-facing site to look up story references. Consequently they're interested in a date-ordered search result, from recent to older, not the default 'relevance' search. They have to use advanced search, which newly includes a date range with calendar controls to pick the dates that default to today's date. This works OK for the one-off search, but for those who make a dozen such searches a week, they have to repeatedly set the starting date range, which is repetitive, time-consuming and frustrating.
What might answer this problem is if all users could set a default search order, or barring that, a default search window.
On top of that, if you're logged into our site with access to more than one of our publications, results from all available publications are included. It'd be nice to get search results from one chosen publication.
I think this may be an issue for some readers who search frequently as well. Any one else bugged by this?
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Ability to override syndication importer embargo date restrictions
We'd like the ability to optionally override the AP embargo restrictions for the syndication importer. While there are good reasons for AP to enforce the embargo, we are missing assets in Blox because the importer won't bring them in if the embargo date is in the future. This means that when AP pushes articles ahead of their intended publish date, the importer doesn't bring them in and they are completely missed.
For instance, they push out several "Today In History" articles in advance of the current day. We no longer get those items as the importer won't bring them in because the embargo date is in the future. If the AP sends the "Today in History" for April 26 on April 20 (with an April 26 embargo date), the importer ignores it.
We should have the ability to override this embargo issue in the importer, and bring in embargoed items that have the start date/time on the asset set to the AP embargo date/time.
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Webinar | New in BLOX Now: Live stream enhancements, customizable weather, analytics improvements, and more!
Webinar recording now available
At our April 2021 customer webinar, Susan Bell, senior product manager at TownNews, highlighted new and exciting updates for the BLOX Now mobile app, including:
- Our new video player enables you to display live streams directly in your home topic feed, making it easier than ever to engage your mobile audience with live video.
- An all-new in-app weather experience keeps users coming back with location-based weather reports and user-customizable location lists.
- Get the latest updates on how TownNews has prepared for IDFA in Apple’s next software release.
- Learn how we are improving GA4/Firebase Analytics so you can better monitor your app’s performance.
- . . . and much more.
Ready to get started? Watch it today!
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Webinar | Best practices for growing reader revenue
Webinar recording now available.
Growing reader revenue has never been more important. At our February customer webinar, Bridget Sibthorp-Moecker, Director of Audience for TownNews, shared expert tips and tricks to help you generate revenue from your audience. From identifying your meter strategy to presenting attractive offers to maximize conversion we showed you easy ways you can make a big impact today.Topics included:
- Building a meter strategy to achieve your business goals.
- Increasing conversions with targeted offers.
- Creating effective promotional campaigns.
- . . . and much more!
Ready to get started? Watch it now.
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Feature Request: Ability to disable "swipe to next article" feature in NowApp
While the "swipe to next article" feature in NowApp is a great way for users to easily swipe to a new article, the swipe (or slide) feature can be a hindrance when interactive content is included in the app. For example, traffic maps, games, and 360 video or photo elements. When a user tries to interact with these elements, we've found that the app's swipe feature overrides these interactions, providing for a poor user experience.
It would be helpful to have the option to disable the "swipe to next article" feature based on section.
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SEO Webinar
Hello, Given the importance of SEO, it would be helpful to have a webinar dedicated just to the SEO features within Blox and how to take advantage of them.
I know there's a lot SEO services and plugins out there but I would like to find out which would be helpful when it comes to Blox or not compatible.
There was a recent webinar that only touched on SEO among many topics. I think it deserves its own. It would also be helpful if the documentation on SEO tools would be updated.
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Feature request: Read-only mode for article and collection assets
There are occasions when we have assets that are still being worked on, but that have information or elements that are relevant to people other than the person working on the asset. It would be nice to have a means of opening an asset in a read-only mode so that it is not locked by the person viewing it, but is not in danger of having conflicting edits made. This kind of thing would also allow editors to at least read and give feedback on an asset while the author has open.
Here's an example: A reporter is working on a lengthy Sunday feature that has a massive gallery attached to it. She is actively working on the asset, but does not currently have it open. Another employee is simultaneously working on a video to accompany the story, and needs information from the story and photo assets from the collection in order to produce the video. But if the second employee opens the article and collection to get the necessary information, the reporter can't make any edits to the story or collection, because they are locked. A read-only mode would allow the video production employee to open and view the assets without preventing the reporter from opening and editing them.
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Notifer notifications
I just discovered that several of our social accounts had become disconnected in Blox notifier.
I was able to go in and reconnect the accounts, but it would have been helpful had there been some sort of notification sent to our Blox admin users letting us know the connection was severed.
That would help ensure the problem was addressed more promptly.
Customer support service by UserEcho