Anyone have creative/useful ideas for accepting and displaying community submissions? Content from a local author, press release or (legacy) calendar events? 

Is the PR Newswire concept (unlimited press releases for a monthly fee) dead in the water? 

How do you decide what sections a user can apply to their submission? 

Would it be possible to have a Blox window column to indicate what kind and/or how many child assets are currently attached to an article asset?

This would be a HUGE time-saver, especially with an aggressive push with video and collections - we wouldn't have to necessarily open (and tie up) articles just to make sure we remembered to attach that video/collection/etc.

When an article has multiple mugshots -- often two or more people running for office, or two or more people charged with a crime -- it would be helpful if Blox had a simple way to turn those multiple photo assets into a single teaser image. Here's an example. Currently we're using a separate photo editing software, slowing the process.

https://lacrossetribune.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/la-crosse-county-board-district-15-monica-kruse-vs-heidi-worminghaus/article_ca853235-c546-5950-851c-12dea81399d3.html

Sent in a ticket for this, but I wanted to also hit up the Community to see if anyone else has seen this:

I need help fixing a feed or article component problem. We are seeing errors when our articles show up in Google Alerts and I am wondering if it is just a scraping glitch or if we have our feeds set up improperly.

• Weather information in place of Article Preview.
• Photo Asset names in place of Article Titles
  
• The Menu Bar text in place of Article Preview

Seem familiar to anyone?

Marshall

Hello. We are going to increase our focus on our email newsletters in the coming months. Right now our Daily Digest is based on a URL and also includes a few extra blocks for sponsored content, calendars, featured photo, etc.

We want to take full advantage of the features that are available for newsletters within Blox and would like to see what some other TownNews customers have done to punch up their newsletters.

I know we would have more options if we worked directly in Constant Contact but our goal is keep building the newsletter within Blox to minimize the work needed.

Just wanted to see if anyone has heard if there's a timeline for finding a fix to this issue: Users can circumvent the metered paywall once they hit their limit by using incognito windows, and it's been pretty rampant in the past few months. 

The last meeting we had with TownNews they said they were aware of the issue and working on a fix, curious if there's an update on this. 

Webinar recording now available.

Taking cues from social media, the BLOX Now mobile app eschews conventional news app design in favor of a single, continuously-scrolling stream of community news and events that keeps users engaged. At our June customer webinar, Susan Bell, BLOX Now senior product manager, and Christine Masters, director of product management, introduced the BLOX Now mobile app.

Topics included:

• Increasing user engagement with a hybrid news and information app.

• Feature highlights, including: in-stream video playback, push notifications, and convenient fly-out menus.

• Monetizing your app with Google DFP integration.

• Managing your app, website, and mobile site in one easy workflow.

• . . . and much more.

Are you ready to get started . . . now? Webinar recording now available.

Webinar recording now available.

Editorial masterclass for BLOX CMS

At our November customer webinar, Christine Masters, Director of BLOX CMS for TownNews, gave a masterclass to highlight some advanced, and sometimes overlooked, editorial functionality within BLOX CMS.

Topics included:

• Using BLOX Notifier to keep readers in the loop and drive social media traffic.
• Enriching your stories with multimedia content using the drag-and-drop Article Designer.
• Customizing your site with expert block management tricks—from permissions to scheduling, and beyond.
• Writing headlines to improve SEO.
• . . . and much more!

Ready to get started? Watch it now.

Does anyone know how to export the custom fields that we are adding when our users register. I see the data on the Custom tab of the users' accounts, but when I export the users to a csv file the only fields that are exported are

There's nothing in the TN documentation about this. The documentation tells you how to add a custom field to the registration form, but it's not much good if we can't export that information.

I'm trying to link a banner advertisement to initiate a phone call. Normally that would be done by using tel:xxx-xxx-xxxx in an HREF. I try to put it into the Link URL: section, but it converts it to tel://xxx-xxx-xxxx which does not work.

Is there a way to do that?

We keep getting the runaround from FB/Town News but we have no idea how or where to add additional moderators to the Facebook comment plugin on our news website. Anyone have any ideas on how to do this? The person who set up the integration left and we haven't been able to figure out how to actually delete spam comments from news stories. When we asked Facebook, they gave us script that Town News said it doesn't have in the system. 

Right now it keeps telling me  'BLOX CMS admin is currently unavailable' ... Of course, the person I am adding needs admin privileges ... IS this something related to the recent password update and is there an ETA for when this might be fixed?

Hey all, I'm thinking we could really benefit from a few new options with polls. Some details:

1. It'd be really nice to be able to put an end date on a poll. It just seems like a basic functionality, and I know several people up-voted the idea before: https://help.bloxcms.com/knowledge-base/applications/settings/urls/custom_properties/article_5fd6d870-2bdc-11e5-93e5-034d9f275a7e.html

2. Can we have the option to NOT show results (and maybe show a field after someone votes — "Check back Aug. 8 to see the winner."). That'd allow for us to do some really cool stuff that's not currently allowed. You could have votes for an athlete of the week, person of the year, etc. and not risk people not voting because someone is out to a 2-to-1 lead early, etc.