So let me pose this scenario:

We've got a story on our the site. Let's say the New Orleans Saints are making roster cuts on deadline day. Our guys are updating their story w/ new player names every couple of minutes. The story tells readers to 'check back frequently' or 'reload the page' for the latest info. How can we best display this info in BLOX so that people who visit a page frequently during a breaking story actually see the most up-to-date info?

Hello.  I wanted to find out how TownNews and TownNews sites are planning to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act. Enforcement begins July 1. The easy part looks like updating our privacy policy but the nightmare looks to be how we will respond to requests to provide site visitors with information about how their personal information -- everything from email address to I.P. address -- has been been collected and sold and shared with third parties.  TownNews back in January said it was looking at potential solutions. Can the company share any details at this point? Would these solutions help with complying for requests with this information. 

Webinar recording now available

At our May 2020 customer webinar, Rick Rogers, chief revenue officer at TownNews, and Richard Green, CEO of Evvnt gave an overview of the new Evvnt calendar integration that we’ll be rolling out over the coming months.
Download PDF Webinar slide deck: Introducing Evvnt

While in-person local events are on pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we want to use this time to roll out Evvnt’s calendar platform on behalf of our partners. When local events return to our communities, the TownNews-Evvnt calendar partnership will provide our local media partners the best tools to showcase and monetize their calendar listings.

Topics included:

• Details about the calendar migration time frame and process.
• Ideas for generating new advertising revenue with local events.
• Examples of our Evvnt integration in action and peak behind the scenes.
• . . . and much more!

Ready to get started? Watch it now.

Curious if any sites are having success with doing paid advertorials or sponsored articles, and if so, how do you separate them from news content or do you have a specific place on site where they are placed?

Had a new question from a reader we haven't gotten before. They wanted a way to specifically search through user comments across the site.

Has this ever been considered before?

Making a feature request for the ability to have the purchase subscription page also capture account (login) creation information and establish that user profile in a singe step-page-process ... thus eliminating the multi-step process of a site visitor having to first create an account before he/she can actually purchase a subscription.

This would enhance the user experience and eliminate a bottleneck/bail out point in the subscriber acquisition process.

Please support this post so it climbs the feature request ladder faster.

Thanks!

Hello.If we migrate to the new Evvnt Calendar, will we still be able to embed events into individual articles and newsletters? Would we still set the price for upsells? 

Hi everyone!

We are looking for someone to beta test two urgent initiatives we are working on…

Firstly, a “Support Local Journalism” page which will ask readers to contribute money or subscribe in order to support journalism during this time. It can be paired with messaging throughout the site that says something like, “We are providing coronavirus coverage without a subscription out of public interest.” And then a link to contribute or subscribe if they want to help.

Secondly, we have a new Photo Sales vendor (Fotomoto) to replace the other one, which is currently down.

If you are interested in helping with either - or both - initiatives, we just need a site for testing, and some of your time to provide feedback.

Each of these items will require some minor set up on your side, such as creating a new account with Fotomoto and Donorbox.org, and possibly connecting a Paypal or Stripe account for payments.

I realize this is a crazy time, but if you feel you have the time to help us test these things, we can do almost all of the work (except for setting up the accounts and reviewing the work) for you!

Let me know if you are interested!

An option to prevent the following from appearing in blank/null searches 

or searches including Articles + Images: 

• Photos that are both child assets and don't have a section tag assigned to them •

----------------------------------------------

1. What problem(s) does this idea solve?

1a•

Prevents duplicate photo resources from being displayed (often alongside each other) in searches. 

2a•

There are photo child assets that are technically required to have titles, those are usually the assets whose titles we want the least visible. Asset titles are effectively hidden unless a search is performed.

2. How often would you use this feature?

2a•

When I run a blank/null search to chronologically see what users will see.

2b•

I sometimes direct users to blank/null searches when they want to see a chronological list of content.

3. How many people in your organization would use this feature?

3a•

I would likely be the only one internally.

There's currently no feature that allows author names of articles to be indexed by the search utility. It only works if the byline is entered in manually as opposed to adding an author by registered user account with the CMS. The only way to access a curation of all of the author's articles is to find an article they wrote and click on their author name, where it prompts to a url address like this www.siteaddress.com/users/profile/authorfirstname%20lastname/

Does anyone have examples of staff directory pages they've created outside of static HTML pages on their sites? How about newsletter list landing pages that are more than the out of the box "list" of newsletters available. 

Webinar recording now available.

At this special webinar, the TownNews team shared ideas and best practices for serving your audience and generating revenue during the coronavirus pandemic.

Topics included:

• How to quickly build a high-traffic special section to cover breaking news with BLOX CMS.
• Leveraging the TownNews Content Exchange Network to augment your local coronavirus coverage with nationwide content.
• Using subscription rules to disable your paywall/meter for specific sections of your site.
• Hosting virtual business and career fairs to strengthen ties to your community and grow revenue.
• Using programmatic advertising—and the expertise of the iQ Ad Ops team—to generate incremental revenue from breaking news traffic spikes.

Ready to get started? Watch it now.

This is a feature request to add the Breaking flag to video assets. 

1.WHAT PROBLEM DOES THIS SOLVE:  this allows us to use a LIVE VIDEO ASSET as a breaking news item on our site.  It provides easy access to one or multiple live streams in the case of breaking news.

2. HOW OFTEN WOULD WE USE IT: Often. Sometimes multiple times a day

3. HOW MANY PEOPLE IN OUR ORGANIZATION WOULD USE IT: All content publishers

As broadcasters, our life blood and competitive advantage is video. The easier we can streamline the process for our viewers, the better for everyone.

"Sponsored content" is becoming a larger part of news organizations' revenue offerings to advertisers. But it's important that sponsored content be flagged as such in all formats to ensure the reader can differentiate between what is sponsored and what is actual news content. So we use the "SPONSORED" flag when posting articles through BLOX. However, when we pull articles into an email newsletter, the "SPONSORED" flag does not show up in the newsletter, so the content appears in the newsletter just like any other editorial content. We'd just like the option to have the "SPONSORED" flag show up in the newsletter, and ideally, for the sponsored content to be somehow distinguished, such as a shaded background. This would avoid confusing the reader and keep the delineation clear between actual news content and sponsored content.