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Access block custom properties in UTL
Anyone know syntax for access a block's custom property in UTL? Context would be an to use as parameter in an if statement. It's one of the (many, many) undocumented parts of the language. Thanks folks!
From within the block? Use this.block.custom.(custom property name), depending on the custom property type.
It's in the docs, but kind of hidden there. There is a dev-specific part of the documentation with it.
Also, there's a little question mark in the top-right corner that has some reference stuff.
Article: How Hearst Newspapers changes its paywall to drive reader loyalty
Good read, this level of flexibility looks great:
https://digiday.com/media/hearst-newspapers-changes-paywall-drive-reader-loyalty/
"At the Albany Times-Union, the first paper to test the flexible paywall, the total number of subscribers has doubled since it started tests in September, and the overall number of new subscriber numbers for Hearst Newspapers has jumped 10 percent."
Quiz asset
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I'm having trouble setting up an Alexa Flash Briefing.
Support says I need a proxy server. Has anyone else got this working that would point me in the right direction please?
Subscribe with Google question
It looks like Google is offering up some new features with its Google News product, including a way for people to subscribe to newspapers with a Google account and a saved (with Google) credit card. It looks like this would streamline subscription for a lot of users, but I assume Google would also take a cut.
https://blog.google/topics/google-news-initiative/introducing-subscribe-google/
Has TN been involved with this at all? Looks like some large publishers are on board.
We have been consulted about the initiative as part of our Google partnership and as part of our AMP integration, but aren't yet part of the beta.
We do have Single Sign-in available now through oAuth 2.0. Here is a page on how to do this: https://help.bloxcms.com/knowledge-base/applications/settings/users/federated_authentication/article_ec11c076-fab5-11e6-b45b-ef23752afc52.html
So, once authenticated, you can log into the BLOX front-end with no sign-in as long as you're signed in to Google.
(We have Facebook authentication as well, which is popular.)
serve HTTPS from blox app directory
Anyone know if this is possible? Our site is now HTTPS, but assets in the app directory aren't, so they won't display.
The /app directory should allow http or https as long as you are calling that from the original code. You would need to ensure that the reference in the code is actually pointing to https however. Protocol-less will also work, but these days we recommend just doing straight secure always, regardless of whether or not your site is secure.
In other words, if your website is asking for an image in the /app directory, it needs to say:
<img src="https://example.com/app/images/image.jpg">
instead of:
<img src="http://example.com/app/images/image.jpg">
If you're doing this already and it isn't working - please let me a link (you can create a job ticket also) so we can look.
Anyone have a Google Ad Experience Report yet?
Go to webmaster tools, then Web Tools and see if you have a report yet. My "Google Sites" page has been reviewed, but none of the other sites I have access to have been reviewed.
Anyone else? Let us know!
Amber alert option
It would be nice to have an option to push a story for an Amber Alert in the area to the site.
Feature request: Reader blogging platform
How many of you would welcome a more robust "article submission form" to use as a reader blogging platform? I'm talking about the same functionality of the story asset, with hyper links, ability to submit multiple photos and place them in the text where needed, etc.
I have seen a few requests for hyperlinks and other stuff in the "article submission form," but I think full functionality would be welcome.
Our only other option would be to open part of our admin to readers, and we really don't want to do that as that will bring in a whole other set of problems.
Feature request: Import unlisted YouTube videos from owned channel
YouTube is working with publishers — there's a whole YouTube for Publishers program. It's also our video player, so we upload and monetize all videos through YouTube. That works great on videos that we create — we upload them and publicly publish them. We also use AP video. We can add (and monetize) the video to our site through YouTube, but not to our YouTube channel. The easy way to do that is to add those as unlisted videos.
Syndication pulls in YouTube feeds; very handy. But only public videos. The API that Town News uses searches YouTube, similar to a user searching YouTube, so unlisted videos are invisible. To add unlisted videos to Blox, I have to manually create a YouTube asset.
Is it possible to change that a bit so that unlisted videos on my YouTube channel also can be imported?
Help with Calendar Query Rules
Can someone help me find the accepted values for calendar query rules with dates? For example, I can see that for the rule "Creation Date/Time" I can Choose an exact date, say "Feb 1, 2018" but I also see that we are using "Today" as a value in some places. Where is the documentation for all the accepted values for these rules? Can I write "Tomorrow" or "Today +7"?
this Calendar Query Rules doesn't seem to have it.
Vote now: Local Media Association R&D Partner of the Year
TownNews.com made the final list for the Local Media Association R&D Partner of the Year. Now, the voting begins.Our mission every day at TownNews.com is to help our partners grow digital revenue and audience with our tools and technology, and we would love your vote and support for this honor. Thank you.
Add Mailchimp preferences to User Dashboard
We currently use Mailchimp to send and manage our email news blasts. Our subscribers are limited to updating their preferences within mailchimp settings. We would like to add a feature to our User Dashboard (“townnewssite”.com/users/admin/) so that users can manage their Mailchimp preferences, like what is available through Constant Contact.
We need this implemented because we prefer the use of Mailchimp vs Constant Contact for its usability and design capabilities. It has become a burden for our readers to manage two different accounts and our newsroom would like to move towards more streamlined personalization features. We anticipate this improved personalization will make our users turned newsletter subscriber into paying members, which will increase our happiness with the capabilities of TownNews CMS :)
Feature Request: Minify CSS/JS on the Fly
Let's say we have some CSS and JS in the global skin and UTL components. It's on the CDN as the other JS/CSS files as Core TN stuff. This works great!
However, can there be a way to access a minified version of those files? For example, if we have a file in global in resources/scripts/somefile.js (which would translate to something like https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/example.com/content/tncms/live/global/resources/scripts/somefile.js on the CDN) can we have a minified version like https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/example.com/content/tncms/live/global/resources/scripts/somefile.min.js ?
Just a humble idea by me. Thanks!
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