Many news sites these days are presenting the first couple paragraphs of a longer story, then fading out the rest of it and including a "read the rest" button. I presume this translates to an analytics event that says someone voluntarily engaged with your content, which is valuable information for advertisers.

Anybody else thing this would be a neat feature to include in Flex? Anyone out there using custom code or a third-party solution?

Any interest from TownNews in making this a toggle-able feature?

Hello!

I've been lurking a few months, but this is my first time posting. We launched Blox back in September 2015 at www.Herald-Dispatch.com.

Anyhow, I am starting to look ahead to election night and how we will use Blox to deal with returns.

Previously, we had a home-grown system built by a programmer who no longer works here. It worked OK, but is a pain to set up -- especially getting it to work with a new platform.

I saw where Blox had an Election Stats feature, but apparently it does not anymore.

So, I am wondering if anyone else is already thinking about this. Or, is there some other solution out there that I do not know about?

Thanks!

At our February webinar, Jon Winters (BLOX Total CMS product architect) discussed the latest improvements, updates and additions to BLOX Total CMS's Page Tracker tool.

Highlights include:

• Improved wireframe view now shows asset status and Live e-Edition segmenting.

• Updated gallery view displays more information and larger previews.

• New linear budget format looks cleaner and makes sharing asset budgeting information a breeze.

• Bonus: Revamped installer makes updating the BLOX Total CMS InDesign plug-in easier than ever.

For more information, watch the recorded webinar today !

We live in a world where people increasingly want to save media(songs, TV shows, movies, YouTube videos, etc) to view at a later date. For instance YouTube has its "Watch Later" list where users can flag videos they may want to watch in the future. I use it all the time.

I've heard a few people mention that they frequently save articles to read later. I see in the BLOX user dashboard there is a section called "Saved Items" but it seems like that's just for classified listing. I would like to see a feature where users can save articles.

Some people would also like to have a place to save articles that they want to just keep indefinitely. Sure bookmarks exist, but they don't always transfer from device to device.

And it would be great to have a very noticeable button to save the article to a list so people will see that it is a feature.

We need maps to display in calendar assets when the address is provided

by simply filling in all address fields for the venue--NOT JUST with a

venue linked to a business listing.

From what I can tell for the map to show, a venue must be added as a

business in the Businesses Manager. However, the option to search for

the address is not obvious to the front-end user.

So when the user chooses to skip the search--because it's function isn't

obvious to them--they fill in available fields for the location.

3. Generally, the user fills in all of the fields. Since a user has

filled in ALL the fields, I would expect the Google map to

generate--very similar to how it is generated when the business listing

is used. I would think this is also similar to how maps are generated in

our Blox Classifieds. I think Classifieds require a street address and

zip code to generate a map.

This feature would be useful for the end user--generating a map for

readers searching events on Blox Calendars. This would also be useful

for Blox customers that do not manually approve events in Blox Calendar.

In that case, Blox admins aren't approving events and enhancing the

event asset by linking to the business listings. But the end-user still

gets the benefit of having a map to the event.

Can you please tell me if this is an option and how to have it set up?

At our February webinar, Jon Winters, BLOX Total CMS product architect, will give an exclusive look at the latest improvements, updates and additions to BLOX Total CMS's Page Tracker tool.

Topics will include:

• Improved wireframe view now shows asset status and Live e-Edition segmenting.

• Updated gallery view displays more information and larger previews.

• New linear budget format looks cleaner and makes sharing asset budgeting information a breeze.

• Bonus: Revamped installer makes updating the BLOX Total CMS InDesign plug-in easier than ever.

Join us Thursday, Feb. 4th at 10:30 AM CST

Is there a way to include related content boxes with rss feeds.

Here is the article with a related content box http://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/videos/cook-this/recipes/cast-iron-skillet-cooking-from-stove-top-to-oven/article_bae44646-ba41-11e5-9771-931eca51937a.html and here is the feed in which I would like to add content boxes to. http://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/search-whiz/?q=&t=article,collection&l=20&d=&d1=&d2=&s=start_time&sd=desc&c[]=videos/cook-this/recipes&f=rss&fulltext=unionall

Reporters, photographers, etc., can add their Facebook, Twitter and MySpace usernames to their profiles. Our youngest reporters have never heard of MySpace, but they know all about Instagram. Anyone else in favor of lobbying to get rid of some of the never-used platforms listed under "social" for platforms that are actually used or relevant?

I'm new to the BLOX system but I was wondering if there is any way to clone our site into a test environment for me to look at while playing with design, templates, etc.

Thanks everyone! I look forward to learning more about this robust system.

We've been getting people who can't share article pages using the AddThis tool. The error says:

This content is no longer available
The content you requested cannot be displayed right now. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired, or you may not have permission to view this page.

This has been happening for at least the past few days, but it could have been even earlier than that. Has anyone else seen this error?

I assume this would be a feature request because I don’t think the ability exists already.

We would like to have a setting that allows us to specify analytics campaign tracking parameters to the tail of URLs posted using the Social Broadcast feature. At a minimum customizable per “Account,” but ideally it would be customizable per “Channel.”

For those unfamiliar with what I’m talking about, it would change this URL:

http://www.galvnews.com/news/article_dcf8a6a2-af4b-5b7f-8ad9-05db087cebd6.html

To this:

http://www.galvnews.com/news/article_dcf8a6a2-af4b-5b7f-8ad9-05db087cebd6.html?utm_source=blox&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=socialmedia

Which can then be used to better track goals, sources and promotions in Google Analytics.

Let me know what y’all think.

I just noticed this today, but it seems like child article assets attached to another asset behave the way we used to expect sibling assets to behave in the old Zen templates.

Complicated words. Let me explain.

For example, if you add an article as a child to another, it appears in the parent article's sidebar as a content box. However, if you then visit the "child" asset, it shows a similar content box that contains the "parent."

This reciprocal linking is the same way things work when articles are related as siblings; however, the sibling display is a simple list of headline links with no rich media.

Back under Zen templates, the reciprocal links would only happen when things were related as siblings. A child/parent relationship added the child as a sidebar to the parent.

It seems like the sibling and child relationships do exactly the same things under Flex, just with different formatting. Is this by design?

Shouldn't the parent/child relationship be more of a "this asset is subordinate to this other asset" relationship, rather than "these assets are on an equal footing"?

When we switched to the new Flex site, our Facebook "like" counter disappeared (Twitter, too). We used to be able to see the number of people who "liked" the story, but now there is just a button to "Share on Facebook." Anyone know how to make those numbers visible again?

I tried Settings > Site > Custom properties and changing "facebook_count_style" to "button-count" but don't see any changes on our site.

Thank you!

We recently had a complaint from a user that our web forms for wedding announcements discriminated against the LGBT community as they requested Information for the bride and groom. Has anyone else made changes to their forms for this reason? How did you handle it? Do you have links to updated forms we can review?

My thought is to have a dropdown box and allow the person filling out the form to choose title. (Bride, Groom, 1st Participant) I would like the selection to update the labels for related field (Bride's parents would become 1st participants parent, etc)...

What's your idea?

Webinar recording: Introducing
TownNews.com Content Exchange

At our January webinar, Tim Turner (program manager), gave an overview of the all-new TownNews.com Content Exchange program.

The program allows web publishers to share articles, images and videos with our vast network of media sites to earn additional ad revenue and attract new users.

Highlights include:

• Generating revenue from tag-along ads through the program's generous revenue
  sharing plan.
• Improving visitor satisfaction by offering in-house coverage alongside high-quality journalism from around the country.
• Reaching a wider audience by putting your content and branding in front of more people, on more sites.
• Integrating with the TownNews.com iQ program to target users based on interests, leading to higher revenue gains.

Best of all, the TownNews.com Content Exchange is completely FREE and turnkey for BLOX CMS customers.

For more information, watch the recorded webinar today!