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.

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0
Answered

Do you allow your print advertisers to place paid events in your calendar?

Edith Klein 9 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Mike Stickler 9 years ago 8

A few print advertisers pulled back, becouse they could post their event for free in out calendar. I allowed it. How do you deal with this, or do you even come across this isse much?

Answer
Christine Masters 9 years ago

Hi Edith!


Mike gives some great advice regarding how to deal with the "relationship" between online and print. I'll give you a few set up ideas.


Firstly, you are currently on our new Flex templates which have really fine-tuned support for how to accept calendar submissions from the website. You're also using Upsell Manager, so that users can self-service "buy" a featured listing for a price determined by the paper. You've got a bunch of self-service upsells already, which is great! All of those people with featured listings paid for them. So you have a lot of options:


1. You can turn off online calendar submissions completely (I wouldn't recommend this, but it is possible).


2. You can turn off paid calendar upsells, or change the pricing. (Instead of $10, you can have $100 upsells, or whatever you want). You can offer multiple calendar upsell packages - such as a $10 which gives you a listing, but nothing on the front page. Then a $75 listing that gets you the featured flag on the front page. These prices are determined by the site, so they can be whatever you want.


Also remember that calendar events can be exported for print. We have a lot of sites that encourage businesses to post their events online (and encourage self-service upsells online!), and then export those listings out for print using our calendar export tools. This provides self-service upsell opportunities, and improves efficiency of getting events for print and online.


0
Completed

Static WYSIWYG Block (Flex & Email)

Andrew McBride 9 years ago updated by Christine Masters 9 years ago 2

I would like to request a static block similar to "text promo" or "promo" that would include a WYSIWYG editor. This would be very handy for building emails or other static content pieces.


I was told you guys are pushing more towards static for these types of things instead of creating unnecessary assets that are being indexed and html is just not as easy for bulleted list, text formatting etc


Thank you.

Answer
Christine Masters 9 years ago

Hi Andrew!


This morning we released our latest major version of the BLOX Core CMS, which has a new "HTML" block type. This way, you can use it to create HTML snippets, without creating HTML assets. We do not recommend that you create HTML assets for non-content items.


Here is some more information about this, including recommended uses and details on data normalization:


http://www.townnews365.com/releases/software_releases/blox-software-release---nov-th-am-cst/article_fe225326-83c8-11e5-bc2d-a73fea840384.html#utm_source=townnews365.com&utm_campaign=%2Freleases%2F&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline


Let me know how this works for you use cases! =)

0

Webinar: Introducing Flex Templates (November, 2015)

anonymous 9 years ago 0

Image 99

At our November 2015 customer webinar, Christine Masters (director of product management) gave an exclusive overview of our new Flex Templates!


Flex Templates take advantage of modern tools like HTML5, CSS3 and Bootstrap to bring responsive design to your BLOX CMS site. With responsive design, your site's layout, content and advertisements can dynamically adjust to fit your user's screen.


For more information, watch the recorded webinar today!

+1

Provide drop-down list of businesses in block query

A. L. Flanagan 9 years ago in BLOX CMS 0

If I do a search on classifieds in the asset manager, I get a drop-down list of business names. I can narrow the list by typing the first few letters of the name. However, if I'm setting up a query for a block, business is just "equal to" a blank line. Apparently undocumented is that you can put the business ID in there, but it's not obvious how to find the ID. Why not provide the same behavior as in the asset manager?

0

eEdition block - query by title and display full

Andrew McBride 9 years ago 0

Can you add the option to querying eEdition by "title" with "is" and "contains" settings?


Also, add an option to display with no crop but also full width for eEdition as well?

0

Static Email Blocks

Andrew McBride 9 years ago in BLOX CMS 0

Are there static blocks for email in the new email templates?


If not, can we get some for placing images and text (WYSIWYG)?

+1

eEdition - Date Picker / Calendar / Advanced Search

Andrew McBride 9 years ago in BLOX CMS 0

We have request from readers to bring back the date picker on the eEdition index page and add one within the application itself.

+1
Under review

Better control over length of asset preview/lead

Nick 10 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Andrew McBride 9 years ago 2
It would be nice to be able to set a number of characters for asset previews before getting the "More..." link. For instance we had a story today that's lead was "Knock it down." I see where I can limit the number of characters in the lead but not past the lead.

I realize the reporters/editors could be adding an online lead in the summary tab, but sometimes I feel like it's a good day if everything has the proper section tag and start date/time. Asking them to add this to their workflow will most likely be met with hostility. And I also realize I could go in and add my own lead to the offending assets, but so much in BLOX flows with such fluidity and ease...So why can't this?

If there's another way to do this please let me know.
0
Answered

Ad at the bottom of page

Nick 9 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Christine Masters 9 years ago 3

Is there an ad region like the Halloween ad at the bottom of this site?

http://www.nptelegraph.com/


If it doesn't load hopefully this screenshot will explain the location of the ad.


Image 98


It stays at the bottom of the page as the user scrolls. I've never seen this ad region so I suspect it is a custom template. But it would be nice to have it as a standard BLOX region.

Answer
Christine Masters 9 years ago

On our Flex templates we do have this as a built-in "block" ad type - we call it an anchor ad.


For Zen, we don't have anything built-in, but if you put in a Customer Support ticket, we have some example code that can help you with this. You'd have to do one size for desktop, and another for Touch 5.


And thanks Mike for your help! =)

0

Calendar RSS feed

Greg Wood 11 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Mike Stickler 9 years ago 2
Is there any way to get an RSS feed for calendar events to display the venue info and website links? Also, we'd like the full text to display.
Here's a sample feed from the calendar in question:
http://www.hutchnews.com/calendar/search/?advancedFormState=on&unrolled=1&q=&areaSelect=&d=&c%5B%5D=calendar*&venue_zip=&d1=&d2=&fl=&s=start_time&sd=asc&l=100&d1=06%2F26%2F2014&f=rss
+3
Under review

Sorting based on Last Modify Time

Shauna Rumbaugh 10 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Christine Masters 9 years ago 3

In the editorial assets manager, you can sort assets according to the Start Time but not Last Modify Time. If I do an upload on October 3 at 9:46 a.m., for example, it would be helpful to be able to sort by Last Modify Time to see all the assets that were in that upload so I can more quickly add them to different sections, add flags, etc. The uploaded assets often come through with different Start Times because of when they were created or placed for our print edition, but even when they all have the same Start Time they are scattered through the editorial assets manager. I can't do a Search based on the Last Modify Time either—only the Start Date. Can this functionality be added?

0

"Facebook Official" block not applying customizations

Nick 9 years ago in BLOX CMS 0

I'm trying to edit the "External: Facebook Official" block's template customizations but it doesn't seem to be responding to the changes. For instance, I'd like to not show the faces of people who like our Facebook page. So I turn off "Show Faces" but it still shows the faces. There's also a "Maximum rows" option that is supposed to limit the number of rows of faces to display. I set it to 0 and I still get a row of faces. If I switch the "Plugin type" to "Activity Feed" instead of "Like Box" I get nothing.


So I'm not sure if Facebook's code changed but the block doesn't seem to be responding to the same options it used to.

0

Chat Program Suggestions

Nancy Bennett 9 years ago in BLOX Total CMS updated by Kevin M. Cox 9 years ago 1

We miss the chat program from our old system. Can anyone suggest chat programs that they use with Total CMS?


Spell check suggestions are also welcome. Thank you.

+1

Webinar: Get responsive with Flex Templates

anonymous 9 years ago 0

Image 97

At our November 2015 webinar we'll give an exclusive overview of our new Flex Templates! Flex Templates take advantage of modern tools like HTML5, CSS3 and Bootstrap to bring responsive design to your BLOX CMS site.

With responsive design, your site's layout, content and advertisements can dynamically adjust to fit your user's screen.

Topics will include:
- Faster load times increase user satisfaction, drive pageviews and boost SEO.
- Universal URLs make it easier to index and share your pages, no more mobile
only "m-dots!"
- Increase revenue with campaigns that span all devices or target specific screen sizes.
- Powerful management features make it easier than ever to change your site's layout, style
and color scheme.

Ready to get flexible? Join us on Thursday, Nov. 12th at 10:30 AM CST.

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Under review

Two lines in Byline area

Kevin M. Cox 10 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Nick 9 years ago 8
Is there a way to have the Byline area display as two lines on the front-end of the site?

The field in BLOX obviously allows multiple lines to be entered, however it "compresses" them into a single line on the public side of the site as seen here:
http://www.galvnews.com/opinion/editorials/free/article_3c505918-ef95-11e4-9cee-ebb2d7e87422.html

Please let me know if there is a way to do this already or if not consider it as a feature request.

Thanks