Though TownNews.com representatives often participate in discussions, this is not a customer service site. For immediate help, call 800-293-9576 or submit a support request via our online ticketing system.
how do you add categories such as slug and article depth to the search result list?
Bill are you talking about in the admin or in front-end search results?
If Admin, it depends on if you are using NXT or Legacy:
In Legacy in Editorial Assets, hover over one of the columns along the top, like Title. On the right side of the column header you'll see a dropdown arrow appear. click that and you'll see a list of columns available. You can also click on a column and drag reorder it.
In NXT, hover in the header area and you'll see 3 vertical dots on the right of the column header. Click that and then 'manage columns'.
Joe Hansen
Director of Solutions Support
Blox Digital
Front page preview
A couple of weeks ago, someone posted in this forum that the time-specific front page preview was not working and someone from Blox posted that there was not ETA at the time. Since it has been weeks, is there an update or ETA available at this time? This is a pretty big part of our workflow that has been upended.
What can a consumer do to stop the retrying of charge to an expired card?
The newspaper has tried unsuccessfully to cancel the charge for a closed subscription account. The customer wants to deal with Blox directly to intervene to stop the attempts.
Please submit a support ticket to support.bloxdigital.com or give our support team a call at 1-800-293-9576 for resolution on this issue.
Joe Hansen
Director of Solutions Support
Blox Digital
Time-specific front page preview no longer working?
Hello,
I noticed this two days ago and it still seems to be an issue. I would typically rely on the time-specific front page preview to ensure all the right stories load into the top stories section in the right order and everything is okay with the teaser images. However, now it is only showing stuff that has already been published.
I tried clearing the cache for the past day, restarting my laptop, trying Microsoft Edge instead of Chrome, but nothing has fixed this. Is there some way to correct this issue? Perhaps it's just an issue for me, because I don't know of anyone else experiencing this...
This issue was reported to our customer support team and a fix is in development for this. No ETA at this time.
Joe Hansen
Director of Solutions Support
Blox Digital
Hi-DPI/Retina ads?
I am curious if anything's in the works for high-resolution ads. Our site looks great on Retina Macs and hi-DPI phones and tablets but the masthead logo and the ads look fuzzy since they are still at 72 ppi. Maybe have the ability to upload something proportionally larger (2-3x) in the same spots (like a 900x750 would be allowed in a 300x250 spot and smashed to fit)?
Roadmap for vertical video
Are there plans for Field59 or Blox to have more integration of vertical video?
The first request would be to accept vertical video and perhaps show it letterboxed in current horizontal formats.
Second request would be to present verticals in video format, especially on moblie and native apps.
Bob, we are currently in process adding support for both BloxVMS and Blox to support vertical video, as well as providing support for VAST programmatic for vertical. We're about 75% of the way through the work.
Joe Hansen
Director of Solutions Support
Blox Digital
Auto-Tag Keywords needs a setting to set number of keywords to add.
While this setting seems kinda neat, I have seen it add up to 30 keywords to articles, I think a setting would be appropriate and easy to add.
YouTube Shorts
Can we fix the video asset type so that it will accommodate YouTube Shorts?
An "Unable to find video information" error is what happening now when you try to enter a Shorts URL.
Bluesky and/ Instagram in Notifier?
Is there any development or plans to incorporate the Bluesky or Instagram social platform into the Notifier tab?
Need Home Button on Mobile E-Edition.
There is a concerning lack of a button anywhere that gets a user out of the E-Edition or back to the Home Page.
AI chatbot for readers
Has anyone integrated a chatbot on the front end for readers that searches your your content and responds to questions? Or is something like that on the roadmap for Blox?
There is interest in creating one, but I'm not sure how the integration would work and I thought I would see if someone else has something like this so we aren't recreating the wheel.
At this point we are investing our approach to better search. We're concerned about just general search as you can see on Washington Post, which returns old content as well as new content. Additionally, AI doesn't have a good grasp on local information, like "give me stories about the mayor" doesn't have context. It's something we're actively talking about. We also want to make sure it doesn't impact page views, we want people to actually read the articles, not simply get an AI summary. Stay tuned as we roll out solutions in our NXT platform.
Joe Hansen
Director of Solutions Support
Blox Digital
Requesting more options for Segmented E-Edition for Mobile.
I would also like for there to be an option in the user's Dashboard to make the original Replica View default.
Please submit a support ticket to support.bloxdigital.com and we'll happily walk you through the process, depending on if you are using Google Ad Manager or Blox Ad Manager.
If you don't have a support account set up, please call the number listed below the form and one of our Customer Support team members will get you set up and also help walk you through the banner ad process.
Joe Hansen
Director of Solutions Support
Blox Digital
Error invalid or missing web GMT
Hello,
I'm trying to set up the GTM ID under Settings -> Google -> Web Analytics but when I input the code it says Error invalid or missing web GMT. I believe this is due to the format of my code it since it starts with "G-" instead of the expected value "GMT-" what can we do to add the GMT code into the website?
Please submit a ticket to our customer support at support.bloxdigital.com for all support-related issues.
Joe Hansen
Director of Solutions Support
Blox Digital
Nope! We crop and resize those as well :)
Joe Hansen
Director of Solutions Support
Blox Digital
Customer support service by UserEcho
