MAIN POINT: Ad blocking is a rapidly growing problem, and TownNews's Ad Blocker Detection tool needs to be more usable by all clients, regardless of their subscription model (or lack thereof).

We're trying to implement Ad Blocker Detection on our site, but we don't currently have a subscriber model we're ready to pursue (we're free-to-read, and our competitor uses a pretty strict paywall, so this has been our competitive advantage and we've grown dramatically as a result).

But TN support tells us the Ad Blocker Detection tool requires subscription integration in order to work.

I understand the rationale behind tying Ad Blocker Detection to subscriptions, but that's very limiting and I think unnecessary. I'd like to see Ad Blocker Detection work, period, regardless of subscription integration. Then websites that want a premium subscription model that doesn't show ads and allows ad blocking could have that too.

We are moving to an umbrella site and found out that this will cause all our sites to have a url with the base site.  For example our TV station is currently bgdailynews.com/wdnz instead of wdnz.com.  That address will take you there but we would like the browser window to show wdnz.com.  TownNews has told us they don't have a way to provide masking to accomplish this.  Has anyone found a way to do it on their own?

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?

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!

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 •

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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.

"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.

We have five pages that we want to add to the daily e-Edition, Each page has segmented areas that link to interactive puzzles on our website. We want the ability to copy these pages from one e-Edition to another without  having to re-segment the pages each day.

We are considering building a new "simple" elections platform for the 2020 election cycle and beyond. This would be more streamlined and easy to use than the old Election Stats, and would include AP election data for state and national elections, leaving you to focus on local. You'd still need to update your local race results as often as you want to make them available for your visitors, but the state and national would be automatic.

I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts on what you would like to see. Is this something your site could use?

What functionality would you want in such a product?

How are you currently handling election results?

I have been noticing that on the Blox Now App, a story will not show up unless the user either force closes the app, or manually refreshes the feed by hitting the refresh button in the menu.   

I had a story post to Blox at 1:13pm.  At 2:15pm I opened my app and the article wasn't there.   I had to manually refresh my feed.  I realize some operating systems put background apps to sleep under different variables and behaviors my differ.  I do not expect a typical user to force close an app or have to manually refresh the feed.  

I would like a feature request for future versions to refresh the users feed after a certain amount of time whether the app is open, closed, or asleep in the background.