We recently were forced to disable auto-approval of calendar events on billingsgazette.com due to an influx of event submissions from spammers. The submissions, which numbered in the hundreds and were mostly links to illegal livestreams of sporting events and current movie releases, were not caught by the spam filter.

We recently were released from an agreement with a calendar feed provider, and are looking at ways of better utilizing the calendar features built into Blox. Unfortunately, we just don't have the resources to curate and approve every calendar event that comes through. Having some extra features in place to make the process easier would certainly be welcome.

I'm proposing that Blox allow us to create a whitelist of trusted users who frequently submit events. This would allow us to disable auto-approval for spammers and new users, but would allow frequent users to have their events show up without our intervention.

Another option would be to disallow auto-approval for accounts created within a recent time span (ex. require manual approval of events submitted by an account that was created within the last 48 hours, but auto-allow events from older accounts).

As a broadcast TV station, we will often create pages with “archived” shows and content. Some of this content can span several years. It would be helpful for us to have the ability to surface assets in a block based on a date range. Ideally this feature would be available in the block’s “sorting rules”.

A date range feature would also come in handy if we were to create a special “news” section that would feature a timeline or back-stories that contribute to our overall coverage.

Our current workaround involves either pinning selected stories to a block and then arranging them in chronological order, or tagging each asset with a common hidden keyword (i.e. #myshow-video-2019)

An unauthorized or malicious user gaining access to the backend of either hosted BLOX or TotalCMS could very easily do great harm not only to a newspaper's credibility and reputation but also to the community it serves.

As such, I would like to see the addition of TOTP two-factor authentication for admin accounts in both BLOX and TotalCMS. This would allow newspapers to secure these systems to a higher level than the current password-only authentication allows.

I would be perfectly fine with a simple on/off option that requires all admin accounts to use 2FA, however if we had the ability to get even more granular that would be great as well. In that I mean allowing us to set the 2FA requirement at the Group level when configuring the access rules for a group.

For example, we could require 2FA for anyone with the ability to edit news articles or send push notifications, but not require it for those who only have permission to moderate comments.

1. What problem(s) does this idea solve? Why do you need this idea implemented? Provide as many problems or use cases as possible.

Helps prevent unauthorized access to the backend of publishing systems and greatly reduces the likelihood that a malicious actor could post fake information or subtly edit news articles.

2. How often would you use this feature?

Every day.

3. How many people in your organization would use this feature?

All staff members.

On the page customizations for COMMENTING there are currently two options:

1) All users can view comments and post comments,

or

2) Require subscription to view and post

I would like to figure out a way to have an option that allows everyone to view, but ONLY subscribers to post.

This will increase subscriptions for those of us who charge for access or for commenting.

Non-subscribers will see comments, and some may be inspired to comment back, which would require a paid subscription.

Currently, our options are limited to all or nothing. Having the middle ground option

3) All users can view comments, and subscribers can view and post comments

would generate more subscriptions from those folks who feel the need to respond to comments.

I have had customers request to preview an Online Only ad in AdOwl before they submit payment. At this time only the a print ad has a preview.

Would love to be able to feature short video clips/loops or even gif files as cover art to be used in the longform presentation. Would this be possible?

Due to past experiences with spam and trolls, we have to moderate calendar submissions. 

It would be great if there was a way to whitelist particular users that we know post events that do not violate any site policies. These include local service organizations, churches, community groups, etc. Being whitelisted would auto-approve their events and bypass the queue for unapproved events.

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!