"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.  

How do you add categories to the bar above the search box? Right now I get type, title, status, sections, authors, priority and start time.

I would like to get the slug and inch count at least, if possible.

I seem to recall there was an easy way to do it under your profile or settings, but I can't find it now.

I can't find an answer (at least easily) in any of the online documentation.

Thanks for any help

Tom Fluharty

Carolina Design Center

Greensboro NC

Does anyone have an example of a custom calendar export template that they would be willing to share with us? We are looking at improving our calendars and are getting some resistance from people who want to keep using the text files they've always used for building our print calendars.

It seems silly to have all assets be displayed on the search results list, especially if some are just images (and especially if some of those images have funny/incomplete titles). Also, we create some assets specifically for our e-mail newsletter, and those are not to be displayed anywhere else on our website, except in the newsletter, and those are showing up in the search results as well.

There must be some way to designate an asset to not be "searchable". Please advise. Thank you!

I'd like to request that we add an additional button called Publish Changes. If I write a short story, that an editor looks at and puts online, I'd like go and add more to it and save it. I believe that would publish the change without an editor seeing it. I'd like to as a reporter save the change so my editor can see it, make edits and then committ the change with a Publish Changes function.

Would anyone else thing that'd be helpful?

In the new AP API delivery, in the preview of the image, you see (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) in the caption. When you open the image to publish on your site, the credit has been removed from the caption, but in the byline field you usually see Seth Wenig - staff, AP or Leila Coker - stringer, AP. Sometimes you see just the name and no organization. 

The reader doesn't care what the title is of the photographer, so we would need to remove this prior to publishing. 

We are used to seeing the credit in the caption, and styled like how it appears in the preview (AP Photo/Seth Wenig). 

My request is the photo byline be styled as you see it in the caption. If that is not possible, the next easiest thing might be to remove the title from the byline. 

If a couple of photos are added to a story, the photos are displayed under the headline; hooray! If a YouTube video is added to a story, the video is displayed under the headline; hooray!

But if there are both photo and video child assets, the visual under the headline defaults to photos, and pushes the video to the bottom of the story on mobile or a sidebar on desktop (unless the video is dragged into the body of the story). That's much less exciting.

If an article has both photos and videos, we'd like to have the flexibility to choose which is dominant. The easiest way: The asset listed first should win. (If it's not the easiest way, it's still what we'd like to happen.) Is that possible?

Webinar recording now available.

At our November customer webinar, Susan Bell, product manager, and Christine Masters, director of product management, will show off what’s new in the BLOX Now app and in BLOX CMS.

Topics will include:

• Exciting updates to the BLOX Now app, including: lucrative new ad positions, powerful full-site searching, updated weather features, and enhanced subscription support.
• An introduction to BLOX Media Library, a new way to keep track of images and other binary files in BLOX CMS.
• Fighting ad inventory fraud within your apps with new “app-ads.txt” support.
• . . . and much more!

Ready to get started? Watch it now.

Facebook is offering an instant article paywall that lets publishers keep 100 percent of subscription revenue.
Details here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tdcq6ocqd1x3hoo/2019-07-25%2013.36%20Subscriptions%20within%20Facebook%20Instant%20Articles.mp4?dl=0

The page that talks about instant article paywall(https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instant-articles/subscriptions/) shows that the integration requires custom FB Pixels events being triggered, on login, and during purchase.
This level of integration doesn’t appear to be something that can be done in GTM, nor in BLOX templates, and seems to  require BLOX software support.The page that discusses account linking (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instant-articles/subscriptions/account-linking) mentions the need for “signed pixel events.”
That page shows sample code in PHP to generate the signed data, which requires access to the FB App secret, which would be unique to each BLOX website, just as the FB App is unique to that website.
This whole process requires running code server side to keep secrets. The “account linking” event requires an account_id to link the FB user to the BLOX user (for subscriber access details.) The only really reliable/secure account_id is the user’s UUID, which isn’t exposed in a cookie, so the front-end doesn’t have access to it .

What I would like, if possible, is to have a column in Editorial/Assets next to Title, Status, Sections and Start Time for Notification Date and Time.

1) What problem(s) does this idea solve? Why do you need this idea implemented? Provide as many problems or use cases as possible.
As of now, to remember or view what assets are set for you have to open each individual asset. This takes many steps and extra time. Also, as you know, opening an asset after a notification has been set increases the odds the post is prone to errors.

2) How often would you use this feature?
Daily. It would be used just like the Title, Status, Sections and Start Time columns.

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

Everyone who posts assets.