We just noticed that the usual social media icons (Twitter, Instagram, etc.) are missing from our staff's user profile pages.

e.g. https://www.galvnews.com/users/profile/johnferguson/

Did something change with BLOX to remove them or did I accidentally turn them off somewhere?

Right now Sibling assets in the left rail of an article display in chronological order, with oldest at top and newest at bottom.

Is it possible to reverse this order, or even better have the siblings display in the order they are attached to the article asset?

For us at the moment it would be more preferable to have the newest sibling article at the top of the list, while also keeping the older stuff listed, just down lower. But the ability to customize the order would be great.

We have a local business news page, where we have articles on the latest business news in our and surrounding communities. A recent article announced the addition of a 3rd dentist to a practice (who is also a big client of ours). A competitors ad was showing up in this article. The ad was an ROS position. The dental practice asked us to remove the ad from their article, and threatened pulling advertising. Without moving the position of the ad, there is no current way to exclude them from the article.

We would love for the option to exclude specific ads in articles. This would solve the problem when a competitors ad shows up in an article. We risk losing annual money from either business if they do show up on the same page. This option would be used periodically when we encounter situations like this, but is invaluable.

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Hello, I'm new to TownNews and Blox so forgive the simple question, but how can I get/find a direct url to an individual asset thats hosted in our Blox (Flex) CMS? For example, if I batch import a bunch of pdfs and then search for them in the CMS, I'd like to be able to add a text link to one of them in another CMS for those viewers but I am unclear what the url is for that specific asset. Thanks for your help!

Getting more and more requests to provide non-employee/non-admin access to review and proof an article (or other) asset.

Creating an admin user with no groups seems like a (less than optimal) work-around.

What are other's doing for this?

We have multiple subscribers asking for the ability to "follow" (receive notifications when assets are posted to) a section. This would enable a notification to the subscriber whenever, for example, a new article is posted in the local sports section. Would your subscribers use this feature if it existed? Have you found a way to use existing functionality to accomplish the same end result? Thanks!

Is there a way to add a presentation mode for a thumbnail only image that does not show in the article body? We would use it for stock images that show on the home page but when you click on the article, it won't show since it is not directly relevant to the article.

We are trying to get a podcast into Apple Podcasts, but have encountered a number of roadblocks. We continue to receive an error message from Apple that it can't "read our feed." A few Town News teams have diligently been working on this for us for several weeks, but we're still unable to get it validated. We are using the podcast player on our site. 

When we reached out to Apple, they said the reason why it can't validate our feed is because it does not have support for HTTP HEAD requests. 

Town News says at this time, it does not believe its the 400 request, partially because it does not allow those requests and it would affect all podcasts. 

Has anyone else ran into this/issues with Apple validating an RSS feed generated through Town News? If so, what worked for you? 

Hi y'all,

For folks here using Facebook Instant, how are you forcing Facebook to update stories from the RSS feed you've submitted?

We notice a lot that a story that's been "Instant-ized" won't update automatically during the day as the story is updated/saved.

Curious to see if there's a solution someone has found. Thanks.

I am sure we are all getting more requests to take down articles that portray people in a bad light. And even though we are loathe to "rewrite history" by pulling stories off the site, we are sometimes sympathetic to people who are followed by minor past crimes like marijuana possession that now show up high on Google searches. Rather than pulling stories down entirely, can we simply exclude specific articles from search engine updates?

I'm looking for some examples and experiences from other papers who are successfully utilizing (or gave up on) the BLOX calendar feature of their sites.

Ours is currently empty: https://www.galvnews.com/calendar/

But we're looking to see how hard it would be to jump start it and then of course what opportunities there would be to monetize it.

I'd appreciate any thoughts, examples and/or experiences that y'all are willing to share.

Thanks!

What are other sites doing with NIE? We no longer deliver papers to schools, instead giving them access to the E-Edition. We recently went to a metered pay wall, and don't want to give a bunch of accounts out. What are you doing? 

I can't find a solution to this, other than to set a block up to display something for only a certain time. But that still leaves a flag on a story.

I think it would be helpful if we can automate a way to take a flag off a story (for example, keeping a "breaking" flag on a story for only two hours) after a certain time frame, or to set it to last only a certain time frame.

Perhaps there's already a way for this, but I can't seem to find it. Anyone have any ideas?

Webinar recording now avaiable

What’s new in BLOX CMS

Become a master of efficiency and automation with the latest updates from TownNews. At our June customer webinar, Christine Masters, director of product management, will highlight the most exciting new features from the latest major release of BLOX CMS.

What’s new:

• Super batch processing makes it a snap to update a large selection of assets.
• New promotional button block lets you create dynamic, trackable text buttons.
• New map vendor give you an alternative to Google Maps, no credit card required.
• . . . and more!

Ready to get started? Watch it now.