I got Firebase / Notifier all set up this morning but was disappointed when I got to this window and saw that I couldn't set notifications to be sent based on Author. I don't love the "Follow Notifications" feature, so my plan was to set up each Author as a Topic in Notifier and encourage folks to follow writers that way instead. For now I'm going to use includes: Keyword and have my writers keyword their articles with "#theirname" but I would love to not have to do that. 

Anyone else think this would be useful? I'm submitting a ticket as well.

We've had several users complain that they have to keep logging back in to our website to view more articles. The login session cookies for our website last as long as the browser is open but I was wondering if we could get an option to have a login session cookie that lasts for a couple of days or even hours after a user logs in. I know a lot of websites have this capability and I think it would help with our user interface.

Hi there -- our newsroom has been frustrated for awhile with the logic in the subscription module that requires users to register for the newspaper's website before buying a subscription. It's creating a bit of friction when e.g. we want to give out a complimentary subscription to an advertiser or other user, and is also a difficult workflow for some of our users if they don't get a confirmation email for registration. 

I understand the logic of registration being different from subscription status; and I also understand the internal logic of someone needing a registration before they buy a subscription. However, I'm wondering if the subscription page could be streamlined, either to allow people to register while buying a subscription or to create a user registration record as part of a new subscription (that is, prompt for a username when purchasing a subscription). 

Thoughts on that? 

Hi all, 

We currently sell print and digital subscriptions online, and are considering doing print only, but there doesn't seem to be a way inside the Blox circulation system to limit print subscription offers by zip code (like most papers, we only deliver to a certain amount of zip codes and have mail subscriptions outside our circulation area). Our older online circulation system limited the print offer by zip code. 

Has anyone run into this, and if so, is there a solution for it? 

thanks, Rob 

We are wondering if anyone has ever done anything with integrating LiveIntent (https://support.liveintent.com/hc/en-us/articles/217205726) into newsletters.

If anyone is using this, we love to find out how the integration went and what you think of LiveIntent.

Dear Town News, currently we have the option of showing how many comments an article receives, would it be possible to show how many times an article has been viewed? We have the block that shows most popular, might be a nice option to show how many people read a story. Many thanks

Moving to Bootstrap in Flex has been great! 

However, as layout options are increasing, and with new versions of Bootstrap, is there a plan to keep things up-to-date?

It's definitely not urgent now, but wanted to see if there was a plan in order to prevent things getting as stale as "Zen" got by the time Flex rolled around.

We've got piano.io pitching our publisher:

a SaaS platform helping media companies convert anonymous web and APP visitors into registered subscribers, combat ad blockers, as well as customize newsletters and user site experience according to their content affinities. Some of our clients include: Chicago Sun-Times, Hearst, Bloomberg, Gatehouse Media, The Economist, and Business Insider.

Anybody using this or something similar with Town News? 

It gets a little confusing at times 😀

Hey ya'll,

Yesterday, I noticed that a person named xxxx Hairdryer made a User account. Their email address was "xxxx@yeah.net" and their bio, while hilarious: 

"What is going to be open today is a hair dryer, a hair dryer that all the girls love, a hair dryer that initiates innovative revolution, a hair dryer of four hundred pounds, and that’s right – it’s the xxxxx Supersonic hair dryer."

("xxxx" instead of the company name, as to not SEO them here too)

...confirmed to me that this was another account made to boost some SEO off of our User system. Usually these accounts have something listed in the "Home page" field, which as I understand it, is essentially like us having a link to their site from our site (a coveted opportunity, if I'm not mistaken). I think you can see the ones that are doing well for themselves if you parameter your Analytics to /user pages. Sometimes these are easy to spot at a glance when looking at your Users, as many are pretty foreign sounding names, or email accounts like @robot-mail.com but sometimes are names like Dallas Moore, and you don't realize until you open their bio and see whatever bogus link / info they've got. Calendar spammers typically leave their bios blank and instead, try to submit events for medical conferences in Dubai or Spain with a link in the website field.

The reason I'm worried about these (they are easy / entertaining enough to ban manually, but that's not ideal ) is that they are auto-opting into my Email Reach as well, effectively messing up my Open / Bounce rates. My intern is "bot-hunting" this stuff right now, but I could see there being more problems in the future.

I'm wondering how these accounts are getting past the email verification step? Also, kind of related - it sucks that the email verification goes to so many folks' spam folder. I probably tell three people to check it a week.

What does everyone else do to combat this stuff?

Hello. I set up group access rules that gives users the ability to only create and modify editorial assets within a certain section. Upon testing this, I discovered that the access restrictions do not apply if the user switches to the mobile interface. That means the user could modify as well delete any article no matter what section. Is there a way to make the group access rules apply to the mobile interface? I love the mobile interface -- very clean and easy to use -- and was going to recommend it to my writers. But I'm not so sure I want to give them across the board access.

I know this has been asked in a similar post a couple of years ago, but ....

We just switched to Blox commenting from Facebook. A lot of commenters immediately complained they didn't have the ability to edit their own comments. Most other major commenting platforms have the ability for users to edit their own comments.

Do you all think this would a useful change for TownNews to make?

Thanks,

Thomas

article interaction and scrolling

Hi:

There's been some discussion at Collegian about the impact of article length with user behavior. A question of how far do they go.

When we were on the Blox ad server I could get some idea about user behavior on articles by looking at ad stats by position. I recently ran a sponsorship ad through Google Ad Manager for a couple of days which gave me some additional information. At least for the bottom of article utility section.

My first thought was to add some pixel image tracking at the top, middle and bottom article utility sections, but we don't see stats on images in Google analytics.

So now I'm thinking of creating a new ad size in GAM of 300x1 and create sponsorship ads for the top, middle and bottom.

I would then be able to get at least 'the average' ratio of top to middle to bottom of article views.

Is this the wrong thinking on obtaining these metrics? Is there a better approach?