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+7
Under review

Subscriptions - "Upselling" without expiring current service?

Ian McPhee 6 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Rich Griffin | Product Manager (Product Manager) 6 years ago 2

Hey ya'll,


We recently launched our Subscriptions (we call it Membership) and there are five different price levels, including the free trial. Yesterday we got a call from someone who signed up for the lowest paid tier for one year, about a month ago. They now want to up their membership to the top level - something hopefully everyone will want to do at some point! Unfortunately, they ran into issues, already having an "active" subscription. My temporary solution was to manually expire their service on my end and then have them sign up for the new one, but this is obviously not ideal. 

I almost posted this as a "Feature Request," but figured it has to already exist, I must just be missing something. 

Any ideas?

Answer

Purchasing a different package is indeed possible when you have an active service. A Customer service ticket was resolved on the issue. There was apparently some miscommunication with the subscriber.

+3

Subscription reporting improvements - cancelled subscriptions and new subscribers

Jay Allred 7 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Ian McPhee 6 years ago 1

Try as we might, we cannot find a report / reports that help us keep tabs on subscriptions that do not renew (a.k.a. lost customers). Here's what we suggest be either changed or added.


1. Create a report that let's us track non-renewed subscriptions by customer name. For example, if Amy Jones' monthly or annual subscription is scheduled to renew, but does not - allow a way for us to get a list of those folks. We want to be able to contact them and find out why, win them back.


2. Create a report that allows us to track first-time subscribers by name. Specifically, we are interested in the people that made the initial decision to purchase a membership. Currently, there appears to be no simple way to track this critical data.

0
Completed

Webinar | Digital advertising 101: Optimizing your local and programmatic ad inventories

Cherry Wolf (Marketing specialist) 6 years ago in BLOX CMS updated 6 years ago 1

Webinar recording now available.

Digital advertising 101: Optimizing your local and programmatic ad inventories

Navigating the ever-changing landscape of digital advertising can be a challenge. At our February customer webinar, Patty Bristol, Ad Ops program manager at TownNews, shared best practices to help you better optimize your overall digital advertising inventory. Using real-life examples and known challenges, Patty showed how using local and programmatic together can create the optimal digital advertising revenue stream.  

Image 442

Topics included:

  • An overview of digital advertising, including commonly used terms
  • Generating revenue from local and programmatic ad sales
  • Introducing eCPM—the key metric for revenue growth
  • Tips for packaging and pricing digital ad inventory
  • . . . and much more!

Ready to get started? Watch it now.

+1

Ban commenting not user

Nic Stevens 6 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Kevin M. Cox 6 years ago 7
I would love to be able to ban someone from commenting without locking them out of their web site account. We have a column called It's Your Call and routinely we have people that push the limits and we have to determine if they are a subscriber BEFORE we can ban them because if they are a subscriber and we ban them, they can no longer get onto the web site. It's quite horrid to handle because you have to remember who you warned and once you banned them, you have to decide if you give them part of their subscription price back. We are on Facebook commenting for most things but this piece because we like the engagement it brings to the web site. Just sometimes don't like the comments. It's becoming weekly we have to make this call anymore. I also feel this would go along way to keep more and more pages with TownNews commenting instead of moving to Facebook commenting.

+13
Completed

Batch upload

Jason Schaefer 11 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Maunette Loeks 6 years ago 24
It could be quite useful for the batch upload feature to be included in the story asset (child assets).

This would enable the copy desk to upload/attach photos to a story at one time instead of batch uploading separately then searching for files.
Answer

This feature was released with our Tuesday update to the CMS.

0

Report comment for "guest" users?

Robert Armstrong 6 years ago in BLOX CMS 0

It seems that right now, the only way to report comments is if the user is logged in. Is there a way to activate the report button for all non-logged in users? I understand that this may lend itself to abuse, so having an option to have a higher threshold for "guest reports" or even the ability to remove the report button on a specific comment could help curb that.

0

The ability to unlock assets within the Blox Go mobile interface

Lonnie de Lambert 6 years ago in BLOX CMS 0


Having the ability to unlock assets within the Blox Go mobile interface will solve the problem of having to switch to desktop view on a mobile device and log into the CMS in order to unlock an article. This will save precious time, especially in a situation when multiple staff members are working on breaking or developing stories.

+1

FR: Disable username display in e-Edition "River of News"

Kevin M. Cox 6 years ago in BLOX CMS 0

(Apologies if I've simply been unable to find this setting and thanks in advance if anyone can show me where it exists already.)

We'd like the ability to disable the display of usernames in the e-Edition's "river of news." (See attached screenshots)

Image 435

Image 436


Showing them here doesn't add anything to the reader experience. They aren't clickable and just clutter up the display with un-useful information.

I'd be fine with them being simply removed completely but an option to enable or disable their display would allow other sites to make that decision themselves.

1. Create a cleaner reader experience by decluttering the display and removing information that is not useful.

2. Every day.

3. Every reader.

Thanks,

Kevin

+9
Under review

Embed form into story, or onto page

Meagen Finnerty 7 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Ian McPhee 6 years ago 3

I'm not sure if this has already been cracked, but it would be so nice if forms generated embed codes so we could put them at the bottom of stories, or embed them onto a landing page. Right now, we either link to them or use a third-party form that we can embed. 

+1

Disable e-Newsletter Confirmation Email

Sally Reynolds 6 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Ian McPhee 6 years ago 1

When a reader signs up to receive our e-newsletters (https://lancasteronline.com/newsletters/), they get an automated confirmation email from Constant Contact that must be clicked before they are actually subscribed to the e-newsletter. While I understand that the purpose is to maintain list quality, the unintended consequence is that the confirmation email is a barrier to the reader. As such, it reduces e-newsletter sign ups. The confirmation email is an optional feature in the Constant Contact platform. However, it is not optional for our e-newsletters due to (I assume) a decision made between Town News and Constant Contact. This affects all Town News clients who use the Constant Contact e-newsletter integration. I would like to ask for a reconsideration of this requirement, such that it be turned off globally for all of us.

+4

FR: Additional analytics for Email Reach

Kevin M. Cox 6 years ago in BLOX CMS 0

We'd like to request some additional analytics data be added for the Email Reach service.

• Statistics / Analytics / Email Reach: Add column for open rate. Yes we can do the math when needed but the system can do it much faster and have it available instantly when we need it or provide it in automated reports.

• Statistics / Analytics / Email Reach: We'd like to see columns related to active subscriptions. How many people on the "Sent" list had an active subscription when the email went out? How many of the "Opens" were active subscribers?

• Community / Email Reach: It could be helpful if the "Events" information was also available under Statistics / Analytics / Email Reach so it is all accessible from the same screen.

• Community / Email Reach / Contacts: Add a column for active subscriber status (yes/no).

Thanks.

+3

Feature Request - Comment notification to Article Author

Ian McPhee 6 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Kevin M. Cox 6 years ago 1

We've recently started using the BLOX commenting system. I would like for Authors to be able to receive a notification when someone posts a comment on one of their articles, as we are encouraging them to join in on the discussions / answer questions posed by readers. Right now the only way to set up notifications is to add their email to the "master list" which notifies them when a comment is posted on ANY article. 

If that's not possible, perhaps we could somehow achieve this through the "Per-URL settings"? If I could set an email to be notified by section that would work just as well too.

Thanks!

+2

Comment length restrictions.

Nic Stevens 6 years ago in BLOX CMS 0

Is there any way to restrict the number of words in a post? We have one individual that continually posts at least 10 - 15 lines. We'd like to cut this down to only 180 words.

+3
Planned

Can we get an integrated alternative for Google Maps since it's no longer free?

ShorthornAdam 6 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Kevin M. Cox 6 years ago 20

College newspaper here -- we resumed publication after summer break and noticed that all of the maps on articles were not working (grayed out with a "for development use only" message).  It looks like Google Maps has gone to a paid usage model: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/


I had to go through a bunch of rigmarole of setting up a Cloud platform app, enabling a tons of APIs and putting in a credit card since usage is no longer completely free. It was annoying because we don't do any cloud computing and don't need any of the datacenter-type features.  They do provide $200 of free credits every month, but there is no easy way that I could tell to stop it from charging you $20 or $200 or $2000 or $20000 if the site gets DDOS'd or has a huge traffic spike, or to set a $199.99 max usage and then have it disable itself.

Would you all please start investigating the feasibility of having integrated maps that use a free/open alternative, like maybe OpenStreetMap?  


I would like to remove my credit card from Google and not have to think about it.

 

Answer
Christine Masters 6 years ago

Hi guys!

As I said previously, we are investigating the ability to provide a new mapping option, and have been investigating different providers.

Right now we are very heavily leaning toward HERE, and have chosen to start development on that. I don't want to say it is a final choice because things may be discovered or could change as we build... but as Aidian said, the free 250k transactions appears to be the most generous.

You'll have to get an API key from HERE, but a credit card is not required. 

We will also begin to look at ways to store geo-data since this service allows that, and then for future map renders we don't need to geo-code each time. Our editorial application, for example, allows you to store your geo-data.

Anyway, as I said, we are still doing dev on this - but let me know if anyone has any thoughts or input. Thanks!

0
Answered

I am trying to create assets that I can use as master files, but then can't find them when I search.

Elleda 6 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Kevin M. Cox 6 years ago 2
I create various assets to be used as master files to be copied and used over and over again. No matter what I do, I can't find the asset after I've created it except for the first few times. After that, I can' find it. I've tried text searches, slug searches, you name it. 
Answer
Christine Masters 6 years ago
We actually have this as a feature request on our road map, so I hope that we can provide built-in functionality for this at some point.

That being said, to address the issue of helping to be able to find an article that you need to reference over and over, you could:

- Add a special keyword tag to it, such as #master, and create a saved search for that keyword. Then, keep referencing that saved search (you can even make it your default starting search).

- Put the start time far into the future, and then sort your assets by start time. This will put the "master" files at the very beginning.

That being said, none of these options are totally ideal unless there is a built-in feature for this, which is why it is on our list. =)

Let me know if this helps!