Hi there -- we're looking to expand what we can offer to sell on our site, to include not just stories and photos but also other branded merchandise. Our sales contact, Carol, suggested SecondStreet for us and they would definitely fit the bill for photo and story reprint sales, but they indicated they're not doing much on the "other merchandise" front right now.

We could use something like Shopify for an online store, but we'd prefer to keep our number of payment processors kind of low if we can. (Among other things, we're in a university environment where we have to get full review from multiple departments with payment modules.)

Thanks in advance!

We've been using FLEX for about a year and I've just now noticed there isn't a way to break out of the mobile view of the back-end like there used to be for Zen.

For instance with Zen I could go to the front-end website and click "View full site." Then I went back to the BLOX back-end website thus tricking BLOX to show me the desktop version of the back-end. This was probably an unintentional workaround but it was very handy when I was away from a computer and needed to change something other than an asset.

I am trying to create a block with content that stays in the block for only one week. I know how to set it up for "today only" but I can't figure out the coding for having stuff that was published in the previous week.

We've got an advertiser asking about how much we'd charge to let them sponsor the entire website and remove the paywall for a period of time. Basically letting everyone read everything for free, sponsored by XYZ, Inc.

Has anyone done anything like this before? Very curious to hear any thoughts on how to price this or reasons why would shouldn't even consider it.

Thanks!

Some of us are OCD about how our code looks. So it's somewhat of an exercise in frustration when creating an HTML block to then have the system remove hard returns. I don't see any rhyme or reason as to what it removes. It does save tabs(or four spaces) which is good but hard returns are really a crapshoot.

To my knowledge there isn't a way in BLOX to see the revenue made from clickbai...I mean Taboola/Outbrain ads. I think they look unsightly on our website and I'd like to get rid of them, but if they're performing well I can't justify getting rid of them.

I don't receive our bills from TownNews so I never see how much we get per month. Is there a way that certain admin can view the performance of Taboola/Outbrain ads?

Hello!

Video has been something that we have never done consistently, or well. It has been a tough culture change for our small newspaper (and I have not done a good job in leading the charge).

I am interested in hearing from those who think they do a good amount of video.

Please list your video page page below, and share how you ramped up your video efforts.

Also, it appears there are two video options in Blox: using a YouTube link or uploading a video file into Blox. With using a YouTube link, it sounds like there is no way to show a preroll ad. However, uploading a video file into Blox DOES show a preroll ad. Is that correct?

I am also interested in hearing about your video workflow. Do you prefer adding videos to YouTube or Blox, and why?

Thanks in advance for any insight!

Andrea

Is there a way to force an asset at the top of front-end search results when specific terms are queried? Ideally a link asset.

Is there a way to add content from an article asset in the right rail?

We're opening up our paywall to people referred from Facebook and Twitter. That way they won't hit the paywall and stories won't count toward the paywall. But in testing it it looks like the views are being counted until 0 articles remaining and then it just continues to let future articles be viewed. I thought they would just not count period.

For instance if we have 10 free articles and someone views two from our website and then two more from social media they would then have eight remaining. But it seems to say they have six. Then it continues to deduct views until it reaches 0 at which point it just continues to give them the free views.

And one thing the documentation doesn't really make clear is whether this custom property has to be an EACH page behind the paywall or if it just need to be on our root URL. For instance can I just have it set on / or do I have to set it on /local_news/, /local_sports/, /life/, etc?

We currently use Business Directory Storefronts to serve as standalone mobile optimized websites for some of our advertisers. This has been a great addition to our local small business advertisers and our sales team! However some functionality of the Storefronts makes it difficult for them to truly function as stand alone websites.

Primary Example - By allowing certain child-related assets to be clickable, visitors to these standalone sites are re-directed to our site, to view the asset. For example we posted an article with an image for an advertiser on their Storefront Website under the "Products" tab. When visitors to his site click on the image, they are confusingly re-directed to the image asset on our site. Taking the user off of his/her intended website and making the user experience not very friendly.

We would like the ability to make some assets not-clickable within the Business Directory.

We use the inline note feature to communicate changes and additional information that reporters and editors may need when reading articles (article assets). This tool would be valuable in photo assets captions - where we are checking spelling on names or adding notes about presentation or dragging images inline. Would anyone else find this valuable?

I'd like to suggest a feature that would help to alleviate articles appearing multiple times on the same page.

Feature: Add a query rule for "asset must be unique". This would make sure that an asset is shown only once on a given page.

Possible Implementation: Global array at page initialization holds array of unique asset ids. As assets are added to the page block by block, the asset ids are added to the array. If the query rule is checked, then when the query for that block is made, the global array of used ids is passed along as a "AND id NOT IN (list of used ids)".

1) What problem does this solve?

Solves the issue with a headline being shown in multiple blocks on the same page

2) Why do we need it?

It doesn't make sense that the most recent blog would be at the bottom of the page.

When a reader is following a blog they do not scroll to the bottom to see the most recent post.

Can the order of blogs (assets) be changed from from oldest to newest so they sort by most recent?