Though TownNews.com representatives often participate in discussions, this is not a customer service site. For immediate help, call 800-293-9576 or submit a support request via our online ticketing system.
"Negative" or excusionary keyword targeting
Premise: Advertisers love it when they are featured or mentioned in a business article. LOVE IT.
Problem: Those same advertisers hate it when their competitors' ads appear in or near an article they are in (see above). HATE IT.
Solution: Enable exclusionary keyword targeting that we can apply to ads for competing businesses.
Example: If the words "Century 21" appear in a piece of content, then do not serve ads for "Re/Max". In this case, we would apply the exclusion target on the Re/Max ad. The reverse would be applied to the Century 21 ad.
Integrate Instagram
It would be great if you could integrate Instagram the way that you have integrated Twitter. Right now, we are using HTML assets for our Instagram embeds because pasting the Instragram embed code into the article body often results in the Instagram caption not showing up.
But even if that weren't the case, your Twitter integration has been great and has made embedding tweets super easy. We'd love to see more of these sorts of integrations.
Can I set CSV verification subscription to auto bind based on phone number?
I see in the help site that to auto bind you have to set verification to email. The problem is that our circulation system doesn't have emails for all customers. We do have phone numbers for all customers though. Is there any way to allow auto bind based on phone numbers?
We're running into problems when someone's subscription lapses and their online does too. Then they have to go back in and sign up AGAIN. That's a cumbersome process and not one that people expect to have to make.
E-Edition PDF "Buy Page" implementation via MyCapture
We use MyCapture for photo purchasing and would like to be able to use it to allow readers to buy e-edition PDF prints as well. However, right now our TownNews implementation isn't sending over our files to MyCapture marked as PDF. We need to be able to include ispdf=1 on the querystring in the buy link.
Has anyone else had this issue?
Not a Blox question - Charging for photo reprints for commercial use
Hello,
If this type of post is not allowed, please delete.
We are a small, locally owned newspaper in Huntington, W.Va. Our daily circulation is around 26,000, and Sunday circulation is about 28,000.
We often get requests to license our photos for commercial use, such as books. I have been tasked to research what other newspapers charge for such things.
Does anyone have a rate structure they could share?
Thanks!
Andrea
Is there a way for us to add a "dateUpdated" meta tag to articles?
I see that there is a meta itemprop tag for "datePublished and "dateCreated", we would like the "dateUpdated" tag for purposes of articles being rescraped.
Hi there!
Actually, the dateModified schema.org property is already available. It looks like this in the code:
<meta itemprop="dateCreated" content="Tue, 28 Apr 2015 21:22:00 -0500">
<meta itemprop="datePublished" content="Tue, 28 Apr 2015 21:22:00 -0500"> <meta itemprop="dateModified" content="Mon, 10 Aug 2015 10:07:18 -0500">
If you are not seeing updates, look in your application settings for editorial. You may have "Manually declare important updates" turned on. In this case you have to check the box in the save button to denote something as officially updated. Then (after a few minutes) it will get the updated flag.
Note that stories more than 30 days old will not show an updated flag to avoid robots getting confused that a story is new when it was just updated. We may change this policy soon as it appears robots have fixed that issue, but we are testing this.
Bug: Showcase (Flex) image won't revert to "original" aspect ratio if 1:1 or 16:9 are selected
I made the mistake of seeing how 16:9 ratio looks on a Showcase block. When I switched to 1:1 thinking it would revert it the image was still cropped. I tried to create a completely new Showcase block and it still didn't give me the full image. I had to find another Showcase that still had "Original" selected and copy it.
So there seems to be some sort of bug with 1:1 and "Original." I'm assuming they're the same thing but 1:1 doesn't behave like "Original" does.
Hi Nick!
For that specific section, I went in and create a 400px preview and uploaded it to the edition, and that made it look a lot better (you can do this for any previous edition that has a small preview size).
Going forward, you'll now get 400px previews as well because I added that to your publication settings (in the general tab).
We use the appropriately sized preview image, and then use a proxy service to resize it to the optimal size that is displayed on the front end. In this case, I used 400px, but you could do 1200px and it would still resize to an optimized size for the display.
For future eeditions, you should have the 400px size already created for you, and you shouldn't have the blurriness problem.
You may want to add in a larger size if there will be the possibility of showing that ad on a larger size screen (maybe on tablet)?
Also, you may want to add a larger preview size to other publications as well.
Feature Request: Allow arrow keys to scroll through photos
It would be great if readers could use the left/right arrow keys on their keyboard to scroll through photo gallery collections, instead of having to use their mouse and click on the < > arrows. I'd even like to see this enabled on article assets that have multiple photos displayed at the top.
This is a feature that is enabled on so many websites that I personally get annoyed when I come across one, like our own, where it isn't.
What do y'all think?
EDIT: Here is a good example, the photos are about halfway down the page.
The arrow keys work to move through the photos both as they are embeded in the article and also if you use the gallery or thumbnail view option to make them larger.
BUG: "Disabled" subscriptions show up as "Service Exists"
I like to see how many subscribers we have at any given moment. This is especially good at the end of the month. However, I just realized that subscriptions marked as "Disabled" still show up as "Service exists." This doesn't make any sense. If it's disabled it can't exist.
So all this time I've been looking at the number and it's inflated. Now I realize all the disabled subscriptions aren't real and I'm looking at 100 fewer subscribers than what I thought.
And for whatever reason since most of these are CSV service subscriptions that are no longer on the CSV(thus being disabled) I can't give them fake expirations to get them to switch to "Expired."
Examples of nice Paywall screens
I’m looking for some examples of nicely done Paywall screens. You know, the one that comes up below the two preview paragraphs when a non-subscriber hits the wall.
We’ve realized that our standard one is pretty boring and we’d like to spice it up.
One example that we like is at the Lufkin Daily News, nice use of colors and logos.
The page you get taken to after clicking “View Offers” is nice as well.
So what about y’all, has anybody else spiced up their Paywall? I’d love to see some examples.
Thanks!
Add a notes / customer service field in BLOX subscription interface
It would be helpful if a tab could be added to the "View Subscription" window that opens when an individual subcriber's name is double-clicked.
Purpose would be to allow text entry of customer service notes when actions were taken that are connected to the subscriber that are not necessarily "recorded" in BLOX.
Could act as a very simple integrated CRM that ties right to subscriber account. Could literally begin with just a window where notes could be added.
Example: CSR takes a phone call with a question from customer, solves problem. Notes date, problem, time.
Example: New subscriber. CSR sends thank you card and gift to subscriber.
Example: Subscriber calls multiple times with one problem or another, Diff people answering phone. Allows for info on previous interactions to be universally avail. "I see you called last week..."
Facebook Instant: Including social embeds?
Submitted this as a ticket but wondering if this is just me being dense?
Are y'all have luck w/ social embeds showing in FB Instant articles? Facebook has some documentation on how to do it. But I **think** it's something TownNews would have to implement. But maybe I'm wrong?
Instructions for setting Defaults for users
Hi there - I would REALLY love to be able to set as "default" some boxes to be automatically checked under Flags and Sections. Being able to have these as defaults would save us SO much time and help with consistency. Would love some help!
Two quick things:
Lots of people currently do something by creating an example asset, set up the way you want, but with a start date in the future, and a "no publish" turned on. Then, when you want to create a new asset, you simply clone the example and all of the sections, flags, settings, etc. will come with it, and it will be "no publish" by default.
The annoying thing is that if you sort by start date, all of these dummy assets will show up at the top. You could create a saved search to get rid of them though (by filtering by date, or some other marker).
As a side note, we do have a roadmapped item in the queue for later this year to more officially "bless" this behavior. We would likely add a new flag to designate an asset as a "template" or "dummy" and then it would not be available with the standard search (either in the front end or the back end). A special property would allow you to search for these.
Then, when you wanted to create a new article, you'd click new -> template -> then choose from a popup of the existing starter templates.
Anyway, let me know what you think!
Folders (organization) for blocks in design
It would be great to see a "folder" structure for Blocks in the Design section where we can place our content/html blocks into so we can orginize better. Either through a drag/drop feature, or in the block itself ("Place in folder"). If no folder, then it would be on the root of the list, with preference of folders showing up first. Folders could be opened and closed.
Often there are lots of different blocks made, even if we try and keep standard and mulit-page blocks. We try and keep keywords and a standard naming conventions, but often miss or don't see blocks even when using the search function.
e.g.
News Folder
- Breaking News Block
- World Events Block
- Local News
- etc...
Advertising Folder
- Rates info block
- Ad sizing and location block
- Random HTML blocks
- etc...
Here's a quick mockup to show further what I mean.
Flex HTML ads, clicked links opening inside the ad frame and not a new window
We just transitioned to Flex yesterday and one of the problems we've run into is with HTML ads.
When clicked, they are opening the resulting link right there inside the small 300x250 pixel ad box, instead of opening the link in a new tab/window (which is what happens with all other ad types and for HTML ads on Zen).
I'm being told this is intended behavior and nothing can be done on Town News' side of things.
How are y'all getting around this? We've got a major advertiser pretty upset with us right now. I suggested the workaround of them adding the target="_blank" on their side but of course they balked since they've got the same HTML ad tags running across numerous sites and this isn't a problem anywhere else.
Help!
Hi guys!
Yes, for HTML ads we had to more to iframes so they would load asynchronously... it helps with people who use networks through Ad Manager and when they were synchronous they would really slow down the page. This also allowed us to implement some new technologies such as refreshable ads, or ad blocks.
As you discovered, a target="_blank" would help.
Also, I would consider this a temporary emergency workaround if you had to, but we still do have the "legacy" mode on HTML ads (which is at the very bottom of the ad size list), which will not load the ad async, and will thus not be in an iframe. It is deprecated though, and some day it will likely not be supported. But, it can help with transitioning ads or with emergencies.
Customer support service by UserEcho