BLOX is a great system for cleanly and simply delivering articles to the public. But sometimes I want to crank the "Feature' knob up to 11. For example, when I have time for our magazine(from the time it's sent to the printer to the time it goes online) to really enhance the web version to mimic a 'feature-y' style. But I have to do this in HTML, which I can do, but it's time consuming. What would be awesome would be a way easily select certain paragraphs to place in a colored box and select the font color.

Would anyone else use a feature like this?

Here are some examples of what I'm talking about:

http://www.goldenislesmagazine.com/features/hives-honey/article_edb5e43e-f9d9-11e6-9797-eb114eef4194.html

http://www.goldenislesmagazine.com/features/on-the-hunt/article_5b84ccfe-f9d6-11e6-a09f-6bfc1155b328.html

http://www.goldenislesmagazine.com/features/hgtv-s-dream-home-offers-ways-to-get-artistic-with/article_ec91dee6-c6ee-11e6-a647-9788557d7e3d.html

When I try and export/batch export images from BLOX, I get a funky '.bpm' file. What is a .bpm file and how do I open it? Can anyone share some info?

An advertiser wants to serve an ad with geo targeting. They want certain zip codes. If we specify a zip code with no proximity will it ONLY serve ads in that zip code or do we have to put a proximity? I'm afraid if we are required to put a proximity we run the risk of serving ads in another zip code.

In the event that BLOX goes down, is there a way to export our Editorial Assets so that we can keep a backup on our local computers?? Also, what is a .bmp file and how does one open it?

I’m looking for help sorting out block sorting rules…

We can use the standard “ASSET | Main Index | Dynamic Section & Children” block for the example here, but it applies to all asset blocks equally.

The problem we’re trying to fix is that when we update an existing article asset and check the “This update is important” box it doesn’t float the story to the top of the block. It remains buried under articles with more recent Start Times.

We should be able to fix this with the block sorting rules but have run into a wrinkle. It seems like a bug to me, but might be intended behavior.

The current sorting of our blocks is as follows:
Start date (descending)
Display priority (highest first)
Start date/time (newest first)

What I assumed would get the behavior we are after is:
Update time (newest first)
Start date/time (newest first)
Display priority (highest first)

However it appears that the “Update time” being referenced in the sort logic is the internal “Last modify time” and not the public “Updated:” time. This means that if we fix a small typo in a story it would bump the article to the top of the list even though nothing of substance was really changed.

The fix would appear to be making the “Update time” sort rule reference the “This update is important” checkbox and public display time whenever a site has the “Manually declare important updates” option enabled. The current behavior would be fine for sites without the “Manually declare important updates” option since then every internal edit results a change in the Updated: time displayed on the public site.

We basically want our block sorting to be based on the public “Posted: Wednesday, April 22, 2015 8:13 pm | Updated: 10:09 am, Thu Apr 23, 2015” text that readers see displayed on an asset.

Please let me know if I need to elaborate more or explain in more detail.

We're using the Infinity Scroll feature now that it supports the sidebar. We also like the fact that we can put ads in this section as well. But this is where we're seeing some issues from a user enjoyment/experience standpoint.

Currently, it injects an ad every 2 headlines. This results in the user being bombarded with ads, sometimes the same one over and over again (if only one ad in the position.) As much as we like visitors seeing ads, too many and they will turn adblock on and we lose out.

Solution: Allow us to change the amount of headlines between ads. This is the same as the option for when to show ads in a gallery setting. We can set it to show every 3 headlines, 5 headlines, 10 headlines, or any whole integer that is put in on the back-end.

Other thoughts: The ability to choose between different ad sizes would be nice as well. Having a "leaderboard" style ad between headlines would also give it a nice look and not take up a lot of space.

I would like to see in the syndication panel if a story asset has been locked at a specific time before I add the story using the curated news. It's frustrating to add a story and then find that they have the time locked and it won't allow me to adapt it to my needs.

We created a custom block to display the front page of a print article, which we'd like to redirect to a different dedicated site. How do we create the hyperlink, so that the image is clickable??

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.