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Adding email and social sharing options to the e-edition
The Herald-Dispatch has entered a feature request to add email and social media sharing options to the e-edition.
1) What problem(s) does this idea solve?
Our previous e-edition vendor had this option. Of the complaints we have received about the Town News e-edition (the vast majority of which is customers having trouble getting used to the new format), the top request has been “bring back email and social media sharing on stories.”
2) Why do you need this idea implemented? Provide as many problems or use cases as possible.
Subscribers are accustomed to the option from our previous vendor. They have come to expect the option in our e-edition.
3) How often would you use this feature?
Subscribers would use it daily. It is a very popular feature with older readers.
4) How many people in your organization would use this feature?
Subscribers would use it daily.
Would any other newspaper that uses the e-edition benefit from such a feature?
Thanks!
Andrea

Feature Request: Setting to have the Find User window triggered by the Authors + (add an author to an asset) display only Admins by default.
I've gotta imagine this would help all of y'all. Our Users list in TCMS continues to grow as we have employee turnover, meaning we increasingly have to wade through former staff members to find current ones.
We can't delete the users because it'll break some link, so Town News recommends just demoting them to normal users instead of admins which is fine.
The missing piece of the puzzle is the ability to then not see these normal users by default and only see admins when you go to add an author to an asset.
1. Greatly speeds up the process of adding an author to an asset. For hosted this weeds out all of the subscribers by default showing you only staff members. For TotalCMS this would show only current staff members and not former staff members who have been demoted to regular users.
2. Every single day.
3. Every single employee who uses TotalCMS.

Adding Custom Proper(ties) to Assets Imported via Jobs
I'm experimenting with some things. Currently, I'm testing a "job" that imports CSV file(s) and makes some assets in Blox.
I'd like to add some custom property to some of those assets depending on some data from the CSV file. Is that possible?

CSV is not a recommended way to load assets into BLOX - producing a NITF XML document is preferable and provides the ability to pass custom properties:

Moving or adding start/date time to workflow area?
Would it be possible to consider moving or adding the start/date time field to the workflow tab in an asset? That way a reporter or editor could more easily be reminded of changing the start date/time when they change the workflow, particularly when it's time for something to be published on the site.

Creative Templates for DFP
Has anyone used the creative templates that Town News provides in DFP? We cannot get them to work. http://help.bloxcms.com/app/dfp_flex_templates/. If someone has one working, can you send me a link to check it out?

sliding billboards and clickable wallpaper ads. double click for small busi

Users are having to clear cache to view FLEX e-editions
We've had a number of problems with our website loading since we migrated to FLEX. Specifically the issues come from viewing the e-edition on Safari mainly on the iPhone, but not always. I get calls at least once a week about this. You can see the problem in the image below. Someone from Town News told me to have the subscribers clear their cache. That typically works but on this non-mobile device it didn't. I submitted a ticket and am waiting to hear back.
One time on my phone even the regular website displayed code as if it wasn't loading the CSS. I had to clear my cache for it to work.
So do any of you FLEX users have this problem?

Alright, we'll consider this issue officially addressed at this point.

Haven't look at hard stats yet, but <lastmod> addition to site maps appears to have increased search traffic, at least on our site
Thanks for the addition!

What's the expected XML format for the "Blox Classifieds Standard XML" Job?
Posted a TN Ticket, but added here as well and in case anyone else has the same question.
I have a question about the "jobs" feature in the Application
settings (via the top-right gear in Blox) in the Classifieds application. One option is "Blox
Classifieds Standard XML job"
Since XML can be many standards and formats, is there any idea on which format is expected? I couldn't find anything so far.

The BLOX Classifieds Standard XML format is documented as part of a larger import and export guide. Here is the relevant section about this format:
That document covers other import formats such as NITF and how to tune that for ingestion in BLOX.

Inform PerfectPixel locations
We embed videos on article pages via a tool from Inform, our video vendor. The PerfectPixel tool has three positions available -- numbered 1-3 -- in the default Flex templates.
Both positions 1 and 2 are stacked at the top of the body text, below the social media sharing buttons. The position is responsive, so the width adjusts with the body text when related assets are attached to the story. But having them stacked is redundant.
It would be nice if Position 1 was higher on the page to allow for a larger video, even when related assets are used. Currently, there's not a way to show a PerfectPixel video wider than 490px -- the width of the body text -- on a page with related assets.
Proposal: Putting the Position 1 div in the wider space below the byline would allow for larger video playback on article pages. And gives editors three distinct positions to choose from on the page.
Moving the div higher would cause the video to compete with a child photo asset attached to the story. But editors would be able to manage whether a video or photo was the dominant visual on the page.

Fixed "donation" bar at bottom of page
My boss is interested in having a bar (dismissable) at the bottom of our pages, similar to what The Guardian does, that would ask for donations to our endowment. You can take a look at their logic by going to https://www.theguardian.com/us or in the screenshot that I'm adding below -- the aqua-colored bar goes to a donation page. I would assume other papers could use this for subscriptions as well as donations. Just wondering if there's existing logic that could be used to create this, or if it's something that would have to be built separately.

Google AMP: If we're getting ready to enable ... 1 question ...
If we enable it and find out something unexpected that we don't like about it, how long does it take to disable. I know there's a disable function in BLOX. Just curious how long it takes from that point for AMP to actually stop. Thanks,
-- Kyle

Hi Kyle!
Technically, Google AMP is enabled when the AMP link is included in your article documents. Adding this link is what BLOX CMS does for you when you enable AMP within our system. Google then scrapes the pages and hosts them on Google's superfast cache servers.
I can tell you that when you turn off Google AMP within BLOX CMS, we will stop including the Google AMP link as soon as the cache expires (5 - 10 mins).
So the question is how long it stays in Google's cache. It looks like they sort of address it here:
https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/update-ping
"Cached content that no longer exists will eventually get removed from the cache"
So I guess the answer is, eventually! =) I am not sure if there could be something TownNews.com could offer regarding the "update-ping" that is discussed there, I will ask our developers about that.
It sounds like you are just interested in experimenting with AMP. If so, I would point at that because it is enabled via a URL custom property, you could do it on one section as a test (say, sports or entertainment). Then you could track mobile page views for those sections and see how they track compared to previous sections, etc.
Hope this helps!

Feature Request: limit login by IP address
In a situation where we'd like to give a subscriber extra concurrent logins (overriding the global limit), it would be nice to be able to limit them by IP address. For example, we'd like to give a school media center 10 concurrent logins, but limit them to the media center's IP address.

Who here is using Google AMP through BLOX?
How many ads do y'all include on your AMP pages? Is there a min or max? Curious to see what people's experiences are with it.
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