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.
Set zoom on map?
I've got two questions regarding the location/mapping capability in articles:
1) Is there any way to set the zoom level at which the maps will be displayed? Right now the map will always show zoomed out to a sort of regional level, when usually I'd like to show a street or neighborhood location.
2) Is there any way to put the map full width across the article column? I've been using a hacky approach involving an HTML asset to do this, but it'd be awesome to just use the integrated google map.
We're a Flex site, which could make a difference.
Thanks!
Flex collapsible block option
Is there a Flex collapsible block option like the one on Zen?
Twitter Beyond 140
Just a heads-up for those who haven't seen it yet. This would require some code changes to Social Broadcast I'm sure.
Twitter Considering 10,000-Character Limit for Tweets
The key detail:
"Twitter is currently testing a version of the product in which tweets appear the same way they do now, displaying just 140 characters, with some kind of call to action that there is more content you can’t see. Clicking on the tweets would then expand them to reveal more content. The point of this is to keep the same look and feel for your timeline, although this design is not necessarily final, sources say."
Feature Request: display weather radar/sat map in different locations
I would love to be able to display the weather satelitte/radar map in different locations than just as part of one tab on the weather index page.
I'd like to be able to embed it in the body of an article, and ideally use it as the lead asset the same way we'd use a photo. In a perfect world we'd be able to set the map options to display on page load (e.g. which overlays; which base layers; present image, past or future loop, whatever).
We're a Flex site. Until recently, I was able to get half way there by putting a flexible iframe around the weather map. However the provider or at least the service changed recently and this approach no longer works.
Doesn't look like it would take much to do, and it would be a big draw when we've got newsworthy weather.
Ads in e-edition not clickable if they are in another asset's region
Sometimes our e-edition doesn't allow ads to be clickable(to view them in full size) if they're in the rectangle region of another asset. This was an issue a few months ago but was corrected when an e-edition update was made in BLOX. But now with the latest e-edition update the issue is back. Here are some examples...
In the next example the ad is clickable but only the part that isn't in the region of the main asset.
Text alerts for our mailing list feature request
Feature request for a text alert that sends out a link to our headline mailing list (Flex site). Readers, particularly the next generation of readers favor mobile text notifications over email. Our stats are showing that a small proportion of newsletter subscribers see our emailed newsletter in their inbox, even though they subscribed to it. It would help us reach more readers, more quickly. We would use this very day for general news, sometimes multiple times a day for breaking news & weather alerts etc. Different types of alerts would be possible & could effect most staff in several departments - but particularly our content generators in the newsroom.
Hoping others will like this idea so it is considered for a future release.
Hi guys!
We have a product called SMS List, which functions similarly to Email Reach but uses text alerts instead. You put a signup box on the front page and on user registration pages, and then you send out alerts.
A few caveats however:
1. Your list can use either a local number to send the texts, or a "short code" which can be purchased from the phone companies. Local numbers are inexpensive, but the phone companies limit them to sending 1 text per second. This means that if you have a list of 7,000 text alert subscribers, it will take you almost 2 hours to send a breaking news alert (which would not be acceptable for most breaking news situations). If you had 500 users, it would be more reasonable at 8 minutes.
If you get a short code, it is much more expensive to buy from the phone company, but your text rate goes up to 30 texts per second.
TownNews.com supports both methods, and we also support sharing a single short code across multiple papers. So if you have a group of papers, the expense of a short code may be more reasonable.
2. We do not support scheduled alerts, so if you wanted to send out something like a Daily Headlines email, you'd have to do it manually each day. But, for most Breaking News for regular-sized lists, this would work great.
This product allows a text list to be tied to a specific business, so that the newspaper can send out alerts on behalf of that business as a service.
If you have any questions, you can ask your sales representative for more information. Thanks!
Add Banner ad start/end time setting - feature request
We fairly regularly have customers ask to have their ads start at specific times of the day. This most often occurs when they have a short, timed sale. I would therefore like to put in a feature request that the start time & stop time could be set along with the date in banner ads. I am the only one that schedules ads but it would benefit the entire sales dept. by making ads more flexible for customers. Eventually when the ad dept is trained 7 others would use it too.
Calendar delete time doesn't work logically
So we'd like for old calendar events to be deleted after a certain period of time elapses following the final date(or only date if it's a one time event). But to delete an event has to recur. I don't understand why one time events can't be set to delete after a certain period.
It seems to me what would make the most sense would be to say "Delete X days/months/years after the final event date." If the event recurs it would never be deleted until such a time that it no longer recurs. If it doesn't recur it would still be deleted X days/months/years after the last date regardless of whether it's a one time event or has multiple dates.
View the statistics of individual editorial assets from within the asset window
We are looking to have the ability to view the statistics of individual editorial assets from within the asset window.
1) Having the ability to view the individual statistics for stories will help us sell more in-story ads, be able to tell agencies how many views our stories receive, help writers know what stories are successful and what ones aren’t, and help promote our business by being able to share with those the story was about how many people viewed and read their article.
2) Having this idea implemented would allow us to view not only the statistics on the top 20-100 stories but also be able to see stories beyond the 100 that are viewable. This would help us in the scenarios mentioned above as well as being able to see our success rate on individual stories that are not in the top 100. We have had several people express interest in knowing this information for stories that were not in the top 100 and had to tell them we did not know.
3) We would use this information at least once a month for web reporting and weekly when the writers are looking to see how well their stories are doing.
4) There are about 10 people in our organization that would use this feature.
Syndication workflow
In the syndication area, after Add to site it would be nice if the asset went into the default workflow.
Collection asset automatically updated by keyword
We're looking into using collection assets because we found the timeline feature which is AWESOME! What would be great is if those collections could be automatically populated with assets based on keywords. For instance if we had the keyword "Donald Duck" as we write stories with that keyword it would be automatically placed into the Donald Duck collection. That way we wouldn't have to remember to manually add assets to collections.
Basically it would be block query rules for a collection asset.
Bug in batch edit of section tags, or a feature request
During a batch edit of section tags, the tags end up in alphabetical order rather than the order in which they are selected. The order of section tags is important, of course.
To make the batch editing of section tags as efficient as possible, it would be great if one or both of the following options were available:
1. Section tags were "added" in the order they are selected. (I believe this function happens else were in the admin.)
2. The user could drag and drop the order of the tags within the batch window to reorder the tags.
Thanks.
Calendar posts across several sites
Is there a way to share calendar entries between multiple Blox sites? Is anyone doing this, and how are you going about it? (syndication? jobs?)
No way to attach image to related content item
I just noticed there's nowhere to add an image(s) to a related content item(like in a "More information" or "If you go" box). There are many instances when our break-out boxes have images. I may be missing something, and if so, please tell me what I'm doing wrong.
I tried adding an <img> tag with the image but BLOX seemed to have stripped that out.
Can't view our site(or other Chicago sites)
We're having an issue and I'm 99.9% sure it has something to do with Chicago servers. I've pulled up TN sites that use NY servers and they work fine. I can't view any of these:
http://thebrunswicknews.com (our site & the backend)
http://docs.townnews.com/kbpublisher/
http://www.gulfcoastnewstoday.com/
I'm not sure because I can't see which servers they're on but I'd be willing to bet they're all Chicago. This issue isn't limited to us. We've got someone traveling in North Carolina and he can't access our site either.
So I guess this question is: Is anyone else on a Chicago server unable to access any other Chicago servers?
Customer support service by UserEcho