Welcome to TownNews.com's customer community! Connect with other TownNews.com customers and with us to suggest features, share best practices and ask questions.

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+2

Feature request: Generating RSS feed from block

Kyle Whitfield 8 years ago 0

We'd love to explore the ability of creating an RSS feed based on a block or specific blocks' content, rather than keywords/section tags/etc.

This would give us more control over RSS feeds we want to use for our apps. Right now it's very difficult to curate our feeds with the best content we have on our apps.

For example, to stipulate what we want the lead story to be on our apps we have to give the story a keyword and make sure the story has the most recent start date/time compared to all other assets previously using that keyword. Sometimes we want to lead with a story that wasn't published in last hour or so.

0

Webinar recording: Optimizing your BLOX CMS site for speed

anonymous 8 years ago updated by Kevin M. Cox 8 years ago 1

At our July customer webinar, Christine Masters, director of product management, highlighted insider tips and techniques to help make your BLOX CMS site faster than ever.


Highlights include:

  • Understanding the need for speed and how TownNews.com's Flex Templates can help reduce load times.
  • Evaluating ads, third-party add-ons and other factors that can slow down your site.
  • Creating page size & load time budgets to help you stay on track when designing pages and adding new content.
  • Future upgrades to rendering, CSS and much more!

For more information, download the slideshow or watch the recorded webinar today!


0
Answered

Flex

Maunette Loeks 8 years ago updated by Christine Masters 8 years ago 3

Recently, someone in our group mentioned they had gotten a list of sites on the four FLEX templates for easy comparison.

Wondering if anyone has that list to share? Thanks!

Answer
Christine Masters 8 years ago

At the top of this doc, there is a link to previews of the various grids on Flex. Let me know if this is what you mean! :)


http://help.bloxcms.com/html_e17abd1e-d998-11e5-b1be-73c249ed5555.html

0

Looking to add a message board/forum to site

Jason Braverman 8 years ago updated by Nick 8 years ago 2

We're trying to figure out the best (and free) way to implement a message board feature on our prep sports website. Anyone using one? Any suggestions? Thanks!

+1
Completed

More than 10 "similar topics" when you search community.townnews posts

Nick 8 years ago updated by Aaron Gillette (Marketing Director, TownNews) 8 years ago 3

Every time I have a question for this community I want to make sure someone else hasn't asked it before. I even did it for this question. /meta This may be beyond TownNews' ability to customize as I'm not sure about how UserEcho works. But when I search for something like "section tag" I know there have to be more than 10 results and I don't want to take away votes from another established topic by creating a new topic that could be exactly the same as a previous one.


So is this something that can be done?


I had another question/topic but I'll ask it another day. I decided today was the day I'd finally ask about more search results.

Answer

Hi Nick,


After some digging around in UserEcho's settings, I found that it is possible to change the number of "similar topics" displayed below the search box. It defaults to 10, but I've increased it to 20 for the time being. Let us know if this is more useful . . . increasing it beyond 20 started to make the page feel pretty unwieldy.


Aaron Gillette

Marketing director

TownNews.com

0
Completed

Feature Request: Add geo location target for serving Banner Ads

Lisa Reilly 8 years ago updated 8 years ago 3

Our advertisers would like to target Countries or States or even Cities for their banner ads. Some examples would be to target Canadians (Winter Visitors) at certain times of year, Military communities as they look to relocate, or Mexico site users on the weekends. In some cases, the advertiser can only sell to people in our state or are trying to target visitors from a neighboring state.


Our request is to be able to target Countries, States or even Cities for banner ads.

Answer
Christine Masters 8 years ago

Hi Lisa!


I was able to figure out your site based on your email address, so it looks like you are indeed using Ad Manager.


If so, yes, we can target banner ads by geo-location in Ad Manager. Here are the docs:


http://help.bloxcms.com/knowledge-base/applications/marketplace/banner_ads/workspace/article_c78ca706-2beb-11e5-b97e-8b48b6ba52c6.html


Look for the part titled "Geo Targeting."


I will say that we are using IP address lookup to figure out the geo location, and on desktops this is a bit wonky since your ISP may report that you're in, for example, Virginia, because that's where your ISP is. (But you're in New York.)


On mobile, which is a majority of traffic on most sites, the geo-location information is much better and we use this information for ad targeting.


One more thing, I should take a moment to mention our ad targeting program for DFP, TownNews.com iQ. This program, in combination with the Google DFP software, can provide a much finer-grained targeting of users based on a variety of data (such as subscription information). If you have any questions, please ask your sales representative! :)


http://www.townnews365.com/solutions/products/townnews-com-iq/article_073df5f4-6d09-11e5-bc62-1b4b889ea1fc.html

0

Join us | Optimizing your BLOX CMS site for speed

anonymous 8 years ago updated by Aaron Gillette (Marketing Director, TownNews) 8 years ago 0


Image 172At our July customer webinar, Christine Masters, director of product management, will highlight insider tips and techniques to help make your BLOX CMS site faster than ever.



We'll cover:

  • Understanding the need for speed and how TownNews.com's Flex Templates can help reduce load times.
  • Evaluating ads, third-party add-ons and other factors that can slow down your site.
  • Creating page size & load time budgets to help you stay on track when designing pages and adding new content.
  • Future upgrades to rendering, CSS and much more!

Join us on Thursday, July 7th at 10:30 AM CDT.

0

Webinar recording: What's new in BLOX Live e-Editions & BLOX Total CMS

anonymous 8 years ago 0

At our June webinar, Rich Griffin (BLOX Live e-Editions product manager) and Jon Winters (BLOX Total CMS product architect) discussed the latest updates and new revenue opportunities.


Highlights include:

  • Generating revenue with ne banner ad positions for BLOX Live e-Editions.
  • Increasing user engagement with cutout asset upgrades.
  • Creating a better reader experience with simplified jump segmentation.
  • Saving time with improved asset merging and page replication in BLOX Total CMS.
  • And much, much more!

For more information, watch the recorded webinar today!


0

Business card: Business (Flex)

Sarah McCraley 8 years ago 0

Is there a way to have mapping as an option on the flex block : Business card : Business (Flex).


The block for Calendar: Card Event has a mapping option. It would be nice to have mapping as an option for the business blocks as well.


Thanks,

Sarah

+1

How come when you type replies in articles paragraphs are not allowed?

rustyp 8 years ago 0

How come when you type replies in articles comment section paragraphs are not allowed?


Thanks.

+4

GeoIP/Geolocations to customize website experience for users

Mary Shepard 8 years ago 0
I would like Town News to include location identification on the site so that we are able to tailor/customize the site per a users location.

Currently we are able to edit the zip code that is used for the search block or to enter a new zip code. However, in our case our circulation area covers over 75+ zip codes. Not using IP-location information in 2016 seems like very poor usability to me. We should be identifying where visitors are located and using their zip code to deliver more accurate search results the first time they search based on the user’s location.

Additionally this could be expanded to allow site designers to develop blocks that would dynamically deliver the most relevant content based on a users location i.e. weather, news, offers, etc.

0

Join us | How to generate more revenue with BLOX Live e-Editions

anonymous 8 years ago 0
Image 167

At our June customer webinar, Rich Griffin (BLOX Live e-Editions product manager) and Jon Winters (BLOX Total CMS product architect) will discuss the latest updates and new revenue opportunities.

We'll cover:
- Generating revenue with new banner ad positions for BLOX Live e-Editions.
- Increasing user engagement with cutout asset upgrades.
- Saving time with improved asset merging and simplified page replication in BLOX Total CMS
- And much, much more!


Join us on Thursday, June 2nd at 10:30 AM CDT.

+5

Feature request: Add photo gallery to poll assets

Erica Smith 9 years ago 0

Polls are awesome. They'd be more awesome if I could add images as child assets and have those images show up as a photo gallery. (If you add photos to a poll asset now, they show up as cards under the poll.) This of the "who wore it best" polls you could do! The contest-type polls! Anyone else interested?

+2

Mugshots and mobile

Erica Smith 9 years ago updated by Rebecca Fellenbaum 9 years ago 1

The mugshot presentation style is great for desktop users, but awful for mobile users, and we have more mobile users than desktop.

Here's what I mean by awful: Say you have a story with two photos and two mugshots (using the mugshot presentation style on those two photo assets).

Desktop view: Headline, two photos at the top of the story in a gallery format, two mugshots in the left rail and the story in the larger portion of the page.

Mobile view: Headline, mugshot, mugshot (they're stacked), photos in a gallery format, then the story. You're in real trouble if you have a story with more than a couple of mugshots.

I want to change this — and I think it should be a global change. Ideally, on mobile the mugshots would be part of the photo gallery — the order in which they're added as child assets would be the order they appear in the mobile photo gallery.


Anyone else in favor?