For those who use the TownNews e-edition:

We think it's important for our organization to control the assets in the River of News. Right now, according to TownNews, there is no way to control that. Basically, it just shows up in whatever order it does. They think it's feasible, but asked me to put in a feature request.

How important do you think this is? Would you use it to place importance on the the content in your River of News?

Thanks,

Thomas 

We've put in a feature request to have taglines to appear in the River of News in our e-Edition. I'm told the asset tagline was never implemented into the segmented article view in the River of News. I'm surprised it isn't already a thing. 

What problem(s) does this idea solve? Why do you need this idea implemented?
Our e-Edition readers are unable to see the bios and contact info of the writers when they're reading articles in the river of news, unless they zoom in on the page view. This is not a big deal for stories written by our regular bylined reporters, but it does leave out an important chunk of information about our numerous op-ed writers.

How often would you use this feature?
Daily, constantly, in maybe 90% of our stories.

How many people in your organization would use this feature?
All, for all e-Edition readers.

I have had customers request to preview an Online Only ad in AdOwl before they submit payment. At this time only the a print ad has a preview.

Has anyone partnered with a third party to create an elegant interface for customers to purchase print or digital subscriptions that would also handle the ez pay recurring payments.  Was thinking about something that would dump a file daily to my archaic circ system that does a fine job of handling my mailed papers but doesn't handle the e-commerce piece.

I'm hoping someone in the TownNews universe will be willing to share an example of bundled print/online advertising, including pricing, sales materials, etc. Thank in advance.

Would love to be able to feature short video clips/loops or even gif files as cover art to be used in the longform presentation. Would this be possible?

Due to past experiences with spam and trolls, we have to moderate calendar submissions. 

It would be great if there was a way to whitelist particular users that we know post events that do not violate any site policies. These include local service organizations, churches, community groups, etc. Being whitelisted would auto-approve their events and bypass the queue for unapproved events.

MAIN POINT: Ad blocking is a rapidly growing problem, and TownNews's Ad Blocker Detection tool needs to be more usable by all clients, regardless of their subscription model (or lack thereof).

We're trying to implement Ad Blocker Detection on our site, but we don't currently have a subscriber model we're ready to pursue (we're free-to-read, and our competitor uses a pretty strict paywall, so this has been our competitive advantage and we've grown dramatically as a result).

But TN support tells us the Ad Blocker Detection tool requires subscription integration in order to work.

I understand the rationale behind tying Ad Blocker Detection to subscriptions, but that's very limiting and I think unnecessary. I'd like to see Ad Blocker Detection work, period, regardless of subscription integration. Then websites that want a premium subscription model that doesn't show ads and allows ad blocking could have that too.

Webinar recording now available.

At our June customer webinar, Susan Bell, senior product manager for TownNews, showed off the latest redesign of the BLOX Now mobile app. This major update bundles a variety of fantastic new features, design layouts, card styles, and more.

Topics included:

• All-new personalization features and behavioral recommendations
• Innovative new “Continue Watching” functionality lets users start a video on one device, pick up where they left off on another
• A completely revamped user interface for iPads and Android tablets
• Tons of additional card styles to help you show off your content
• A modern “flat” design option that you can enable with the flip of a switch
• . . . and much more!

The results of poll questions are no longer visible on our website. Can someone please advise

We are moving to an umbrella site and found out that this will cause all our sites to have a url with the base site.  For example our TV station is currently bgdailynews.com/wdnz instead of wdnz.com.  That address will take you there but we would like the browser window to show wdnz.com.  TownNews has told us they don't have a way to provide masking to accomplish this.  Has anyone found a way to do it on their own?

So let me pose this scenario:

We've got a story on our the site. Let's say the New Orleans Saints are making roster cuts on deadline day. Our guys are updating their story w/ new player names every couple of minutes. The story tells readers to 'check back frequently' or 'reload the page' for the latest info. How can we best display this info in BLOX so that people who visit a page frequently during a breaking story actually see the most up-to-date info?