Hello.If we migrate to the new Evvnt Calendar, will we still be able to embed events into individual articles and newsletters? Would we still set the price for upsells? 

Hi everyone!

We are looking for someone to beta test two urgent initiatives we are working on…

Firstly, a “Support Local Journalism” page which will ask readers to contribute money or subscribe in order to support journalism during this time. It can be paired with messaging throughout the site that says something like, “We are providing coronavirus coverage without a subscription out of public interest.” And then a link to contribute or subscribe if they want to help.

Secondly, we have a new Photo Sales vendor (Fotomoto) to replace the other one, which is currently down.

If you are interested in helping with either - or both - initiatives, we just need a site for testing, and some of your time to provide feedback.

Each of these items will require some minor set up on your side, such as creating a new account with Fotomoto and Donorbox.org, and possibly connecting a Paypal or Stripe account for payments.

I realize this is a crazy time, but if you feel you have the time to help us test these things, we can do almost all of the work (except for setting up the accounts and reviewing the work) for you!

Let me know if you are interested!

An option to prevent the following from appearing in blank/null searches 

or searches including Articles + Images: 

• Photos that are both child assets and don't have a section tag assigned to them •

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1. What problem(s) does this idea solve?

1a•

Prevents duplicate photo resources from being displayed (often alongside each other) in searches. 

2a•

There are photo child assets that are technically required to have titles, those are usually the assets whose titles we want the least visible. Asset titles are effectively hidden unless a search is performed.

2. How often would you use this feature?

2a•

When I run a blank/null search to chronologically see what users will see.

2b•

I sometimes direct users to blank/null searches when they want to see a chronological list of content.

3. How many people in your organization would use this feature?

3a•

I would likely be the only one internally.

There's currently no feature that allows author names of articles to be indexed by the search utility. It only works if the byline is entered in manually as opposed to adding an author by registered user account with the CMS. The only way to access a curation of all of the author's articles is to find an article they wrote and click on their author name, where it prompts to a url address like this www.siteaddress.com/users/profile/authorfirstname%20lastname/

Does anyone have examples of staff directory pages they've created outside of static HTML pages on their sites? How about newsletter list landing pages that are more than the out of the box "list" of newsletters available. 

Webinar recording now available.

At this special webinar, the TownNews team shared ideas and best practices for serving your audience and generating revenue during the coronavirus pandemic.

Topics included:

• How to quickly build a high-traffic special section to cover breaking news with BLOX CMS.
• Leveraging the TownNews Content Exchange Network to augment your local coronavirus coverage with nationwide content.
• Using subscription rules to disable your paywall/meter for specific sections of your site.
• Hosting virtual business and career fairs to strengthen ties to your community and grow revenue.
• Using programmatic advertising—and the expertise of the iQ Ad Ops team—to generate incremental revenue from breaking news traffic spikes.

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This is a feature request to add the Breaking flag to video assets. 

1.WHAT PROBLEM DOES THIS SOLVE:  this allows us to use a LIVE VIDEO ASSET as a breaking news item on our site.  It provides easy access to one or multiple live streams in the case of breaking news.

2. HOW OFTEN WOULD WE USE IT: Often. Sometimes multiple times a day

3. HOW MANY PEOPLE IN OUR ORGANIZATION WOULD USE IT: All content publishers

As broadcasters, our life blood and competitive advantage is video. The easier we can streamline the process for our viewers, the better for everyone.

"Sponsored content" is becoming a larger part of news organizations' revenue offerings to advertisers. But it's important that sponsored content be flagged as such in all formats to ensure the reader can differentiate between what is sponsored and what is actual news content. So we use the "SPONSORED" flag when posting articles through BLOX. However, when we pull articles into an email newsletter, the "SPONSORED" flag does not show up in the newsletter, so the content appears in the newsletter just like any other editorial content. We'd just like the option to have the "SPONSORED" flag show up in the newsletter, and ideally, for the sponsored content to be somehow distinguished, such as a shaded background. This would avoid confusing the reader and keep the delineation clear between actual news content and sponsored content.

We have five pages that we want to add to the daily e-Edition, Each page has segmented areas that link to interactive puzzles on our website. We want the ability to copy these pages from one e-Edition to another without  having to re-segment the pages each day.

We are considering building a new "simple" elections platform for the 2020 election cycle and beyond. This would be more streamlined and easy to use than the old Election Stats, and would include AP election data for state and national elections, leaving you to focus on local. You'd still need to update your local race results as often as you want to make them available for your visitors, but the state and national would be automatic.

I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts on what you would like to see. Is this something your site could use?

What functionality would you want in such a product?

How are you currently handling election results?

Join us on March 5th @ 10:30 AM CDT

At our March customer webinar, we’ll introduce SmartSend, an all-new text and email marketing app that allows your clients to easily send instant, direct messages to their customers. Your advertisers will love the outstanding response rates that text messaging provides—you'll love the effortless upsells and new digital marketing revenue stream!

Topics will include:

• An overview of SmartSend, an intuitive app that your clients can use to send texts and emails to their customers. It’s as easy as posting to social media!
• Success stories from businesses who are using SmartSend to send offers, coupons, invitations, and more.
• How you can start using SmartSend to easily generate NEW revenue from local advertisers.

Ready to get started? Join us on March 5th at 10:30 AM CDT.

Want to take in the webinar on your own time? Register now and we’ll send you a link to the webinar recording once it’s ready.

Webinar recording now available

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When it comes to audience engagement, email is still tops. But how do you know you’re getting the best possible results from your email newsletters? At our February customer webinar, Tim Turner, director of content and data services for TownNews, introduced a new, FREE optimization service that will help you deliver real results with ultra-engaging email campaigns.

Based on proven best practices, our team will work with you to:

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