Feature request:

PLEASE make adjust these additive only fields in TCMS so that they act "normally" and make adjustments to files in Blox as well. If a feature is additive only, it makes it very difficult to actually be useful for clients that use TCMS as their main CMS.

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What’s new in BLOX CMS

Become a master of efficiency and automation with the latest updates from TownNews. At our June customer webinar, Christine Masters, director of product management, will highlight the most exciting new features from the latest major release of BLOX CMS.

What’s new:

• Super batch processing makes it a snap to update a large selection of assets.
• New promotional button block lets you create dynamic, trackable text buttons.
• New map vendor give you an alternative to Google Maps, no credit card required.
• . . . and more!

Ready to get started? Watch it now.

I've submitted a ticket about this but would like to see how many other would find this useful.

We would like the ability to "feature" a comment on pages other than articles. With the increased focus industry-wide on a more engaged journalistic approach, this is something I think all TN customers would find useful. For us, the reader has become much more involved in every step of our writing process. We want to combat the recent "don't-read-the-comments" mantra that has become so commonplace.

Ideally, there would be a block that can pull in or pin Comments just like blocks can with Assets. This would allow us to have various blocks that show the latest comments in every section on the homepage, or every comment in a given section, for example.

I thought this might also be possible somehow by embedding the comment as a "widget". I played around with Google Console and was able to pull the html for a comment and paste that into an html block to pull it in, which obviously isn't ideal for several reasons (if the user edited their comment, that wouldn't be reflected, for example). But I didn't see anything like a "comment id" in the code, or in the Comments feature in general anywhere, which is how I would assume this would be done.

Has anyone done something similar or want to do this as well but can't figure out a way?

I followed the instructions listed here to set up Firebase and connect it to BLOX. But when I send the test push notification, nothing happens. The error in the log says "The caller does not have permission."

I deleted my keys and redid everything from the start, and same thing. Don't know where I should look or what I need to do to get it to work. Anyone have a similar problem, or any ideas on how to fix it?

I got Firebase / Notifier all set up this morning but was disappointed when I got to this window and saw that I couldn't set notifications to be sent based on Author. I don't love the "Follow Notifications" feature, so my plan was to set up each Author as a Topic in Notifier and encourage folks to follow writers that way instead. For now I'm going to use includes: Keyword and have my writers keyword their articles with "#theirname" but I would love to not have to do that. 

Anyone else think this would be useful? I'm submitting a ticket as well.

We've had several users complain that they have to keep logging back in to our website to view more articles. The login session cookies for our website last as long as the browser is open but I was wondering if we could get an option to have a login session cookie that lasts for a couple of days or even hours after a user logs in. I know a lot of websites have this capability and I think it would help with our user interface.

Here is what I want and why I want it:

I'd love the ability to create a Collection asset and then define a slug template that would automatically assign any specified asset type matching that pattern to the Collection as a child.

For example: 

Create a Collection, set the Start Time, Sections, Workflow, etc. Then define the following for matching:
Type: Image
Slug: 180518-new-shooting*
(The asterisk being a wildcard just like in slug search.)

The system would run a search on the slug either constantly or every five minutes or something and then automatically add the matches into the collection.

180518-new-shooting-01-KMC
180518-new-shooting-37-JR
180518-new-shooting-15-SV
180518-new-shooting-4-KW
etc.

Or maybe even options for keywords instead of slugs:
Type: Image
Keyword: #sfhsshooting

Two scenarios where this would save a ton of time:

1. We had a mass shooting today and it would have been a huge help for photographers to FTP their images into TotalCMS and not even need to open the browser and login to BLOX. Just upload the photos and know they'll be added into the existing live photo gallery within a few minutes. (Transmitting images via FTP directly from Photo Mechanic is hands-down the fastest way to get photos into TCMS.)

2. It would save a bunch of time when covering sports to setup the Collection ahead of time and then let it auto-populate as photos are sent during the game. During the World Series last year I was able to send photos during the games but usually didn't have time to get into BLOX until afterwards. So while my photos where in TCMS, they weren't online for any readers to see.

A feature like this would help level the playing field for small publications that don't have dedicated web staff sitting in the office to build galleries.

Hi there -- our newsroom has been frustrated for awhile with the logic in the subscription module that requires users to register for the newspaper's website before buying a subscription. It's creating a bit of friction when e.g. we want to give out a complimentary subscription to an advertiser or other user, and is also a difficult workflow for some of our users if they don't get a confirmation email for registration. 

I understand the logic of registration being different from subscription status; and I also understand the internal logic of someone needing a registration before they buy a subscription. However, I'm wondering if the subscription page could be streamlined, either to allow people to register while buying a subscription or to create a user registration record as part of a new subscription (that is, prompt for a username when purchasing a subscription). 

Thoughts on that? 

Hi all, 

We currently sell print and digital subscriptions online, and are considering doing print only, but there doesn't seem to be a way inside the Blox circulation system to limit print subscription offers by zip code (like most papers, we only deliver to a certain amount of zip codes and have mail subscriptions outside our circulation area). Our older online circulation system limited the print offer by zip code. 

Has anyone run into this, and if so, is there a solution for it? 

thanks, Rob 

Say a reporter is completing his/her story. They've added the photos, gallery and any other assets. Next they move over to "Notifier" and create a tweet and FB message and hit "Save and Send." By default, since the story isn't "live" on the website yet, it goes into "draft" mode. Next, they'll promote the story for the editor to read. He/she reads it and promotes it to the web. Shouldn't the tweet and FB post go live at that time? 

We've received many, many complaints that ads block out text in the phone app. We've contacted customer service but nothing was done. This is a real issue for our phone users.

We are thinking about adding a podcast at our paper, and I've been looking at the BLOX documentation about setting up a /search/ url to create a home for the podcast feed - but I'm not quite able to visualize how this is supposed to work. It would be nice to see another BLOX site that hosts podcasts to see how it looks and to learn how it was configured. I'd like to have both an iTunes friendly RSS feed, as well as a way to have an asset page for each episode with show notes and a link to the audio. The answer "we have a podcast, but don't host it with BLOX" would also be an interesting.

We are wondering if anyone has ever done anything with integrating LiveIntent (https://support.liveintent.com/hc/en-us/articles/217205726) into newsletters.

If anyone is using this, we love to find out how the integration went and what you think of LiveIntent.

Dear Town News, currently we have the option of showing how many comments an article receives, would it be possible to show how many times an article has been viewed? We have the block that shows most popular, might be a nice option to show how many people read a story. Many thanks

To make compiling analytics on pushes easier, would be so helpful to be able to prepare a downloadable report of all pushes sent to a particular channel, with options on what columns to include in the report.