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Adding collections to a story
I'm just getting ready to launch, and am impatient. We have created several collections, but I can't get them to show up with stories. Any suggestions on what I'm doing wrong?
Google Analytics-prove site ownership
Due to unresponsive former students, I need to be able establish site ownership in order to be able to regain administrator access to our Google Analytics information. Unfortunately, I cannot seem to figure out how to go about uploading the required .txt file to the default URL or even add meta tags to be able to accomplish this. Any help would be appreciated.
Do you have a Google site verification code? It's 40 characters long and made up of letters and numbers. If you have that, you can go to the Page customizations for the top level page on your site. Under the Meta Data section, there is a Google site verification field. That's where you enter that code. That will create the google-site-verification meta tag for you.
Comment length restrictions.
Is there any way to restrict the number of words in a post? We have one individual that continually posts at least 10 - 15 lines. We'd like to cut this down to only 180 words.
Can we get an integrated alternative for Google Maps since it's no longer free?
College newspaper here -- we resumed publication after summer break and noticed that all of the maps on articles were not working (grayed out with a "for development use only" message). It looks like Google Maps has gone to a paid usage model: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/
I had to go through a bunch of rigmarole of setting up a Cloud platform app, enabling a tons of APIs and putting in a credit card since usage is no longer completely free. It was annoying because we don't do any cloud computing and don't need any of the datacenter-type features. They do provide $200 of free credits every month, but there is no easy way that I could tell to stop it from charging you $20 or $200 or $2000 or $20000 if the site gets DDOS'd or has a huge traffic spike, or to set a $199.99 max usage and then have it disable itself.
Would you all please start investigating the feasibility of having integrated maps that use a free/open alternative, like maybe OpenStreetMap?
I would like to remove my credit card from Google and not have to think about it.
Hi guys!
As I said previously, we are investigating the ability to provide a new mapping option, and have been investigating different providers.
Right now we are very heavily leaning toward HERE, and have chosen to start development on that. I don't want to say it is a final choice because things may be discovered or could change as we build... but as Aidian said, the free 250k transactions appears to be the most generous.
You'll have to get an API key from HERE, but a credit card is not required.
We will also begin to look at ways to store geo-data since this service allows that, and then for future map renders we don't need to geo-code each time. Our editorial application, for example, allows you to store your geo-data.
Anyway, as I said, we are still doing dev on this - but let me know if anyone has any thoughts or input. Thanks!
I am trying to create assets that I can use as master files, but then can't find them when I search.
That being said, to address the issue of helping to be able to find an article that you need to reference over and over, you could:
- Add a special keyword tag to it, such as #master, and create a saved search for that keyword. Then, keep referencing that saved search (you can even make it your default starting search).
- Put the start time far into the future, and then sort your assets by start time. This will put the "master" files at the very beginning.
That being said, none of these options are totally ideal unless there is a built-in feature for this, which is why it is on our list. =)
Let me know if this helps!
Hi Alfonso!
To start: it might be better to put this question into our ticketing system where our support staff can help. They will often have quicker response than posting here for these sorts of questions. Or, call our Customer Support line (we offer 24/7 emergency help!) and one of our support staff can help you.
Incidentally, I'm actually serving as that after-hours support right now, so I will try to help. =)
Firstly, if you're trying to get the weather alert into the Breaking News (NOTICIAS DE ÚLTIMA HORA) block at the top of the page, that block is populated by the "breaking" flag, not the "weather alert" flag.
There are lots of ways to fix this:
- You can just flag the article as "breaking" instead, and it should show up.
- You can change the block to also include stories based on the "weather alert" flag.
- You could use the "pin" feature to add the story to the block even though it didn't meet the block's requirements.
Will all that being said, I believe there is a weather alert on your breaking news block already, so perhaps you've already figured this out. =)
If you need more help, let me know. Thanks!
Feature Request: bring back adding _preroll ad to specific sections
We are really pushing video on our site. We've had an advertiser for years that pays for a preroll ad on just our athlete of the week videos & advertising has been working on selling them the same thing in our news section. Unfortunately, sometime last year the ability to set sections for a _preroll ad was taken away (it worked still in June) and they must be run of site now. So it turns out that what advertising has been trying to sell to this customer the customer will instead get for free (plus video in all other sections). Since they were exclusive to the AOTW videos, they now, for the same price, have exclusivity for all our video inventory, eliminating future monetization potential on something that we are currently focusing on. Please restore functionality to this ad. It should function as any other ad - ie all the settings in the ad asset should actually do something.
Idea's for banner ads...
Link an ad display to user logon or lack thereof... My site content sits behind a paywall and one of the biggest complaints I get is "Hey you posted a link to this article on facebook but the article sits behind a paywall!!!" I know I can bypass the paywall in the article's custom properties but I'd like a way to monetize that. For example if a non-subscriber opens an article then display the ad in the popover position. However never display the popover ads when a subscriber is logged in. (So there would be 3 states "logged in subscriber," "logged in non-subscriber," "not logged in" --- by default an ad would display under all three circumstances... by deselecting one or more options on the ad setup this would be controllable.
Link Ads together... I would love the ability to link 2 or more separate ads together (related) so that when 1 displays they both do... For example a skyscraper, leaderboard, and background ad (page takeover)
Smarter exclusions ... say I have 2 skyscrapper ads and I'd like them to randomly switch between 2 ad positions... If I put both ads in both positions then it randomly selects which ad will run in each position ... Because the same ad can't run twice on a page sometimes I see both ads some times I will see one ad... I'd like the system to be smart enough to say "Hey this ad is already running elsewhere on the page I'm going to automatically select the other ad for this position."
Community Calendar
The default event time selection the the submission form is every one minute. Who starts or ends an event on the minute? Please changed the default list to every 30 minutes with the option to type in minutes.
Inline Content
Currently, Blox CMS has a way to include inline content with text and formatting or from related assets. That's great!
However, I was wondering in the future if it would be possible to add custom inline types? Thanks!
Webinar | Tourney fever is coming—score big with ultra-engaging college bracket contests
Join us on January 17th @ 10:30 AM CST
Sports fans nationwide are turning their attention to college hoops, and pick’em contests are a fun and engaging way to turn local sports fans into loyal repeat visitors. At our January customer webinar, Gary Stibolt, sales representative, and Doug Green, product manager at TownNews, will show off our all-new basketball pick’em contests for GamesPerform.
Topics will include:
- Creating bracket pick’em contests to satisfy your audience’s hunger for March college hoops.
- Wowing advertisers with a variety of lucrative banner positions and contest sponsorship opportunities.
- Managing your contests, creating leagues, and showcasing local basketball experts.
- . . . and much more!
Bonus: Webinar registrants will be invited to join the TownNews Bracket Challenge and compete for prizes and bragging rights against other TownNews clients!
Ready to get started? Join us on January 17th at 10:30 AM CST.
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.
Community Calendar & Marketplace Businesses venue submission on mobile is less than desireable
You've made an update recently so this is better, but it's not there yet.
When using a mobile device to submit an event with the Marketplace Businesses module active the user experience to
"Find a location" lands on a screen that does not function well. If you are lucky the venue will display so you can choose it, but the box is not tall enough on an IOS iPhone 8. When you type in the search area, again it might display part of one venue from the search. The user is limited to the choice displayed and no way to navigate the remaining venues in the system or search.
Nailed yet RE scrolling. I've issued a ticket to resolve this. We'll try to have a fix out soon!
Poorly performing articles
We use the information to be able to judge how our audience will react to a similar story in the future or in the extreme case we know not to write another story about that subject if it doesn’t get may views.
Some of our reporters/editors have already used this information to turn down a few stories because the last article we ran about that subject barely even had 20 pageviews but an article that we thought was a fluff piece (two paragraphs from AP) was viewed thousands of times.
I have read article of larger metropolitan papers that do a similar analytics.
It would also be nice if we had a view stats option directly on the article/assets. Similar to what is on the classifieds to quickly view their analytics.Attached is an example:
Integrate Facebook events with BLOX Calendar events
Allow the Calendar in BLOX to associate an event with a Facebook event. Then, you can use the FB API to pull photos to the BLOX page!
Customer support service by UserEcho
