Welcome to the BLOX Digital (formerly TownNews) customer community! Connect with other BLOX Digital customers—and with us—to suggest features, share best practices and ask questions.
Though BLOX Digital representatives often participate in discussions, this is not a customer service site. For immediate help, call 800-293-9576 or submit a support request via our online ticketing system.
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Video Indexing Issues
Not sure if anyone noticed, but Google made a change in December that affected how and if videos were indexed. The change created a massive decrease in the number of videos indexed from our sites. Are we alone in this, or are you seeing the same thing?
Check this interaction out from Google support: https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/248660820?hl=en
I'm baffled.
JPF
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Manual fix - poll question
I made an error in trying to change a function on a live poll. It reset the results back to 0. But I have the results at the time I made that error. Is it possible to manually restore the correct number with each choice?
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Andy,
Unfortunately there isn't a way to edit the poll results.
Joe Hansen
Director of Solutions Support
Blox Digital
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Adding elements to multiple sites
What is the best (fastest) way to add a story element to multiple sites? Or transfer an element from one site to a sister site? Right now I have to create the element for one site, export it to my hard drive as a bpm file, then import it to the other sites. It's a clunky and time consuming process for those of us who manage sites for multiple publications. Is there any way to do this more efficiently?
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Feature Request: Require active subscription to post comments
We're seeing a large increase in comment spam lately so I'd like to formally make the feature request for something that I know I talked to support about in the past. We require email confirmation when new accounts are created but obviously the spammers have automated their way around that.
I'd like an option to require an active subscription to post comments on the site. This offers numerous benefits to all Town News customers:
• Provides another perk or subscriber benefit to paying readers.
• Potential to increase Day Pass sales for those who aren't subscribers but really want to share their opinion or comment.
• Reduces comment spam to virtually zero.
I could see it being useful to allow this setting to be toggled per URL/section so that for example you could allow anyone to comment on obituaries but not news stories.
1. All of the items listed above.
2. Every day.
3. Every reader.
Please let me know if anyone has thoughts or questions!
Thanks,
Kevin
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Zoe,
In the editorial Asset Editor, open your article and navigate to the "other" tab. You'll find fields for subhead, kicker, hammer near the bottom of the "miscellaneous" section.
Joe Hansen
Director of Solutions Support
BloxDigital
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Can't create polls
Is anyone else having issues creating poll assets? Every time we try to create a new poll we get the message "Preparing asset editor," and that's it.
I'm wondering if this s something unique to us or is it a larger problem.
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Hi Maureen - This appears to be a bug. Thank for your letting us know! Please keep an eye out for release notes for a fix.
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Alternative web statistics?
Has anyone moved away from using Google for site analytics? We are thinking about migrating to a service like Plausible.io which we pay for vs. using Google for free and giving them info about all of our readers. Plus, managing it appears to be an order of magnitude simpler.
Has anyone made this change? Any feedback or other services we should look into?
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Can the Utility:Social Links module be updated with an X icon (instead of Twitter)?
That's all!
Thanks
Adam
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Hi Folks -
This logo will updated in various locations throughout the frontend in our next FLEX template release.
Once ready, this release will be posted here: https://www.bloxdigital.com/releases/
I'm currently anticipating week of 9.18.23 Thanks for your patience!
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Remote work and on prem TCMS
We have an on prem TCMS appliance and we are trying to figure out a feasible way to allow our page designers to work at home without requiring VPN. The internet lag seems to be the biggest hurdle but we also struggle with giving access to the shared files without VPN. Is anyone doing this successfully and wouldn't mind sharing the setup?
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Allow URL Anchor or URL Query String to give direct access to promos instead of typing in promo code.
I get that promo codes generally aren't very difficult, but as a tech guy at a newspaper I run into customers who just seemingly find a way to create unnecessary issues. I think it would be neat to be able to add something in the Subscription URL so that the promo codes are already displayed.
Example: www.tdtnews.com/users/admin/service/purchase/?serviceid=478#RESUB would take you to the online-only subscription page, but the #RESUB or ?RESUB would activate the promo code without needing to type it in.
Thank you,
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Pinned asset visual indicator if not yet live
New Blox user here.
I think it would be useful if a pinned asset in a block could show it was not yet live ... whether by icon, or a different colour shading. Yes, we can quickly edit the article to check its pub date/time, but it would be nice to see visually which pinned asssets aren't live.
Also, can the block be smart enough to show the maximum number of live articles? If we pin 5 live articles and 5 future articles into a 10-article block, the block shows it's full even though the block on the live site is pulling in 5 articles from query because 5 pinned articles aren't yet live.
Thanks,
Tim
Customer support service by UserEcho