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.

+3

Freature Request: Form Success Page/Messages

Victor Jackson 5 years ago in BLOX CMS 0

When a user signs up for any email reach newsletters, they are greeted with a blank page reading only "Thank You" after completing the signup.

There is no link to return the user to the home page, there is no site navigation, or branding, or ads. 

When a user signs up for a newsletter, there should be an option to redirect them to a site page, or static page. 

This can be accomplished by adding a "Landing Page URL:" or "Thank You Page URL:" field to the Edit List dialog for individual campaigns. 

0
Under review

Does anyone know what the pricing and profit sharing is for photo sales through Town News?

mcgregora 5 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Kevin M. Cox 5 years ago 12

We currently use My Capture but would switch for the convenience if the potential income was comparable.

+2

Switching comments to Disqus

Jesus Sanchez 5 years ago in BLOX CMS updated 5 years ago 0

Hello. I'm considering switching from TownNews commenting system to Disqus to see if we can increase engagement. Has anyone else done something similar? Did it increase the number of comments? Is it easy to manage?

0
Answered

Social icons missing from user profiles

Kevin M. Cox 5 years ago in BLOX CMS updated 5 years ago 3

We just noticed that the usual social media icons (Twitter, Instagram, etc.) are missing from our staff's user profile pages.

e.g. https://www.galvnews.com/users/profile/johnferguson/

Did something change with BLOX to remove them or did I accidentally turn them off somewhere?

Answer

Kevin, after looking a bit more, that is actually a bit of overreach on our move to reduce privacy data on users that is exposed. The intent was for this to remain for admin users. This change happened with Flex 3.145. I'm going to look into having it restored for admin users.

+1

Feature request: Batch editing in Page Tracker's budget view

Andrea 5 years ago in BLOX Total CMS 0

The budget view in Page Tracker is a great tool to see what has happened to all of the stories we had budgeted for an edition. 

However, there are several budgeted stories that do not get used each night. It would be great to have a batch edit option so we could change the start date of those assets to a future date -- without have to open each asset to do so. 

0

Sibling Asset Display Order

Kevin M. Cox 5 years ago in BLOX CMS 0

Right now Sibling assets in the left rail of an article display in chronological order, with oldest at top and newest at bottom.

Is it possible to reverse this order, or even better have the siblings display in the order they are attached to the article asset?

For us at the moment it would be more preferable to have the newest sibling article at the top of the list, while also keeping the older stuff listed, just down lower. But the ability to customize the order would be great.

Image 646

Image 645
+2

Searching by last modified by

Nancy Bennett 9 years ago in BLOX Total CMS updated by Andrea 5 years ago 1
We would like to be able to search in Total CMS by last modified by. This would be a huge time saver for copy editors and would be the equivalent of searching by author. (We had this feature in our old system and several employees are missing being able to do it.)
0
Completed

Exclude ads in specific articles

mamundson 5 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Troy Sporcic 5 years ago 5

We have a local business news page, where we have articles on the latest business news in our and surrounding communities. A recent article announced the addition of a 3rd dentist to a practice (who is also a big client of ours). A competitors ad was showing up in this article. The ad was an ROS position. The dental practice asked us to remove the ad from their article, and threatened pulling advertising. Without moving the position of the ad, there is no current way to exclude them from the article.

We would love for the option to exclude specific ads in articles. This would solve the problem when a competitors ad shows up in an article. We risk losing annual money from either business if they do show up on the same page. This option would be used periodically when we encounter situations like this, but is invaluable.

Answer

Just to update this, there is no way to exclude ads based on keywords in the Blox Ad Manager, nor will that be supported. Your best option to do this is to move to Google Ad Manager.

0
Completed

Webinar recording now available | 20+ secrets for digital revenue growth with TownNews

Cherry Wolf (Marketing specialist) 5 years ago in BLOX CMS updated 5 years ago 1

Webinar recording now available

Image 612

At TownNews, our number one goal is to empower YOU to generate revenue with your digital presence. At our September customer webinar, Christine Masters, director of product management, highlighted more than twenty insider secrets for making more money with TownNews.

From simple tweaks you can make to your site, to additional programs you might not be participating in, we’ve got more ways than ever to grow your digital revenue. You can’t afford to miss this webinar.

Ready to get started? Watch it now.

0
Answered

What is the url for a specific asset in our Blox (Flex) CMS?

Ashley 8 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Sweet Zzz 5 years ago 4

Hello, I'm new to TownNews and Blox so forgive the simple question, but how can I get/find a direct url to an individual asset thats hosted in our Blox (Flex) CMS? For example, if I batch import a bunch of pdfs and then search for them in the CMS, I'd like to be able to add a text link to one of them in another CMS for those viewers but I am unclear what the url is for that specific asset. Thanks for your help!

Answer
Christine Masters 8 years ago

Hi there!


I think the easiest way is to go to the asset, then click on "live view" (under the "preview") button. It will open the live page and you can get the URL from there.


As soon as the asset is saved and publishable, you can get the URL from the live view link. Even before it shows up on the front page or on other pages. So, this is actually a good way to get a URL in order to send it to an email or other places quickly, because it is immediately available.


However, this is how you would link to the PDF page. We would highly caution against linking directly to any binary element, whether it is a photo or a PDF or a video, because sometimes those storage URLs change and will cause broken links. It is pretty rare, but the URL of the files themselves (not the asset URL, but the binary file) may change.

+1

generate a private/preview link for a non-published asset

David Dierker 5 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Jesus Sanchez 5 years ago 1

Getting more and more requests to provide non-employee/non-admin access to review and proof an article (or other) asset.


Creating an admin user with no groups seems like a (less than optimal) work-around.


What are other's doing for this?

0
Under review

Follow a Section

Matthew Pierce 5 years ago in BLOX CMS updated by Joe Hansen (Product manager) 5 years ago 1

We have multiple subscribers asking for the ability to "follow" (receive notifications when assets are posted to) a section. This would enable a notification to the subscriber whenever, for example, a new article is posted in the local sports section. Would your subscribers use this feature if it existed? Have you found a way to use existing functionality to accomplish the same end result? Thanks!

0
Under review

Slower time sending from TCMS to Blox?

Lindy Ritz 5 years ago in BLOX Total CMS updated by Joe Hansen (Product manager) 5 years ago 1

We've noticed lately that to send anything to Blox from TCMS, the process has severely slowed down and the story has to remain in 'Posted' workflow for at least a minute. It used to be that you could save it in 'Posted' workflow, and it was immediately on its way - and so were we.

When did this change? I have not found a release note to verify. It creates hangups - especially when saving with a breaking flag, and it gets in editors' ways when you have to physically wait to ensure the story makes it live into Blox. 

+1

Pasting

mmeszoros 5 years ago 0

Trying to copy and paste is so frustrating. I would love to see it be cleaned up in two ways:

1. When you're pasting plain text, have what you paste appear right where you left the cursor. Now it creates a return before and after that. I don't understand why. It just makes the process longer.

2. Similarly, when you paste copy taken from the body of an article, can you make it so it doesn't jump that text to the bottom of the window? Again, it's just a pointless thing that slows you down.