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.
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Feature request(s): BLOX admin enhancements
We'd love for y'all to consider a more intuitive BLOX interface (selfishly speaking b/c I"m sure our workflow is different from others) …
-- the ability to search for a story, drop it into a block and re-order the items in the block w/o having to open multiple tabs/individual blocks.
-- Also, could related stories we drag into an asset show up in a related box underneath the centerpiece when the asset is put in that block? Right now we have to manually define centerpiece related stories.
-- Would also be helpful to 'link' block to one another so a story can seamlessly flow from one block to another on a page.
Right now when we change centerpiece story, for example, we have to change the CP, then move that CP'd story -- which is still being widely-read -- into another prominent block on the page.
We would use these features VERY often.
Multiple pictures per article
Is there a way to add more than one picture per article without them showing up in a gallery like view. For example, is there a way to have one image a the top of the story and another one midway through?
Bulk photo upload in the user dashboard
Allow users to upload multiple photos at once via the BLOX user dashboard.
Feature request: Generating RSS feed from block
We'd love to explore the ability of creating an RSS feed based on a block or specific blocks' content, rather than keywords/section tags/etc.
This would give us more control over RSS feeds we want to use for our apps. Right now it's very difficult to curate our feeds with the best content we have on our apps.
For example, to stipulate what we want the lead story to be on our apps we have to give the story a keyword and make sure the story has the most recent start date/time compared to all other assets previously using that keyword. Sometimes we want to lead with a story that wasn't published in last hour or so.
Getting a video error in Chrome
I've uploaded a video several times to BLOX but I can't seem to get it to play on Chrome. I get this error: "The media playback was aborted due to a corruption problem or because the media used features your browser did not support."
It's an mp4 exported with Adobe Premiere using h264. I can't even play it in TCMS.
Has anyone else every seen this error?
HTML5 Flowplayer
Is it possible to change to the HTML 5 version of Flowplayer? If so, will it support pre-roll ads we create through BLOX?
The new Flex templates use an HTML5 video player. I'm not sure if we will be able to migrate Zen, due to site customizations and other issues, but it is possible.
Live e-Editions App
Just curious about this app. I didn't realize it existed until reading about it in another post here.
It doesn't look like there are many publications available in it and it keeps crashing on me when trying to switch to View Page mode.
Webinar recording: Optimizing your BLOX CMS site for speed
At our July customer webinar, Christine Masters, director of product management, highlighted insider tips and techniques to help make your BLOX CMS site faster than ever.
Highlights include:
- Understanding the need for speed and how TownNews.com's Flex Templates can help reduce load times.
- Evaluating ads, third-party add-ons and other factors that can slow down your site.
- Creating page size & load time budgets to help you stay on track when designing pages and adding new content.
- Future upgrades to rendering, CSS and much more!
For more information, download the slideshow or watch the recorded webinar today!
Hi Craig -- Not at this time, no. Visitors will require a user login to submit events.
When a website shortcut is made to an iPhone start screen, the images don't show when clicked
Also, the newspaper logo at the top is not clickabkle and the nav doesn't work. This is reproduceable. I don't think this is a TownNews issue, but has anyone has a similiar issue?
It only happens when you go to the website from an icon made on the start screen of an iPhone. I have not tried Android yet.
Mobile App that plays nice with TownNews metering
My paper recently went through the FLEX redesign process and is now moving closer to creating a mobile application. We use the TownNews metering platform with a five story limit per 30 days. Unfortunately, I've been unable to find a company that can create a mobile app that will play nice with the metering. Basically, I'd want subscriptions created on the app to translate to our website and vice versa. It would essentially mean having a shared customer database between the two platforms. Does anyone have a setup similar to the one I desire? I would greatly appreciate any information on the matter.
How to determine how many online readers have a subscription?
Hey folks, hoping this is an easy one. Is there a way in Statistics to see:
What percentage of our online readers are logged in?
What percentage have an active subscription?
Thanks!
Hi Nick!
This is available under Statistics -> Analytics -> Subscriptions. There is a report available for New Subscriptions, Renewals, Expired, Active, total revenue, and a summary report.
In addition, these can be saved and sent daily, weekly or monthly to a user. (So, for example, you may want to send a weekly report to your circ director to let them know how the online only subscriptions are going.)
Can we add taxes to Community/Subscription?
We can set online forms to charge taxes but I can't find anything about adding taxes to subscriptions through Community/Subscription. Is there a way to do this?
MyCapture integration: More rules for restriction of sale.
We sell photo prints through MyCapture, it's pretty popular. However, under the Flex templates, we cannot restrict the images that it offers for sale.
There are times where we don't allow the sale of a photo, such as photos of accidents or photos of gallery art. Also, we are not allowed to sell AP photos for licensing reasons.
Right now, it's either all or nothing. Ideally, we would want a way to flag certain photos or sections with a "not for sale" sort of tag that MyCapture would honor.
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