Feature request based on new BLOX article designer release!

Hi Kyle!! I love to hear your feedback!

SIBLING ASSETS

So let's talk about sibling assets. I am convince-able - however, the purpose behind the siblings was to create more of the "related link" thing that you see at a lot of sites which I have had a lot of requests for. Here are some examples:

Washington Post

USA Today

CNN.com

So, that's what I was going for with the related siblings. Supposedly, these types of links (which are follow links) are very good for SEO and traffic to destination site (which may or may not be the current site). Then, you had the capability of switching to "summary" if you wanted a more robust sibling display.

I'd like to hear more from you or others about why you want this changed (I need some convincing). Maybe we need a mini-summary mode, plus the ability to set a default, like you said. That may be something we could look at...

OTHER TWEAKS

I do already have a feature request in already based on some late feedback (that we got either right before the release came out, or right after). Here is what I have on the slate for upcoming tweaks:

1. Make "headline link" font size the same size as the text, but bold. (On longform it is 4 points smaller than the body text.)

2. Siblings and parents in "summary" mode should be much shorter, with the preview floated to the left of the summary text. (See the story promo in this middle of this article: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/21/feinstein-scalded-by-anti-trump-fervor-238641). 

3. Full-width children in "summary" mode should be side by side - preview left, story right, like summary on an index page, but larger than sibling, above. Right now children articles in full-width mode are HUGE.

3. Masthead photo should go below the "content discovery" feature on mobile/tablet. It is part of the story whereas Content Discovery is not.

4. Add some space below the "content discovery" feature - I recommend making it 40px instead of 20px - on tablet view (it's OK on mobile... on tablet it seems very close).

5. User reactions is too wide on longform. It should be the width of the tagline and other stuff at the bottom of the story.

6. By default, the sibling assets (which come in correctly as headline link), should be full width. (Right now they are floating right by default.) They should be link related link articles on CNN or other sites.

7. I also have a separate request for "better dark support" for pages where you want to create a dark background. I'll update the ticket with a link to an example of that.

8. Captions and cutlines should be standardized between inline displays, galleries and showcase/masthead (right now they are slightly different).

Hopefully all that will be done in 2 - 3 weeks.

Also, when you syndicate an article with related links, there is an HTML link included in the destination story (which links back to the origin story). Again, a great way to gain SEO especially if used within the Content Exchange (or another group network).

I'd like to style those links... right now they are literally just an ahref, but we built them with a class so I could enhance them slightly. I think I will make them look like headline links. Let me know if anyone feels differently.

Thanks, Christine! My hope was to start using the sibling assets for all-NON photos so we could help our copy desk when they export story files out BLOX for print. Now when they do that, it's messy with all the related stories as child assets. 

The way sibling assets look in-line on our site right now look a little wonky with big red text. The summary siblings look great -- just like the default children assets. 

I know all this is pretty specific to our site so I don't mean to complicate things I promise! Thanks for all your hard work!

When an article with inline siblings is exported, those siblings become inline links back to the origin site (export/import is meant as a way of sharing data to non-syndicated sites). So, I don't think that will solve your issue even if you moved to that model.

Now, we've actually been talking about you a lot at TownNews.com. ;) We had a meeting the other day where we went over all of the possibilities to help improve your workflow. We had three ideas:

1. Total CMS Cloud - In alpha phase now.

2. Fast Syndication - The first step was added in our latest BLOX release (web services) and now we are going to build an internal mechanism so syndication uses those web services for a really fast response. We think it will be fast enough that you will be OK posting to TCMS first.

3. Hosted to TCMS Syndication - I can't remember if I've asked you about this before. Have you tried this? It may not have been available when you first were set up. Or is it not fast enough? You can still build things in hosted, but then when you need to, just export (through the Syndication channel) to print.

Let me know what you think! =)