Yes! Let me know what you think!

Hi guys!

We're working on an easier module that will allow these to be customized in the admin UI. However, we did implement the code in a way that makes it easy to override these messages at a custom UTL level.

Here is a page with details on the specific macros you can override.

https://help.bloxcms.com/knowledge-base/applications/community/subscription/faq/article_1e7a2630-6ec0-11e5-9ab0-6f110dad59e2.html

If you don't have access to edit the UTL as described, please contact our Customer Support and they should be able to help.

You guys are awesome!

Browser companies do not want websites to be able to detect private browsing mode - otherwise it isn't private, really. ;) There have been ways that some websites have found ways to detect incognito, but browser companies consider those to be bugs, and they actively try to fix them.

Like CadillacNewsIT said, Chrome lets you set cookies, so it is difficult to know that a user is in private mode. Boston Globe figured out a way to detect incognito in Chrome, but Chrome immediately filed a bug ticket against it.

It used to be that Safari let you set cookies in private browsing mode, but it blocked local storage - so we actually discussed doing a check for that and then triggering some behavior. But, as of Safari 10, it looks like (based on some quick internet searches) it has now been fixed.

So, essentially, from a product perspective anyway, our thought is that we shouldn't fight against the browser companies on this topic and try to implement any functionality that targets incognito users.

That being said, we are always looking for ways to improve experiences for the end users and would welcome continued thoughts and discussions on this topic. Maybe better messaging at log in time would help?

If you use the "author" setting, it displays the user information regardless of what is added to the byline.

For example, here is the "both" setting - meaning, it shows the byline (which does get overwritten from print) with an overlay popup for the user's author information: https://flex-showcase.bloxcms.com/news/firefighters-recount-needle-in-the-haystack-avalanche-search/article_81f185ec-c335-5ddc-b4ac-d56801f64533.html?dd

Here is the "byline" setting, which uses only the byline and no author information popup. https://flex-showcase.bloxcms.com/test/byline/firefighters-recount-needle-in-the-haystack-avalanche-search/article_81f185ec-c335-5ddc-b4ac-d56801f64533.html?dd

Here is the "author" setting, which only shows the author info and does not show the byline. https://flex-showcase.bloxcms.com/test/author/firefighters-recount-needle-in-the-haystack-avalanche-search/article_81f185ec-c335-5ddc-b4ac-d56801f64533.html?ddd

As a side note, the tagline is what is showing above the User Reactions... the author bio is what is showing next to the avatar in the author area. You can choose to show it or not, depending on whether it is repetitive information versus the author bio.

We have the option to display author information based on the author's user account. So at the top of the article, you display their author info, and then at the bottom, it displays their author bio. If you don't want the print tagline to display, that is also an option. Will that work?

Hi there!

Our developer is looking into the issue - it could be that it doesn't work with a specific combination of options. Could you submit a job ticket if you haven't already?

But, essentially there are a few options - One is to give them the paywall, and it just looks like a normal paywall. In this case if they logged in, or removed the ad blocker, they would get the content (So, essentially, subscribers would be allowed to block ads).

The other option is just a message. When this triggers it looks like a metering message... but it says something about that An ad blocker in enabled on your site. Please turn it off or whitelist us, etc.

I will get more information as to the set up and make sure our docs are updated. Thank you!

Hi Kathy!

So I've been talking to several people about this, and I think we have some answers.

Firstly, Amazon does not currently support Let's Encrypt security certificates, which is currently used by BLOX CMS. That's why we are getting "Error fetching the requested URL" when trying to add a secure feed. This is a known Amazon issue that they are investigating (but, it has been a year or so that this has been a know issue).

Text flash briefings do not need to be secure at this time, so those will work. Secure feeds will not work until Amazon supports Let's Encrypt, or unless there is another fix.

For regular insecure feeds our network recognizes the Amazon feeder as a bot, and throttles the traffic. This is a protection mechanism against bad bots, attacks, and other invalid traffic.

Usually, we "whitelist" feed scraper based on user agent - this way we recognize the scraper as a legitimate process, and we allow it to have normal access to the site (rather than being restricted as a bad bot). Unfortunately but Amazon doesn't have a unique user agent on their scraper so this method can't be used.

Another alternative is to white list a feed scraper based on IP address... but Amazon does not use a narrowly-defined set of IPs. And, unfortunately, their IPs are the same as any bad bots that happen to be hosted on Amazon's EC2 hosting services. So if we opened up our servers to any traffic from their IPs, we would open ourselves up to a lot of bad traffic.

All that being said, it appears - until Amazon updates some of these methods - that the best thing would be to use a proxy service, which is what our support team recommended. This is basically a feed service that stands between Amazon and TownNews.com to get them to play together.

I set up a test using Google Feedburner. Basically you enter your script into Feedburner, and then get the Google address out, and then put the Feedburner address in to Amazon.

I'm currently testing this. It did let me set up the service, which is further than I've gotten before. But, I haven't seen yet if it updated more quickly than before.

I will let you know how it goes!

Feel free to try to set up a Feedburner account yourself if you want to experiment. Let me know if you have any questions.

I'm going to post this answer in your support ticket as well.

Thanks!

That's a great idea Maureen, thank you! Jay, if you need help implementing her test block, let me know. =)