Your comments
I just noticed you mentioned a ticket number, and it was actually just assigned to me. So I will be forwarding it on to the appropriate folks. =)
A few things to note:
1. The pricing sheet changes quite a bit due to feedback from customers, data trends and testing, and changes to vendor pricing. I think that one is still in effect, but we change the pricing (for all accounts) several times a year. We announce any changes in our weekly release note emails. But, I'm specifically mentioning this for future generations who read this email, please note that the pricing may have changed.
2. As mcgregora mentioned, in order to switch old photos to "disabled" the mass batch editing feature is great. I would highly recommend you do a batch to turn off ones in specific sections or with specific bylines (or even ALL photos). Then, you can strategically re-enable some that you know will work - such as photos posted by a specific photographer, or photos in a specific section (which you can search for and then perform a batch on those searches).
That being said, by far the majority of photos are going to be ones that are recent, so you're probably not missing a lot by just enabling photo sales going forward.
However, we are working on a few projects to try to make finding and purchasing older photos easier for end users. We will have a special search function (which will only find "enabled" photos) that you will be able to use which will allow you to create special searches to promote certain photos, and they may contain older photos as well. For example:
- Historical photos about the area
- Promoting more photos about a specific prep sports team from a current article
- Scenic photos around town of landmarks or nature (imagine someone buying framed photos of Yellowstone for their living room makeover)
- Previous graduation photos promoted from this year's gallery (or prom, etc.)
- Posters or graphics made by the paper to promote an event (like Best of the Region, 100th anniversary of the town, etc.) that people might want to hang in their office, etc.
We actually see a good deal of people who buy really nice framed photos of a particular theme in order to use in decorating. Pictures of nature, pictures of animals, etc. are very popular. The most popular photos are prep sports, graduation, prom, and then community shots. But scenic photos are next.
3. As mcgregora also mentioned, I believe the "disabled by default" issue has been addressed. So if you are still having this issue, please submit a ticket. There are now ways to make this happen in all situations, I believe. It might require some changes as mcgregora mentioned.
Thanks!
A few quick ideas:
- We can do import jobs based on different types of feeds, most successfully ical. So if there are other local calendars, from the Chamber of Commerce, the local travel bureau, the big hospital, the big concert/theater place... you could just have those imported to fill out your calendar.
- Do community outreach to get those same places above to input their own events, or provide ical exports. As part of the training, show them that they can use calendar upsells to promote their events. Union-bulletin.com is an example of a site that has lots of event upsells on their front page.
- Once events are entered into the system, you can use BLOX Calendar to export them in a print-friendly format to use in a print publication.
- As someone else mentioned, you can create a weekly calendar newsletter featuring upsold events.
- Create collections of events in "paging" mode - make sure you add a stock photo or image with them - they look great! Here is a test example:
(Note that I have ads inserted between pages of the featured events! Create a collection each week and feature it on your front page!)
- Create a collection of events in "mapped" mode - again, add photos and locations (or venues from the Business Directory) - and create a great mapped presentation. Here is another test example, which is currently in "beta":
Note: If you like the mapped presentation, above (also useful for businesses... like a list of the best restaurants....here is an example of that: https://flex-showcase.bloxcms.com/news/local/mapped-event-sponsors/collection_3c279f52-76d2-11e7-9017-03f5e1e153ad.html) and are interested in trying it on your site, let us know. Enabling this test will convert all of your mapped presentations to the new experimental mode. Submit a CRM ticket and ask them to send it to me or Doug Green for the mapped presentation experiment. Thanks!
This is on our roadmap for Notifier!
We are considering something like this, but it comes at this idea in another way...
We are thinking of a "dynamic" collection, where essentially you create a new asset and as part of the asset you define a search query - so it could be populated by slugs, keywords, tags, priorities, or any important parameter.
Then, on the front end, it can still display as a gallery, but essentially it is a search that just keeps populating with those results.
Nice things about this:
1. There is no upper limit, so you could have thousands of assets which are relevant to the gallery.
2. It would be lazy loaded, so, again, it could be infinite. A user would read the most recent things first (or whatever sort priority you decided to use) and then keep traveling back in time.
3. It could grow over time, so you could have something like "prepsports" or "lion attacks" and each time you posted something that qualified, it would automatically show up.
4. Since it is search based, it would not cause performance issues when you are loading thousands of assets at once.
5. In theory (I just thought of this so I'm not 100% sure we could do it) you could have an article search for dynamic galleries that are related by keyword, and automatically show those articles as cards on a story.
6. The gallery would automatically use the first child as the preview image, or you could define a teaser image specific to that gallery which doesn't change.
At the same time, we are considering adding an upper limit to standard photo galleries to ensure they are more efficient. I think as long as we had the dynamic gallery, a limitation to regular galleries is fine. Do you guys agree? Like a 100 image limit for new galleries, existing galleries would be unaffected. Regular galleries would be used for short, specific stories that should be closed after a time. Dynamic galleries would be open and ongoing.
Let me know what you think of this idea and you can help flesh out the requirements. =)
Hi Maureen!
We are just about to launch an integration with a different vendor, but they provide programmatic email ads for BLOX Email Reach.
Due to the multiple "phases" that an email goes through (from us, to our email vendor, to the email software) there are many parts that all need to work in harmony - so this was a somewhat difficult integration to pull off.
That being said, we are doing beta tests this month, and hope to launch in the next few weeks. As part of the program, you get several blocks with different ad sizes, and you just use them throughout your newsletters as you see fit.
I will respond to your CRM ticket if you would like more information.
If anyone else is interested in beta testing, let your sales rep know - we can probably take one or two more. Otherwise, be on the look out for more information as this program launches in a few weeks. =)
Hmmm... I wonder if the reset start time setting should ignore future dates? It is meant to "fix" dates that are a few days old due to a reporter creating the asset two days before and not updating the date.
Customer support service by UserEcho
Hi Alex!
An asset that has published changes will update automatically within moments - you just have to contend with any related caching time (including browser cache).
On front and index pages, where the asset must get through additional layers of caching, it may take longer.
However, please see this help article on how to speed up page updates for breaking and important news:
https://help.bloxcms.com/knowledge-base/applications/design/blocks/block-library/article_d2b122f4-f038-11e4-a844-ff7a130047bb.html