1. What problem(s) does this idea solve? Why do you need this idea implemented? Provide as many problems or use cases as possible.

Like every subscription-based newspaper across America, the New Hampshire Union Leader must transition our users from paying for print to paying for online content. The online content subscribers will pay for are exclusive news and enterprise stories; the premium information that you dedicate a reporter's day or week to, not just a few minutes to rewrite a press release.

A metered paywall is fine for commoditized news like accidents, fires, crimes, etc. -- the info all media outlets in a region will share. But on premium content -- a story we might have invested hundreds of dollars in and only we have it -- these we want to make access subscriber-only with a hard paywall that can be applied selectively on a story-by-story basis.

Presently, TownNews allows us to assign the level of paywall needed to any defined section in the taxonomy of sections and carve out niches within that hierarchy. For example, unionleader.com has a hard paywall on Business and Politics, and a metered paywall in the Crime and Safety sections. Further, within Politics and Business are sponsored subsections that are excluded from the paywall because an advertiser is footing the bill. All of that works great.

The problem we're seeing arises when a premium story we have invested in naturally falls into a section such as crime, safety, education, etc., that is a metered paywall section. At present we must either allow access to that premium content through the metered paywall or intentionally miscategorize that content to place it into a section that has the hard paywall needed.

A section-based paywall is fine in bulk, but in the particulars is unable to convey Premium status to the content we are most invested in in a manner that is quick and simple.

What we are proposing is that a keyword such as #premium and/or #hardpaywall be established that can be applied by our editors on an article-by-article basis to allow us to lock out non-subscribers regardless of section. Our editors are already accustomed to using keyword #nofollow on Washington Post stories, so such an approach is easy to train against.

We believe such a feature will not only be valuable to the Union Leader, but to newspapers you serve across America who like us will survive only by getting readers to subscribe.

2. How often would you use this feature?  Every day.

3. How many people in your organization would use this feature? About 20 on the news team.

Webinar recording now available.

At this special webinar, the product team at TownNews introduced important changes to BLOX Live e-Editions and Associated Press feeds, and showed how new polling widgets from our Content Exchange partners can enhance your Election 2020 coverage.

Ready to get started? Watch it now.

Hey all, I'm thinking we could really benefit from a few new options with polls. Some details:

1. It'd be really nice to be able to put an end date on a poll. It just seems like a basic functionality, and I know several people up-voted the idea before: https://help.bloxcms.com/knowledge-base/applications/settings/urls/custom_properties/article_5fd6d870-2bdc-11e5-93e5-034d9f275a7e.html

2. Can we have the option to NOT show results (and maybe show a field after someone votes — "Check back Aug. 8 to see the winner."). That'd allow for us to do some really cool stuff that's not currently allowed. You could have votes for an athlete of the week, person of the year, etc. and not risk people not voting because someone is out to a 2-to-1 lead early, etc.

We've got a payment form set up on our site. The marketing team wants weekly spreadsheet emailed with info from that week's submissions. Is that possible?

When using the "Hammer" headline in an article, is there a way to turn off the title?

Anyone have any experience integrating Infolinks as a programmatic provider. Or any opinions on Infolinks as to value, user experience. Am looking into using them to augment our AdSense for remnant ads

How can I disable "do not publish" on a permanent basis? Essentially, it automatically comes on when I set stories for print and web but have not yet set them to final. Then later when they should go online, they don't. It is very frustrating, as I have to go back in later on to post on the website.

Is there a way that the breaking news flag can go off automatically after a certain time? It is a pain to have to go in and turn it off later on, especially on a weekend.

"Broadcast" doesn't seem to be turning on the twitter and facebook. What am I doing wrong? Is there something else I need to do?

It used to work. Anyone else having problems before I put a work order in?

At our September customer webinar, Christine Masters, director of BLOX CMS, shared expert tips and tricks for using our industry-leading tools and tech to win on election night ‘20.

Topics included:

• Easily updating tabular data throughout election night.
• Displaying interactive maps and graphs with embeddable widgets.
• Using TownNews Content Exchange articles, images, and videos to supplement your homegrown election coverage.
• Keeping your visitors engaged with push notifications—even when they aren’t on your site.
• Showcasing fast-changing news and data with Update blocks.
• . . . and much more!

Ready to get started? Watch it now.

Wondering if there is a way to tag people/businesses in Facebook posts from the Notifier?

1. What problem(s) does this idea solve? Why do you need this idea implemented? 
We regularly post things for our advertisers and they like it when we tag them in it. With the app now we are having to post individually to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc... and the notifier (especially for stories that are under the calendar or classified sections that don't auto-feed into the notifier) Being able to post to all of these outlets in one spot saves a lot of time. But at the moment we cannot tag the people or businesses our stories are about from notifier. 

2. How often would you use this feature? We would use the feature 3-10 times a day.

3. How many people in your organization would use this feature? Three of us that do social media would use the feature. 

There should be reporting options for Upsell Manager. 

Right now, BLOX has stock reports for 

-Orders by category through Ad-Owl

-Transactions and Revenue through Forms 

-Subscription revenue by service 

-CPM reports from Ad Manager

Yet there is not a way to set up or see a report of Upsells. 

Background:

We have a number of upsell packages that users can buy. Some are standard on BLOX, like highlighted "news" releases and "Enhanced" business listings. Others are custom for our audience, like a Calendar option to buy a spot on a daily briefing podcast. Upsells are great for us. They're user-friendly and drive passive, engaging revenue. 

Problem:

There is not an efficient way to appropriately allocate revenue. 

Example: 

A pr firm contributes a press release and buys a $60 upsell to feature it for a day. Our Accounting Manager gets an email notification from BLOX and sees $60 deposited in PayPal. A similar process would happen for every other Upsell. At the end of the week, they have to use some combination of PayPal, Outlook and Upsell Manager in order to allocate the revenue appropriately. 

With reporting options similar to, say, Forms' Top Products, our Accounting Manager could receive a weekly report of Upsell Revenue by Type. Then they could consolidate bookkeeping based on which packages were purchased. 

Problem: 

There is not an efficient way for leads to be identified. 

Example: 

a local physical therapist buys a listing on the daily Health newsletter every Friday for a month. Our Sales Manager would have to recognize the pattern based on the newsletters or irregular email notifications.  

With reporting options similar to, say, Editorial's Published, our Sales Manager could receive a monthly report of (newsletter) Upsells by Business. Then they could assign a rep to call that physical therapist and pitch them a contract that includes the daily Health newsletter. 

Reporting options would also make it much easier to identify and react to trends. Example: We could see that venues have begun opening up if music-related upsells become more frequent. That would tell us to promote the Arts section more or test additional Calendar upsell options. 

Would upsell reporting help anyone else? 

1. Allow Description and Byline field to display under video assets that are inserted into stories, similar to how photo assets placed into story text displays the Caption and Byline fields (this may be being addressed). Currently video assets that are placed into stories do not display the Description for Byline fields, giving readers no context to tee them up about what they are about to watch.

2. Allow an option to display a caption and byline under a story asset's Cover Art.

3. Allow an option to display a caption and byline under a photo that's placed inline into a story, and the "Presentation" is set to "Parallax."

4. For photo assets whose presentation is set to "Showcase," allow these assets to display at the "Showcase" width when placed inline into stories (they currently do not). Alternatively, add a "Showcase" option to the "Presentation" tab under "Inline display properties" that are available when a photo asset is placed inline into a story. This would allow a presentation width that's essentially between the "Full" (default) and the "Full Bleed" options.

5. Find a way to allow photographs to display side-by-side when placed in-line into text. For example, it would be cool if 2-3 photographs could display side-by-side the full width of the browser window. We're able to fudge this by creating a triptych in Photoshop (you can see an example of how we've done this by scrolling down toward the bottom of this story) but it would be quicker to be able to do this inside Blox.

These options would give us more flexibility and enhance online displays.