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Whole website search options
Any ideas on a search bar that includes multiple types of results like articles, classifieds, calendar, and marketplace. For us, we have a search on our homepage but it only includes the classifieds and searching, for say, a town name and receiving all of the assets that go along with that would make it much simpler for our viewers. Has anyone found a work-around for this?
Any way to disable Amp for just one specific story/url?
When we embed HTML assets in article assets these html assets are only shown as links on Amp pages. Is there a way to disable Amp for specific articles in which the HTML asset is integral to the story?
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Customize Form Appearance
What I thought is a simple change but I can't find anything related- I'm looking to remove the drop shadow on my form headers. I saw other TownNews customers sites without a drop shadow and wanted to do the same. On here is a picture of a current form for us with the drop shadow. Thank you!
Batch edit utility - change more than 25 at a time
There are several different requests in here:
- A "mass" batch edit. We are working on this currently... it should be available in Q2 of this year. It allows you to create a search and then apply batch edit to that entire search results, even if it affects thousands of assets. There will be an extra confirmation process where you must type in the number of assets so that you are sure that you know how many assets you are affecting. The task on large amounts of assets happens as a background task (so it can take as long as it needs) and then sends you an email when you're done. So, for Nick's needs, this would definitely work).
- The ability to see more assets on a search results page in the BLOX admin. The solution for this will likely come as part of our new backend UI, which will likely end up being some kind of infinity scroll.
Lastly, there is the request for a batch edit function to change headlines and captions. To be honest, we are worried about allowing content to be changed in a batch editing process. Firstly, it's considered bad SEO to have similar titles on multiple pages in your site. Secondly, having all headlines (such as on a vertical gallery) is kind of annoying and repetitive to the reader.
On the other hand, I of course realize that if you don't add a title, we'll use the filename instead. And typing 200 unique, accurate titles is a very time-consuming task to say the least! Also, the only thing worse than a vertical gallery with repeated identical headlines is a vertical gallery with filenames as headlines instead! And, we currently provide no mechanism for them to be hidden as an option.
However, maybe we can fix some of those underlying problems instead. Basically, we're thinking that batch editing headlines and captions is a symptom of a bigger problem rather than a problem in and of itself.
What about something like this:
- A collection asset has the option of not showing photos and captions, even if they exist.
- In places where we have to show some kind of title (such as search results) maybe we show the parent's title instead?
Or:
- A way for the photo itself to know whether or not it has a unique headline, and if it does, display it. If not, display the parent (unless on a collection page). I would have to think more on how it can know it is a unique title...
Freature Request: Form Success Page/Messages
When a user signs up for any email reach newsletters, they are greeted with a blank page reading only "Thank You" after completing the signup.
There is no link to return the user to the home page, there is no site navigation, or branding, or ads.
When a user signs up for a newsletter, there should be an option to redirect them to a site page, or static page.
This can be accomplished by adding a "Landing Page URL:" or "Thank You Page URL:" field to the Edit List dialog for individual campaigns.
Have a close option on mobile admin site
I often make some quick fixes to stories in the morning from the admin interface on my phone. But since there is no close option, it keeps me locked in the asset. Am I missing something? Is there a way to truly "close" the asset?
Does anyone know what the pricing and profit sharing is for photo sales through Town News?
We currently use My Capture but would switch for the convenience if the potential income was comparable.
Switching comments to Disqus
Hello. I'm considering switching from TownNews commenting system to Disqus to see if we can increase engagement. Has anyone else done something similar? Did it increase the number of comments? Is it easy to manage?
Social icons missing from user profiles
We just noticed that the usual social media icons (Twitter, Instagram, etc.) are missing from our staff's user profile pages.
e.g. https://www.galvnews.com/users/profile/johnferguson/
Did something change with BLOX to remove them or did I accidentally turn them off somewhere?
Kevin, after looking a bit more, that is actually a bit of overreach on our move to reduce privacy data on users that is exposed. The intent was for this to remain for admin users. This change happened with Flex 3.145. I'm going to look into having it restored for admin users.
Sibling Asset Display Order
Right now Sibling assets in the left rail of an article display in chronological order, with oldest at top and newest at bottom.
Is it possible to reverse this order, or even better have the siblings display in the order they are attached to the article asset?
For us at the moment it would be more preferable to have the newest sibling article at the top of the list, while also keeping the older stuff listed, just down lower. But the ability to customize the order would be great.
Exclude ads in specific articles
We have a local business news page, where we have articles on the latest business news in our and surrounding communities. A recent article announced the addition of a 3rd dentist to a practice (who is also a big client of ours). A competitors ad was showing up in this article. The ad was an ROS position. The dental practice asked us to remove the ad from their article, and threatened pulling advertising. Without moving the position of the ad, there is no current way to exclude them from the article.
We would love for the option to exclude specific ads in articles. This would solve the problem when a competitors ad shows up in an article. We risk losing annual money from either business if they do show up on the same page. This option would be used periodically when we encounter situations like this, but is invaluable.
Just to update this, there is no way to exclude ads based on keywords in the Blox Ad Manager, nor will that be supported. Your best option to do this is to move to Google Ad Manager.
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What is the url for a specific asset in our Blox (Flex) CMS?
Hello, I'm new to TownNews and Blox so forgive the simple question, but how can I get/find a direct url to an individual asset thats hosted in our Blox (Flex) CMS? For example, if I batch import a bunch of pdfs and then search for them in the CMS, I'd like to be able to add a text link to one of them in another CMS for those viewers but I am unclear what the url is for that specific asset. Thanks for your help!
Hi there!
I think the easiest way is to go to the asset, then click on "live view" (under the "preview") button. It will open the live page and you can get the URL from there.
As soon as the asset is saved and publishable, you can get the URL from the live view link. Even before it shows up on the front page or on other pages. So, this is actually a good way to get a URL in order to send it to an email or other places quickly, because it is immediately available.
However, this is how you would link to the PDF page. We would highly caution against linking directly to any binary element, whether it is a photo or a PDF or a video, because sometimes those storage URLs change and will cause broken links. It is pretty rare, but the URL of the files themselves (not the asset URL, but the binary file) may change.
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