Ideas
+5
Under review
Feature request: Sort by asset preview
I'm using the top story list block on our homepage for some festival coverage. I like this block, but I always want to have a story with an asset preview in the larger space. I'm actually syndicating content from our sister site, and it's harder for me to manage priorities on automated syndicated content and I don't want to pin a story because then new content won't override it over the weekend. So I wish one of the sorting rules was "has asset preview." That way a story with an asset preview would always be in that large spot. Instead I'm excluding content that doesn't have an asset preview so we're missing some content there.
Customer support service by UserEcho
I've wanted this feature since Day 1. It would be something we use 24/7, 365 days a year. I can't tell you how many times the night shift has forgotten to assign priorities and some no-photo story has occupied the top story spot.
Very good idea.
Could a workaround be to have two blocks... one block shows stories 1 - 10 with "has asset preview." One block shows stories 1-10 without "has asset preview." So essentially the ones with the preview are in the top block, but the ones without the preview are not missing, they are just in a subsequent block?
A possible "problem" I could see there is that you'd end up with older articles above newer ones. This might not matter for a site with high volume of both types, but if there are far fewer "has preview" it could make the page look stale.
Well, that would happen regardless, wouldn't it? If we had a sort rule that sorted by preview, it would sort by preview first, and then date. So yeah you'd have to make the choice which was more important.
Well if I'm understanding the original request correctly, yes it would, but only a single item. The first first thing might be older, but it wouldn't be a whole block of things with previews followed by a whole block of not previews.
If you do the two separate blocks with five items each, you could potentially have five older above newer instead of just one.
Or am I totally confused here?
I can see how the older item issue could come up, but I am specifically talking about the top story list block that has room for an image on one side and a list of stories on the other. I want a way to guarantee that first story is one with an image without pinning a story. So the two blocks idea doesn't make sense when I'm talking specifically about this block. We usually use this block for multiple stories surrounding a topic or event one or two days, so it's usually all pretty current content. (I realize this wouldn't be the case for everyone, but that was where this request came from.
I'm really only interested in the first item having a preview. The others would sort by date/time.
Having two blocks creates a problem with how you sort each block. For instance this is how our front page is set up now...
I've had to just accept some days the top story will also be the second story on the page unless we post a newer story. If I change the sort option for the second block I run the risk of the newest story being hidden in the second block. I can't use Block 1(show 1 of 1), Block 2(show 2 of 10) because the sorting doesn't match for both blocks. Make sense?
We've had to make do by giving the top story a higher priority but that still doesn't solve the problem in the second block as seen in the attached image.
Nick, Our solution to this duplication is that the top block is based on a story with a featured flag. Then stories with a featured flag are excluded from the next block. I have another block on the page with the older featured stories, so they don't completely disappear when they are replaced in the top block. (Or I remove the featured flag from the story so it will return to the main story block.)