Feedback on Social Promotions / Our Picks

[rgf100]

Some kind of "from the archives" or "on this day..." feature, yeah...

[PPlanet]

8 hours ago, Matt said:

So you're saying do it automatically? Flag items as evergreen and allow the system to push one out on an empty queue day? I sort of like this.

Yes, exactly.

[rgf100]

On 03/11/2017 at 2:25 PM, rgf100 said:

a) It's not showing reaction *numbers* like you get usually and
b) It's not picking up reactions from... topics? It's getting them for topic replies, blog posts, blog comments, but not the first post of a topic?

a) is just a template issue (not even issue, difference) - I've ended up using reputationMini for my homepage.
b) is in Tier III support. 

[PPlanet]

I'm considering using this as a landing page when I upgrade my live site to 4.2. Right now on 3.4 I'm using the Portal, which I love; however, Our Picks allows much more in a same space, without one post pushing another one down so much as I happens with the Portal.

I have cloned my site on a different server and upgraded, so I had a play with Our Picks and promoting posts. Some things that probably would stop me using this as a home or landing page.

- It seems to function well if someone has uploaded a picture. However if the person who made the post simply linked to an external image, Our Picks does not recognise it and treats the post as if it had no images. Ideally it should take the first image it finds in the post whether it's linked or uploaded, and even skip emoticons (images below a certain size).

- I set it up as the homepage, when I click on the menu link to Our Picks, all good. However if I click on our logo or type the main home url, it takes me to Our Picks page as it should but the photos are not displayed.

Then some suggestions that would make sense imho.

- It would be great for us time-poor webmasters who would be promoting, if there was a setting to cap the text at a certain amount of characters followed by a ... or ... Read More, for example. So, we wouldn't need to touch the text.

- I echo some previous suggestions in this thread, for example being able to choose what part of an image will be displayed. (Or maybe a setting that shows the full image too)

[Joel R]

On 11/22/2017 at 10:45 PM, PPlanet said:

- I set it up as the homepage, when I click on the menu link to Our Picks, all good. However if I click on our logo or type the main home url, it takes me to Our Picks page as it should but the photos are not displayed.

This sounds like a bug, reported by others too.  Submit a ticket and mark as a Bug.  

On 11/22/2017 at 10:45 PM, PPlanet said:

- It would be great for us time-poor webmasters who would be promoting, if there was a setting to cap the text at a certain amount of characters followed by a ... or ... Read More, for example. So, we wouldn't need to touch the text.

Every social media promotion on Facebook or Twitter includes a Bitly link, so there's already a Read More.  And if you're on Our Picks, the entire card is essentially one big link to the content item.  

Twitter's box will cap you at 140 characters.  

 

 

[PPlanet]

Yes, I'm aware of the Twitter capping, I was thinking of how the Our Picks page would look like as a landing page. I work with advertisers, and some would write posts as long as a novel, no paragraphs, etc; others just a few words. I saw after posting the above that if you use it as a vertical block, there it's capped, so I was thinking about an option that allows you the same but on the actual Our Picks page.

[Claudia999]

Only an idea: Today I saw Kialo. It looks like "Our Picks", but I like the tags at the right. Perhaps it would be nice to have the tags of the "picked" threads on the site "Our picks". 

[CheersnGears]

I've been playing with Promoted Items a little more and I'm gettin great results from it.  I have a few wish list items:

1. Ability to switch off "Picked by" across the board. Everything on my promoted items list will be picked by me, I don't need to show it.  My website is the brand, not me personally.  This should be a toggle in ACP.

2. Set a default expire date on the picked content and be able to override that date when promoting an item.

3. The evergreen idea mentioned here.

4. I don't seem to be getting pictures from Pages show up in the promoted content.  I only promote from Pages, so I haven't checked anywhere else. 

[Matt]

Thanks for the feedback! There's some good ideas there.

[CheersnGears]

@Matt - Should I be getting pictures in Our Picks or on the bottom of emails when I promote a Pages article?  I just want to know if it is by design or if I have a problem. 

[rgf100]

The whole social promotions / Our Picks thing really could be the basis of a genuinely engaging portal for our sites. Very much hope it gets plenty of attention.

[Josiah Wallingford]

Is it possible to disable twitter and facebook. I only want to promote to Our Picks.

[Joel R]

On 4/25/2018 at 10:14 AM, rgf100 said:

The whole social promotions / Our Picks thing really could be the basis of a genuinely engaging portal for our sites. Very much hope it gets plenty of attention.

Check out Our Picks Enhancements by @Fosters if you haven't already.  

1 hour ago, Josiah Wallingford said:

Is it possible to disable twitter and facebook. I only want to promote to Our Picks.

Remove your settings from the "Social Media Promotions."  There's a button to remove.  

[Josiah Wallingford]

14 hours ago, Joel R said:

Remove your settings from the "Social Media Promotions."  There's a button to remove.  

I have checked Social Media Promotions and do not see a button to remove those two.

Also, it shows Administrators have access to promote to Our Pics but it does not show the other group I gave permissions to.

[Joel R]

11 minutes ago, Josiah Wallingford said:

I have checked Social Media Promotions and do not see a button to remove those two.

Also, it shows Administrators have access to promote to Our Pics but it does not show the other group I gave permissions to.

Yeah it looks like FB and TW are disabled for Our Picks.  They should the appearing as options.  Clear your cache and send in a ticket.  

[rgf100]

Recent changes I love: 

The Auto Scheduler
Choosing your own title for a promoted item.

What I'd love even more:

With the Auto Scheduler, the scheduled time should be the next *empty* slot. I don't want to wake up in the morning and schedule 12 posts for 10 am. I want to schedule 1 post every two hours for the next 24 hours. Say instead of just choosing the next slot, you get a drop down of all the slots, with the next empty one pre-selected?

 

[rgf100]

Ok, now this is getting interesting...

I was looking at the Our picks page and getting frustrated as if I put my usual sidebar content in there it doesn't look so good. The patchwork thing is really nice, having a sidebar that stretches way past it or ends halfway down the page... yuck. So I started playing with the promotePublicTableRows template. And ended up with

 

{{if count( $rows )}} 

>>>>>>>> {{ $mycount = 1;}} <<<<<<<<<<<<
	{{foreach $rows as $item}}
		{{if ( $item->object() instanceof \IPS\Content and  $item->object()->hidden() === 0 ) or ( ! $item->object() instanceof \IPS\Content )}}
			


{template="promotePublicTableRow" params="$item" app="core" group="promote"}


>>>>>> {{$mycount++;}}
{{if $mycount == 5}}
<div data-role='patchworkItem'>
	<div class='ipsBox ipsClearfix cPromoted'>
{block="site_sponsors"}
  </div></div>
{{endif}} <<<<<<<<<<<



{{endif}}
	{{endforeach}}
{{endif}}

Look at the bits between the >>>> and <<<<<

It keeps a count of how many items have been posted, and at the required value (5 here), it inserts... whatever. I've got it sticking my site sponsors block in. 

I'm really intrigued by the possibilities here. My usual home page / who's online / latest posts blocks can all go in there. It shouldn't be too much trouble to have ad zones in there. Add a bit of randomisation and you can keep things moving around, or only popping up once in every x times...

Any thoughts?

 

[Day_]

Ahh just the thread, didn't see this but twitter cards, because separate images with links just doesn't look great does it? You have record images for pages, don't be so forumist, give us the OG life #ForumLifesMatter

[CheersnGears]

Any progress on making a toggle to remove the "Who promoted this" or expiring promotions in Our Picks after a set time?

[Day_]

Could we use the Twitter promote tool without allowing Twitter login and registrations like before, like the good old days?

[PoC2]

+1 on not requiring Twitter registrations as well.

[Joel R]

I'm circling back to Social Media Promotion and Our Picks for the third time to re-evaluate its feature set.  (Third time's the charm, right?)  I see the utility in it as a homepage.  I think there's power in curating community content.  And the layout is nice. 

1.  Social media networks -- I am NOT linked to Twitter or Facebook in the ACP.  However, when I try to promote on the front-end, it still tries to fill out the Facebook or Twitter fields.  Those fields shouldn't even show.  

I can't promote to Facebook even if I wanted to!  

 

Facebook and Twitter options still show.  

2.  Picture dimensions -- A major problem that I have is the dimension of your cover photos.  It's very wide.  Most images that I'm promoting are of humans, and showing their torso makes for very boring images.  Can we get dimensions that use max_width, so the full cover image is shown.   

 

 

[Joel R]

As a follow-up to the above post #1, I can apparently always promote to my personal Facebook (just not any Facebook page).  I would rather disconnect all Facebook options if I'm not posting to the social network.  

3.  Default Title - Can you show the default Our Picks title when I open the option?  There are some posts or topics with long names that I can't remember, and I'd like to use the default title as a base.  

[Joel R]

4.  Video as Cover -- When a content item contains a video (embedded or otherwise), please allow the video to become the header media.  That would allow the Our Picks to become much more media-centric, and push video content to the forefront.

5.  Highlights -- When a content item is popular, featured, or pinned, I'd like some visual cue on Our Picks.  There are some picks that are more important than others, including website announcements, sponsor posts, or popular posts, and I think it would be great if we could bring attention to those picks.  

[Joel R]

Suggestion:

- When promotion fails, give notification to sender that it failed.  Otherwise, you have no idea unless you manually check