Aramaech Posted February 4, 2021 Share Posted February 4, 2021 (edited) When you click the promote button at the top of the thread the window you're presented with is almost impossible to figure out just by looking at it. There's no way but trial and error to figure out how it works, and it doesn't work particularly well once understood. I attached a screenshot of the window, so I can describe the problems with it. To be fair, before I start in, I'm only using this tool to promote internally which is a wonderful feature when I can endure the tedium required to get it to do what I want. I don't use it to promote to FB or Twitter or anything like that. ------------------------------ FIRST WINDOW The first window titled Full Link is easy enough. Works fine except that you can't delete the link, so it's confusing as to why its in an input box. If it's just for copying and pasting into the other 2 dialog boxes, it should probably be at the bottom of the window. ------------------------------ SECOND WINDOW The second window I'm assuming is the text that gets sent to the platforms you're set up to promote to. This box is initially populated with only the text content of the post you're promoting. No images, no post title. If you click "Show original content" underneath the text box it does nothing but change the text bog to a long form text input box which can only be resized horizontally, not vertically...? Why? And it can't be changed back once you click it, not that I understand why you would want to.How this should work: This should start as a resizable long text input box that's resizable vertically, not horizontally, and the pointless "show original content" button should instead be named "restore original content" and serve to restore the original text when clicked (undoable of course), and it shouldn't disappear once its clicked. ------------------------------ THIRD WINDOW The third window, despite having a "close window X" in the top right, will automatically stop the content from being promoted internally if left blank. This took me a few tries to figure out, seeing as I wanted to promote the thread with the title only, and no description. I figured the X was the toggle for "share internally" but apparently the lack of text is a secondary toggle, even if you do input a custom title. In order to get the threads title I had to open a new window, re-navigate back to the topic, copy the title, and manually paste it into the "Set a custom 'Our Picks' title" input. You can imagine the annoyance of having to do this 3 times before realizing that the blank, poorly labeled text box above was preventing internal promotion.How this should work: There should be 2 input fields. A top short input field which auto-fills with the topics title, but is changeable. The second input, the main text box, should not cancel the internal promotion if left blank. Even if the title is blank as well. (At that point the only text in the promoted item in the Our Picks window would be "So-and-so posted a topic in Some-Forum on whatever date". That's sufficient.) The text underneath the box should read "Promote this content on this community" followed by a toggle switch, and the X in the upper right should be removed. ------------------------------ UPLOAD IMAGE WINDOW As it stands, if I want to add an image that's already in the post I have to re-navigate back to the post in a new window, download the image from the post, and then upload it into the promoted content window... ------------------------------ IT GETS WORSE On your Manage Promotions window, if you edit a an internally shared item and delete all the text in the description, when you return to the Manage Promotions window, the edit icon will be gone for this item. ------------------------------ Thank you for coming to my Ted talk on your Promotions window :) Edited February 4, 2021 by Aramaech Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dean_ Posted February 4, 2021 Share Posted February 4, 2021 When you promote a topic or post, it should auto detect any images and give you a choice to select one or more to be the main image on the forums or for social media links (or, upload your own image). The show original content will be the original post or topic text. The next box down (green +) will be a preview text of the post or topic. I usually keep this to two lines and no more, so it shows on the forum. If you have Twitter or/and Facebook then these too will be populated with the post. Again keep to no more than two lines, the links to the original post will also be in the box. So you really shouldn't have to do much, but trim down the text as you don't want half a page of text on your promoted page. *Note I deleted my URL in full link. Jordan Miller and Joel R 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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