Public Blog

More Composer Pro updates are coming this Friday. Mainly UI stuff this time:

• Updated playlist templates - prettier and more consistent UI throughout.
• New drop down menu option to easily move between all of your program guides.
• Improved playlist search: limiting search results for listeners to relieve load on database; improved search results for admins.
• Feed next 5 programs.
• Feed last 5 playlists for a program.

And we’ll schedule a training session for later this month.

The latest Quick Pledge improvements:

Sustaining Membership Template

We created a special sustaining membership template.  The pledge levels on this form are listed in Monthly amounts, so donors choose an ongoing monthly amount instead of choosing the Annual total. This will make it clearer to see the ongoing monthly donation amount, without confusing it with the annual total.

Form UI

Improved premium selection, state drop down defaults to your state, new submit graphics, and more!

Are you curious About CSS? Interested in learning the basics? Here ’s a nice simple intro to cascading style sheets.

http://www.slideshare.net/maxdesign/css-cascade-1658158

We released some small Composer Pro updates, most small updates related to usability and design, and including 2 fun small features:

• Name that guide: You can now name your program guide something other than just “Program Guide”. This is especially helpful if you have multiple signals. Click Program Guide Wizard.
• Feed programs up next. In addition to feeding the next program, you will be able to list more programs up next.
• New parameter 9: Number of upcoming programs to show:
  • NOTE: Use only when parameter 1 is set to “2″.
  • This parameter can be left blank.
  • Displays up to 5 upcoming programs

Slide Show Wizard

A reminder that the Slide Show Wizard is available to all PI customers. You can use it to create a slideshow with captions and audio, and embed it into your web site, a Public NewsRoom or Public Arts article, or a Public Platform page.

Are you adding audio, video and slideshows to your articles? Send us your links!

RSS Feed Wizard

A reminder that this easy-to-use tool is available to all PI customers, and is listed on your Portal Page. The RSS Wizard ‘parses’ or processes RSS feeds for you, so you can easily display content on your site in a reader-friendly format.

Quick Instructions:
•    First, place the RSS link to the feed in the RSS Feed URL field
•    Next, choose the number of items/stories to show by selecting the Feed Elements (Title, Copyright, Build Date, Description) and Image Elements (Category, Author, Date, Description) you would like displayed
•    Then, click ‘Generate Snippet’ to generate code. Check the Preview to make sure it’s what you want.
•    Finally, paste this snippet of code into the HTML code for your web page. You can also use the code in your Public Platform pages or add it to the custom buckets in your NewsRoom, Arts or Events
•    CSS: You can modify the fonts, etc. using CSS.

PI staffers returned from our version of Summer Camp - online news training workshop at USC. Part of the Core Publisher project is helping our stations creating compelling station web sites that build audience engagement, and a big part of that is the idea of a river of local news content. A group of NPR/PI staff

· Steve Safran, Keith Hopper, Angie Tung, Doug Gaff, Joe Orlando, Ki Sung (not pictured)

· Staff from the 6 Core Pilot stations

· And a few select public broadcasting stations

convened for a digital leadership summit generously hosted by the Knight Digital Media Center, based at USC in Los Angeles. Details here: http://core.publicinteractive.com/

We’ve updated the user guide for Composer Pro to reflect some of the recent upgrades and changes. If you don’t have a recent copy, now’s a good time to download a new version. It’s also accessible from your Composer Pro admin screen.

We’re also planning some training sessions, if you’re new to Composer Pro, or would like a refresher, please let me know.

You may have heard about the new option for syndicated programs in Composer Pro and Basic. We’re collecting playlists for syndicated programs for SoundExchange reporting, and with Pro, this also means you’ll also be able to display syndicated program playlists (for the programs that are currently providing them to us).

To accommodate this change, we updated the way the add program options work. We also did our best to make sure your existing syndicated programs are now marked properly, but we may have missed a few here and there.

To make sure syndicated programs are entered correctly in your Program Guide, please check the following.

Program drop down: This contains a list of all programs currently in use on your program guide. Syndicated programs are listed in red, see below.

We really enjoyed seeing many of you at the PMDMC, the conference was energizing and educational as always. The best part is hearing about how things are going at your station.  We must admit, though, that we are quite happy to be back in the office where the temperature is around 72F.