Newsgator Forums / NewsGator Online / Editor's Desk - Widgets and Buzz

How do I measure/know how many people are subscribed to feeds from my site? (via various feed readers)?

karimhhhs — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:22:14 GMT

This would be a total of people subscribed through Bloglines, Google, Yahoo, MSN, Newsgator, and all the other various methods of receiving RSS feeds.

Announcing the NewsGator Technical Blog

Jenny Blumberg — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:58:42 GMT

NewsGator's Media and Consumer Team has put together a new technical blog! This blog aims to be a resource for developers, technical savvy users, and anyone interested in learning more about best practices and NewsGator code updates.

The NewsGator technical blog will cover the widget framework and widget development, hosted readers, NewsGator API, and general programming advice you can use to enhance this group of NewsGator products. The blog will also be where our team will announce loads and release notes, so you can be assured that you will always be informed of the most recent improvements we are making on our side.

NewsGator Technical Blog: http://blogs.newsgator.com/newsgator_technical_blog/

RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/typepad/newsgator/newsgator_technical_blog

Kind Regards,

Editor's Desk - Temporarily unavailable Thursday, 10/8

Jenny Blumberg — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:06:21 GMT

If you attempted to reach Editor's Desk (https://hosted.newsgator.com/Admin/SaaSLogin.aspx) on Thursday, 10/8 around 5pm MST, you may have noticed a runtime error upon reaching the page. This was a temporary issue resulting from a load we were doing, and functionality was restored in approximately 5 minutes. If you continue to see any issues, please contact us.

Thanks,

Adsense Code on Newsgator Widgets

lemongrass — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 04:15:34 GMT

I am new to these forums and have just added a Newsgator Widget to my site. My question is how do we add our Publisher code to the Adsense block below the news feed, as this was not requested. Am I missing something basic here or what? Would really appreciate your sage advice!

Here is the page:

[url=http://www.anglesey-today.com/anglesey-news-latest.html]http://www.anglesey-today.com/anglesey-news-latest.html[/url]

Thanks in advance. :)

David

rss news feed widit

ewg — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:19:40 GMT

Three questions:

1. Can I get rid of the advertisement at the bottom of my NewsGator wigit?

2. Can I edit the news/blog headlines? I figured not, as it's an RSS feed but I thought I'd ask

3. Can I get rid of the stars, so that users can't rate the news clips?

Thanks!!!

Widget Framework Release Notes for Thursday March 12 2009

Dan Borrego — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:15:46 GMT

Some cool new stuff is being made available with this load. Most notably is a new feature that lets you search for feeds that contain a particular topic: this will help you build whitelists for searching and related content. Its called the 'Related Content Search' tool, and can be found in Editor's Desk under the Utilities tab.
We also fixed the bug that caused Facebook widgets to not have an "Add to Profile" button. Facebook made some changes which broke that feature, but we fixed it.

[hr]
Release Notes:

[b]Admin[/b]

* Statistics Page - Better handling of custom attention events in separate columns.
* Widget Builder - Modified content preview for Related Content widgets to show topic/keyword/keyphrase info for source article, and to show topics for related posts.
* Facebook Wizard - Modified verbiage to match changes in Facebook's application editor.
* Related Content Search - New feature! Allows you to search for feeds based on a topic. Added to the Utilities menu.

[b]Widgets[/b]

* Post Toolbar - Due to lack of adoption, the "Send to Mobile" feature has been removed for the time being.
* Statistics/Reporting - Fixed a bug that caused subordinate widget descendents to not log attention data.
* Search - Modified keyword search to return more relevant results.
* Widget Code - Modified HTML entity encoding behavior to more consistently handle foreign language characters.
* Facebook - Fixed a bug that caused the "Add to Profile" button to not appear when adding an application.

Actually Getting Newsgator to Show Up on Profile

andrewmcibbon — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:21:05 GMT

Can anyone tell me how to get the Newsgator facebook app to actually show up on my facebook profile. I can see that the app is installed in my applications but it is not appearing on the profile. Am I missing a step?

Many thanks in advance for any help anyone might provide.

Andy

Help with Video Widget

Ashley — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:32:09 GMT

I am trying to create a video widget and for some reason the video is not displaying nor are the thumbnails.

The feed: http://www.wtoc.com/global/Category.asp?c=133433&clienttype=rssvideo

Anyone know why?

Question from a newbie

eisel_j — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:03:29 GMT

When I'm in my editor's desk management area, I have a number of widgets running, but they all have alerts on them.

When I click on them, there are messages next to them saying "feed has not been updated recently" - with a refresh button next to them. When I click the refresh button, the message goes away.

A couple of questions -
- What did I just do? Did the feed just go to see if there are new stories? And that's how the Web site where the widget is located is updated?
- How often do I have to refresh?

I would have checked the help manual .pdf, but I keep getting an error when I try to download it.

Thanks.

Ticker

jbjimbo — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:50:47 GMT

I had an older widget I had been using on some of my pages displaying headlines in a ticker. Today I went in to add new feeds to this old template and because the ticker is no longer an available template is simply changed over to a new format and I cannot get it back. Anyone to get the ticker widget back? Is there a way to request the ticker widget is brought back?

creating tabbed widgets

elinkrob — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 13:55:08 GMT

hello, i am trying to create a widget that has 3 tabs across the top, each displaying a different news feed.. i am looking at the code for another tabbed widget, but not really sure where it is pulling the feed source.. the one we currently have on our site has a lot of background images, this one i just want to be all basic text and background colors.. could someone please point me in the right direction on how i can get this together.. thank you very much

robert johnson
pharmacistelink.com

Facebook widget not updating

cliff — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:48:08 GMT

I have built a facebook app using the facebook wizard and the it's not updating on the profile page.

The widget updates on the canvas page but not on any other pages.

It is on this page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/ajccom/13310147298?ref=s

its the ajc.com and accessatlanata feeds

thanks in advance for any help .

Facebook Application Changes and How They Affect Your Widgets

Dan Borrego — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:04:15 GMT

In the past couple months Facebook has changed their application architecture a number of times, and we have steadily attempted to keep up with them (for the most part, successfully). Most recently however, the changes have been drastic enough that some of the widget applications based off of NewsGator widgets could be negatively affected, or even broken altogether.

The good news is that yesterday we loaded a new version of the Facebook wizard in Editor's Desk. If you have NewsGator widgets in Facebook, please test them to ensure they are working properly. If not, the act of simply stepping through the wizard will bring your widget up-to-date with Facebook’s framework. Don’t delete your existing apps, just use the wizard to copy fields from our wizard into your Facebook app, and vice versa.

[i]Access the Facebook Wizard in Editor's Desk on the Manage page: simply expand your widget view, and in the tools menu on the left side you will see an icon for "Facebook."[/i]

[b]Here are a couple important points:[/b]
--Facebook has moved to a new editor for Facebook Applications, which enforces a limit of 100 characters for URLs. If you open up an application with long URLs in the new editor and then save it, Facebook will truncate all the URLs behind-the-scenes, thus breaking the app. All the URLs we gave in previous versions of the Facebook Wizard were over 100 characters long, so this applies to all apps created through the Facebook Wizard, and likely ones made before we had a wizard.

--The profile page apparently has new size restrictions. From what we can tell it is 184px wide by 250px tall, but it isn't documented anywhere. This only applies to apps that use Flash or the “show an image on the profile page” option. You will have to make the image or Flash movie smaller.

Help creating a video widget

ewendkos — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:53:20 GMT

I've created a widget using the feed:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/mrss/1345087319/top/trailingweek

Widget is

But I can't seem to get thumbnails to display or any player to show.

Can you help?

Newsfeed widget does not validate in HTML/XHTML

FTI — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 14:16:47 GMT

Has any one found a way so that the NewsGator Widget validates as a valid Html/Xhtml Document????
Somehow I like that all my pages in my blog are a 100% valid.
With the Newsgator Widget included it's not the case.

Feed history in my Widget?

Widgeteer — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:36:37 GMT

Hi, I'm getting started with Widget development. I'm trying to base a widget on a feed, which is generated every hour and is random assortment of items selected from our content. It's not based on the latest published items.

I get that this is somewhat against the spirit of RSS, but thought it might be possible anyway. What I see is that my 10 random items make it into the feed but previously grabbed items seem to be held by newsgator, since later items from the past still seem to make it into my widget, which grabs three off the top. So, even though my current feed contents have changed, since the items in the feed at any given time might not be the LATEST by pubDate, the latest by pubDate (including those grabbed over some past timeframe) still 'win' in terms of making it into the widget.

I can imagine how I could hack the pubDate in the feed to somehow reflect faux-currentness for the feed's current contents. This feed is purposed only for my widgets that behave this way, and not promoted or published anywhere else. But is there something I can do in Newsgator's toolkit to prevent holding of items not currently in the feed? Are my assumptions about NewsGator's treatment of the items correct?

Thanks for any help.

Release Notes for Thursday December 5 load

Dan Borrego — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:07:31 GMT

Widgets

Post toolbar loads on demand, instead of all the time (this significantly improves widget load times)
New widget script context (WIKI)
New widget load events (WIKI)
Excerpt modifiers (after your post description, usually something like "..." or "more...") can now be HTML (including foreign characters) instead of only English text. There'll be a blog post or a Wiki article on this in the near future

Admin

Widget Builder: Added Advanced config section on the Edit HTML page. Has new setting to control Script Context feature
Widget Builder: Changed code editor for Edit HTML, improved syntax highlighting, now works in FireFox, Safari, and Chrome
Widget Builder: Added full screen option for code editor
Added new popup to manage author-defined event names (no more "Custom1," "Custom2" events)
Modified reporting page to show said author-defined events
Promote > Sharing: Added "custom" theme option for further customizing Gigya

Facebook

Add widget to profile button on widget's canvas page
Add widget to Boxes, under "Edit" section and "Edit" dialog

NewsGator service disruption - 11/17/08

Dan Borrego — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:40:53 GMT

As you may have noticed, we are experiencing some problems this morning. We are working diligently to restore service at this time.

Sorry for the disruption, and thank you for your patience.

Regards,

NewsGator service disruption - 10/26/08

Dan Borrego — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 18:36:12 GMT

Hey all,

Some of you may have noticed that we are experiencing some problems. We are working diligently to restore service at this time.

Sorry for the disruption.

Regards,

Formatting stripped out of half the headlines in widget

GamJams.net — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:41:13 GMT

I've got a basic headline widget that aggregates feeds from about 30 blogs on my site here:

http://www.gamjams.net

When I view it, the first 4 headlines are formatted correctly, but the next three have all formatting stripped out. I'm on a Mac running OS 10.4 and have the same problem when viewing through Firefox and Safari. I also see the same problem when the widget appears on other sites, for example here:

http://bethbikes-bethbikes.blogspot.com/

It looks like half the widget picks up the CSS from the blog sidebar it's in.

Any ideas?

NewsGator Experienced a short disruption of service

Dan Borrego — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:22:12 GMT

Hey all,

Some of you may have noticed that we had some problems a short while ago. We experienced a service disruption lasting a little more than 10 minutes. If you were trying to use Editor's Desk during this time, you might have received some errors. Given our caching scheme, depending on when your widget was last served up, the widgets on your web sites may or may not have been affected at all.

We have fixed the problem and everything seems to be back to normal. We are taking measures to ensure that we avoid this type of issue in the future.

Sorry for the disruption.

Regards,

NewsGator Widget Customer Connect webinar recording - Sept 23

Jenny Blumberg — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:44:43 GMT

In this webinar you will learn how to capture critically important
widget usage data.

a. Wiring your widgets for attention data

b. Give widget inheritors more than they expect

https://cc.readytalk.com/play?id=08yz0ltg

Check out our recent changes to the NewsGator Widgets site!

Jenny Blumberg — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:08:27 GMT

The NewsGator Widgets site at http://www.newsgatorwidgets.com has recently been updated! A few of the additions include:

An introduction to Editor's Desk
Information on analytics tracking
Our widget co-brand programs
A Learning Center with detailed information and best practices
Updated information on related content including data services and search services

Also, check out the NewsGator Widget blog at http://blogs.newsgator.com/newsgator_widget_blog/. This site is a great resource for finding the latest and greatest widget news, as well as case studies and more updates.

Error in Widget - "F is undefined"

critter42 — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 05:22:34 GMT

I just noticed the other day that one of my widgets shows the error "F is Undefined";
When I went into the editor, the preview is showing the same thing. However, it is a legacy widget, so is there something that was changed on the backend that broke it?

username is critter42 and the widget is "NeighborhoodNews"

Widget not updating, manage articles not working as intended

jgilstrap — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:58:11 GMT

The feed for the following widget hasn't updated in a while:

We've been trying to remove a story from the feed by unchecking it on the manage articles screen, but it still appears in the widget.

Our workaround is to hide the item using CSS, but we need to get the item removed and have the feed updated.

Thanks.

buzz container not 'behaving'

cdr21 — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:03:22 GMT

In trying to use buzzContainer in a custom template, the container 'blows-out' the cell in which it resides and does not scroll. Any insight on why this is happening would be greatly appreciated... example link below

http://66.165.225.207/widgets/widget-pfl.htm

Wetpaint-compatible widget

Hodgdon — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:32:01 GMT

I created a widget that I'd like use in my wiki on Wetpaint.com. But when I paste the code into Wetpaint's wiki Add Widget tool it says it doesn't support widgets based on <SCRIPT> tags yet. But it does support <EMBED> tags or <IFRAME> tags.

Is there a workaround within Desk Editor that would enable me to accomplish this?

NewsGator Widgets Developer Wiki

Jenny Blumberg — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:28:22 GMT

Check it out here!

http://developer.newsgator.com/wiki/index.php?title=Widgets_Main_Page

Is the color picker screen available after saving a new widget?

critter42 — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:50:43 GMT

I know I can go to the CSS tab and edit the widget CSS, but I REALLY like the color picker that shows up when you create a new Widget. Is it possible to get back to that screen when editing a widget? I've poked around for an hour or so and haven't found it.

If it's not currently accessible once a widget has been saved, I'd like to make feature request to be able to access it as part of the editing process as it it makes it easy for me to visualize the color changes I would be making.

Now if only there were a really stellar Windows-based CSS editor out there I could use - anyone know where I might be able to get one? :Whistling:
.
.
.
.
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.
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( Just kidding NickB! :hehe: It's just that I can't use TS at work which is why I'm asking for this feature :) )

NewsGator Knowledge Base Articles for widget developers

Dan Borrego — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:19:30 GMT

Check out NewsGator's Widget Developer's Knowledge Base for lots of "How To's", code samples, and tips on developing advanced widgets.

Just open up the folder named "Editor's Desk and Widgets", or enter a search term.

Missing widget

critter42 — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:32:13 GMT

OK, I noticed this during the beta but just chalked it up to the database maybe not being replicated/synched on the beta side, but I am missing a widget. If I logged into the old interface during the beta it showed up, but if I logged into the beta interface it was missing. I hadn't published it anywhere yet as I was still working out some of the code, so I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not

Now that the new editor out of beta, that widget is still not showing up. Is there a "backdoor" to the old interface by any chance, or can you see what may have happened?

I hate to admit this, but I can't remember what I called the widget, but I think it had the word "countdown" in it :)

New NewsGator Widget Blog

newsgatorjosh — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:51:15 GMT

We've got a new NewsGator Widget Blog up and running [url=http://blogs.newsgator.com/newsgator_widget_blog/]here[/url].

Check it out!

reuters market widget

dmccowan — Fri, 30 May 2008 11:30:23 GMT

the reuters market widget all of a sudden stopped diplaying the charts. It still gives the news part but nothing else. Please check it out. Thanks

Dan

No luck with AP OVN Video & Image in RSS Widget

AlexMediaGeneralIMD — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 16:59:46 GMT

We recieve RSS feeds from the AP Online Video Network for each our sites are trying to configure our settings in the newsgator widget to display the attached thumbnail and play the video clip in a pop-up player within the widget.

The code we normally use for displaying the thumbnail and play the video/podcast is not cooperating with these type RSS feeds.

RSS feed example from AP OVN with Site ID: http://video.ap.org/s/RSS.ashx?mk=en-ap&ns=ENAP_AP_Gallery&tag=editorsall&title=AP%20Top%20Video&p=201222

The template code we are using is:

{if
LoadScript("http://www.clickcaster.com/plugin_assets/clickcaster_engine/javascripts/create_player.js", "window.create_player != null") &&
LoadScript(NGBaseUrl + "NGScripts/BuzzTemplates/buzzFooter.js", "window.returnBuzzFooter != null") &&
LoadScript(NGBaseUrl + "NGScripts/BuzzTemplates/videoPlayer.js", "window.returnVideoPlayer != null") &&
LoadScript(NGBaseUrl + "NGScripts/BuzzTemplates/adRotator.js", "window.returnAdRotator != null")
}
<div class="ng_buzzContainer ng_simpleList">
{for Post in Data}
<div style="padding:2px; border-top:1px solid #eeeeee;" class="ng_post">
<table cellspacing="0" cellpading="0" width="97%" class="ng_buzz_table">
<tr>
<td>
<a href="${Post.HtmlUrl|html}" onclick="${AttentionClickJS(Post)}" class="ng_postTitle" target="_blank" id="post_title_${Post.PostId}">
${Post.Title|default:"(no title)"}
</a>
<br />
<span class="ng_postInfo">
Published ${Post.PubDate|timeSince} ${% (Post.FeedName != '' ? 'by ' + Post.FeedName : '') %}
</span>
</td>
<td align="right" valign="top" nowrap>
{if Post.MediaRSS && Post.MediaRSS.Contents[0]}
<a href="void(0)" onclick="populateVideoHolder('${Post.MediaRSS.Contents[0].Url|js}', '${Post.Title|js}', '${Post.HtmlUrl|js}', event, ${BuzzObjJS}, ${Post.PostId});" class="ng_buzz_playLink">
Play video
</a>
{elseif Post.EnclosureUrl}
<a href="void(0)" onclick="populateVideoHolder('${Post.EnclosureUrl|js}', '${Post.Title|js}', '${Post.HtmlUrl|js}', event, ${BuzzObjJS}, ${Post.PostId});" class="ng_buzz_playLink">
Play video
</a>
{/if}
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
{if (Post.MediaRSS && Post.MediaRSS.Thumbnail && (Post.MediaRSS.Description && Post.MediaRSS.Description.Description))}
<td class="ng_postDescription" colspan="2"><img src="${Post.MediaRSS.Thumbnail.Url|html}"></td>
{else}
<td class="ng_postDescription" colspan="2" id="post_description_${Post.PostId}">${Post.Description}</td>
{/if}
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">
${% RenderToolbar(Post) %}
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
{forelse}
No posts found.
{/for}
</div>
${returnBuzzFooter(BuzzId,BuzzObj.apiToken,BuzzObj,_CONTEXT)}
${returnVideoPlayer(BuzzObj,_CONTEXT)}
${returnAdRotator(BuzzObj,_CONTEXT)}
{/if}

Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated.

Widget feed issues

CDP Matt — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:56:19 GMT

The local news RSS feed on CDP is acting a bit strange. It performs fine in both IE7 and FireFox, the trouble starts when using it in Newsgator. Newsgator will not display any articles past “Crabtree Falls hikers found” posted on April 4th. I don’t believe it is a Newsgator issue as any other CDP feed posted into the widget displays as expected.

Email address displaying with feed author name

metsgrrl.com — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:04:37 GMT

Where does the feed pull an email address from?

I'm working with a content partner who's including my Feed Burner feed in their Editor's Desk widget. Everyone else in the feed displays just an author name, but my content is displaying with an email address that's not public. It's not displaying on the site. It is the default address used for the admin account, but, again, it doesn't display anywhere. It's not displaying in any of my feeds... but yet it's displaying in Editor's Desk - but none of the other contributors are displaying an email address next to their author name.

I just changed the address within Expression Engine and created a test post but it's not pulling it yet (although it's showing up on Google reader and elsewhere) so I don't know if this will fix part of hte problem - but what I want to know is, why is the Editor's Desk displaying an email address for my feed? Where would it be pulling this information from?

thanks.

Displaying more than 20 articles

TheOverheadWire — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:17:55 GMT

Is it possible to display more than 20 articles?

Widget shows last item from feed first

mnestor — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:07:51 GMT

I have a custom widget based off of the default "Paging" template. When I first created it the item at the top of the RSS feed it was pulling from would be displayed first. Today I noticed it's displaying the last item from the feed first. I've seen this happen before but it went away if I reset the feed url but it's not doing it this time.

Is there something I'm missing that I need to set in order to make sure it consistently displays the first item in the feed when the widget is first loaded?

News Stopped Populating

kismetgerald — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:45:05 GMT

I tried to update the RSS url and now the news aren't displaying anymore on my site. I have a google groups RSS feed and I'm aware of the privacy settings that prevent the widget from accessing the feed.

I've set it to "Anybody Can View Content" but no luck.