Foundation Dev Blog

This summer we've been sharing updates to our ongoing additions to the Foundation Editor, and this post is to highlight the latest batch of customizing options that were released, along with a recap of the other recent releases.

Field Label Customizing

If some of the fields would be more intuitive for your staff use if they had different labels on them within the Foundation Editor, we can now support adjusting the fields to have custom names for you.

Just let us know your specific change requests, and we're happy to adjust those items.

For example, renaming the Subheadline to "Secondary Headline", or "Tagline", or "Deck".

Reordering Fields

If your editorial workflow would benefit from a different sequencing of the fields in the Foundation Editor, we are now able to accommodate customization for most of these as well.

Note that there are a few fields that have specific UI requirements to remain exactly where they are, such as Status and Release Date, but most other fields can be reordered by request.

Here's an example of label changes, reordered fields, tool tips, counter max vaules and more:

Foundation Editor Recap

The above items were major changes  that we are excited to have accomplished, along with the other recently-released precursors, summarized below:

• Tool Tips - Fields support custom tool tip messages that can be displayed.
  
  
• Character and Word Counter Limits - Fields that have counters can now display a preferred limit to alert editors to stay under a specific count.

More details on the above two features can be found here.

• Author and Topic multi-value sequencing - Most multi-fields have allowed for easy value re-sequencing for a while, such as Images and Connections. The same capability has now been added to Authors and Topics. More details on this can be found here.

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If you would like to take advantage of any of the new customization options, please email your request details to support@desert.net, and we'll set them in motion for your Foundation Editor preferences.

Last year, we released a tool for our Foundation clients to be able to select and import regionally-relevant content from Stacker.com,  to supplement your locally driven article page views. You can read back on the original feature release details here.

We've now enhanced these options to make this free resource even easier to access.

The arrangement is intended for your convenience to review, edit and re-format the content to fit your site's own voice before deciding whether to publish live, the same as you would with any of your own writer's content. 

Foundation Editor and Stacker

In the Foundation Editor, you will now find direct links to the Stacker content stream options easily accessible from the logo linked in the intro page, as well as at the top through the navigation tabs. Clicking either will take you to the Stacker selection interface.

Foundation Editor Permissions

The Stacker article import and editing process will now respond to your Foundation Editor permissions, the same as it does for any other content creation you do through the Foundation Editor. Here are the key highlights:

• Only Admin and Editor users will be able to import articles as they are the only permission groups that can view and edit articles created by other Authors (Stacker authors in this case).
• Your permissioned-users will only be able to import into the categories they have permissions to create articles within.
• Articles will import with a status of "Pending Review" and will follow the same rules and permissions for editing text, release date, status, as you have for all your in-house produced article content.
  
  

Fine Tuning

While in there, we also made a few refinements to the Stacker article-browse-and-select interface. Key changes are:

• Your portal for the latest Stacker content now defaults to your Regional view for the most relevant content to your market.   The broader selection of national and categorical content will still be available as well, just by  clicking through the navigation options.
• We've improved the terminology for clarity of use when you are interested in an article, so your editors can more easily explore the "Import Settings" and choose to "Import" an article for editing and review, without concern of it prematurely publishing live. 
  
  

As mentioned above, importing sets the status to Pending Review so the act of importing will not make anything live. It's essentially making it available to your team for editing and admin-preview within your normal editorial process. 

Since deleting is easy, feel free to try this out and delete the article after your test.

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The refinements mentioned above are live on an initial group of publications, and will be rolling out to all over the upcoming week.

If you would like to fast track this and launch sooner than later, please write support@desert.net and we'll include your publication in the next round of launches.

Please write support@desert.net if you have any questions.

Thanks!

Continuing from the theme of Thursday's announcement, we wanted to share a few more few more enhancements that were recently rolled into the Foundation Editor.

This round may be of most interest for writers and editors who handle multiple author articles, or work with a number of Topics.

Author Sequencing

When an Article has multiple authors, we've made it a bit easier to ensure they are sequenced the way you want in the Byline appearance.

Instead of adding them one at a time, you can now add all of the authors at once, and then just drag-and-drop to re-position them.

click to enlarge

Topic Sequencing

For clients who use the Topic field, the first position is usually the most important as it's considered the primary Topic.

We've made this easier to adjust by using simple drag-and-drop repositioning, the same as with images and authors. So you no longer have to re-do them one at a time.

click to enlarge

Topic Picker Default Preference Options

On the topic of topics, the Topic picker usually defaults to those already associated with your article's Category.

For example, an article in the Culture category may show the following as the default Topic options:

click to enlarge

This is usually helpful, but if your staff's usage would be better served by seeing "all topics" as the default, there is a new a setting we can switch for you to achieve that.

In which case it would appear something like this:

click to enlarge

If you are interested in this new "Default To All" option, please write support.

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This set of features have been enabled everywhere, so you will see them the next time viewing the Foundation Editor.
The topic default selection can be changed on request.

Please write support@desert.net if you have any questions

We're excited to announce that we are in midst of a major development cycle for a shiny-new version of the Foundation Editor interface.

This undertaking will upgrade both the underpinnings for speed and efficiency, as well as some user-friendliness of the very-many features this custom WYSIWYG has grown to serve through the years since it launched.

As we work toward that larger goal, we're also able to release some of the enhancement in parallel within the current version.

A few highlights of requested feature additions recently made available include the following:

Tooltips

We've added support for tooltips to be an option in the Foundation Editor for virtually every field.

Here's an example of a tooltip on the Credit Type field:

Customizing Tooltips

A few fields have tooltips by default, but you can also have us add your own customized instructions for editorial guidelines and goals.

For example, if you want to add instructional copy on your policy for your writers and editors filling in the meta title and description. That could be done right in the tooltip.

If you would like to explore this, pease reach out to support and we can configure custom tool tips with you.

Character and Word Counters

You may have also noticed a few additional character counters and word counters showing up in the Foundation Editor. We've enabled this feature on a number of fields.

We've also added an option to set a preferred max count. This count serves as a warning rather than a restriction.

Here's an example of a preferred max count set to 70 on the meta title field. Notice how the count has hit 80 and the preferred max of 70 is red.

How To Enable Everything

By default, the character counter, and word counters are enabled. In addition, a few fields like Credit Type will have default tool tips. Both features are live.

If you would like to add additional tool tips, and/or set some preferred max count values, please write support@desert.net with your specific requests and we'll get these enabled for you. We can also share how to set them up and edit them if you would like to make extensive changes.