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January 15, 2019

Introducing Live Blog 3.5

Editor’s Pick: 9 Events to Live Blog the First Quarter Of 2021

Introducing Live Blog 3.5

by Anna Rohleder |  January 15, 2019

Building on the usability and performance improvements that made Live Blog version 3.4 even more flexible and easy to use, we have added great new features for collaboration and managing content, as well as ads, in version 3.5.

New features include:

  • Post Flagging – indicates a post being edited which makes others aware of who is working on those posts
  • Default SEO Theme and AMP Theme now supports more than two levels of nesting/inheritance.  
  • A new repository of custom post types: https://github.com/liveblog/custom-post-types

Improvements include:

  • Improved blog notifications when new posts are created by team members
  • Team subscription allows a new maximum number of themes
  • Better image handling, especially for image galleries
  • Easier social sharing, including Facebook and AMP-compatible tweets
  • Unpublished posts are easier to find and manage
  • Improved display of ads, across a variety of themes

Be sure to contact us if you have any questions about the latest updates to Live Blog: saas@liveblog.pro

Ready to begin liveblogging?

Getting started has never been easier.

June 12, 2018

Meet Live Blog 3.4

Editor’s Pick: 9 Events to Live Blog the First Quarter Of 2021

Meet Live Blog 3.4

by Gideon Lehmann |  June 12, 2018

Over the past few months, Live Blog has become increasingly popular as its features have grown more powerful. Recently powering the Eurovision Song Contest’s official live blog, Live Blog version 3.4 is filled with useful new features and improvements that make tools even easier to use, including:

  • Enhancements to our advertisement management system based on configurable output channels. Ads can now be placed easily into a Live Blog’s timeline in a configurable frequency for both our Default and AMP themes. This means that you’ll be able to make more profit from advertisements with readers now engaging with ads on their phones.
  • Updates to our text editor will result in a much smoother editing experience. When it comes to editing text that has been copied and pasted from external sources, our text editor will now remove the unwanted original formatting of the text. This will save you from having to fix the formatting in your post before publishing.
  • Thinking about archiving or deleting several blogs at once? You’ll now be able to select several at a time and do so, rather than spending time adjusting the settings for each one individually.
  • The user commenting feature is now available for the AMP output, so you’ll also be able to engage with your readers directly through their phones by incorporating their comments into your live blog. This increased user engagement won’t only benefit the content you produce but will also help to popularise your live blog in the long run.
  • Our customisable Live Blog themes can meet any need. We’ve always made sure that our live blog themes are adjustable to fulfil the requirements and branding of different organisations. In version 3.4, we’ve introduced blocks that allow you to override certain components of your chosen Live Blog theme while still maintaining the desired elements, even when new updates become available.

We’ve also been hard at work increasing the test coverage of our software, inheriting the latest version of our mother project Superdesk with its improved UI and updating our API documentation to make sure it functions well with our new features.

We are already working on our next developments to Live Blog. Here are three things that are under way for future releases:

  • Direct video upload
  • Automated creation of AMP-compatible output channels
  • Improvements in regards to data privacy and embeds

Be sure to contact us if you have any questions about the latest updates to Live Blog: saas@liveblog.pro

Ready to begin liveblogging?

Getting started has never been easier.

June 28, 2017

4 Features to Cover Sports Like a Champion with Live Blog

4 Features to Cover Sports Like a Champion with Live Blog

4 Features to Cover Sports Like a Champion with Live Blog

by Anthony Covalciuc |  Jun 28, 2017

The 2017 Champions League tournament is well underway, and as it nears its June 3rd finale, it’s time to ask yourself: do I have the necessary tool in order to provide football supporters with all the updates, images, and analysis that they crave? Not to worry if you feel unprepared, Live Blog is here to help.

Not only is the Champions League one of the most prestigious tournaments across the globe, but in recent years it has become the most watched annual sporting event in the entire world (the 2016 final had more than 300 million viewers). Supporters want the latest information fast, and Live Blog allows editors to supplement conventional live coverage and deliver text, images, video and social media content in real time, ensuring maximum engagement.

The latest Live Blog release comes fully-equipped with new tools and features to boost your live blogging efforts and enrich the experience for your followers.

Scorecards – Visualize Your Live Data

Live blogging about a sports event requires presenting data in a comprehensive and meaningful way. The most important pieces of information in this regard are the current score of the game and the final result. Use the Scorecards tool to inform your viewers who scored a goal and in what minute. You can also use this tool to divide teams into “Home” and “Away”.

4 Features to Cover Sports Like a Champion with Live Blog

Adding score cards to your live blog.

Custom Post Types – Provide Real-Time Statistics of the Match

As we’ve mentioned in a previous post about election coverage, the free-types management tool provides creative freedom over how to present information relevant to your coverage. When you cover the Champions League or another sporting event, statistics such as possession, corner kicks, fouls, bookings, and shots can all be illustrated however you and your editors decide. Enhanced, real-time stats illustrated with graphs, charts, and graphics make games more interactive while increasing the audience’s connection to their team.

It’s important to note that custom post types must be configured as part of an initial effort. If you have the skills or people in place, great, you are ready to go! Otherwise, you can enlist the help of Sourcefabric’s development team and we will get the post types you want up and running in no time. Also in the works is a set or package of custom types available to all Live Blog users on Github.

3 New Features Raising the Bar for Live Blogging

Include statistics to your live blog.

User Comments – Engage Your Fan Base

Football supporters love to be part of the action, so make certain that they are able to participate and offer their own insights with the User Comments feature. Viewers who also share streams, highlights, or social media directly from their game-watching experience help your blog to gain popularity and increase exposure.

4 Features to Cover Sports Like a Champion with Live Blog

Easy to review and approve user comments.

Native and Remote Ads – Monetise Your Coverage

The ability to include advertising in your live blogging software – either from a third-party provider or ones you have made yourself – increases revenue for your organisation. Football supporters are an engaged audience who are loyal to their club. Additionally, their love of the game and for an organisation is handed down from generation to generation. Advertisements during your broadcasts can include sponsorships or in-house products and services that will bring in money for your organisation. You can consider supplemental ads for merchandise or even to purchase tickets to the next match, enticing your viewers to take the next steps to support their club and bringing you more revenue in the process.

3 New Features Raising the Bar for Live Blogging

Monetise your live blog with advertisements.

Ready to begin liveblogging?

Getting started has never been easier.

June 28, 2017

3 New Features Raising the Bar for Live Blogging

3 New Features Raising the Bar for Live Blogging

3 New Features Raising the Bar for Live Blogging

by Gideon Lehmann  |  Jun 28, 2017

Back in 2016, Sourcefabric was awarded a grant from the Google Digital News Initiative Innovation Fund (DNI) which enabled us to begin work on a special project, the Live Coverage Ecosystem (LCE). This project allows news organizations to syndicate and subscribe to one another’s breaking news as it unfolds in real time. Our live blogging software, Live Blog, is the foundation of the LCE project, and our major partners include Germany’s dpa and the Spanish news agency EFE.

The LCE project is divided into milestones, and we are happy to announce that we recently achieved milestone 2 of the project. With this accomplishment, we are pleased to introduce a number of useful new features for our live blogging tool – on top of its already competitive price, user-friendly interface, and useful blogging tools developed during milestone 1. These new features will become available in the upcoming releases for Live Blog, namely version 3.3 this summer.

Image-Posting Made Faster, Simpler, and More Accessible

Live Blog 3.3 will facilitate better integration of images for news agency feeds in a variety of ways. Editors can now drag and drop image feeds from an external source into their blog, adding speed and ease to the whole process. Check out the GIF below!

3 New Features Raising the Bar for Live Blogging

Image-Posting Made Faster, Simpler, and More Accessible

Additionally, we have made it possible for agencies and blog editors to access a repository of images related to an event via their ecosystem. The ability to syndicate content within your ecosystem is possible for both input and output. The more content you have access to, the more revenue streams become available. Simply flag or mark specific content, and this will become accessible to other relevant ecosystems in your marketplace.

New and Improved Advertising Interface

Also for Live Blog 3.3, we will have an additional interface exclusively reserved for managing your advertisements up and running. This used to be part of Live Blog’s editorial features, but we’ve separated it so that you can more efficiently manage both content and advertisements. The benefits don’t stop there, however. You can build and design collections of ads and program them to automatically be displayed at a fixed frequency while you blog, for example after every 10 posts. This makes certain that your ads are displayed at the right moments while saving you time and effort.

The new advertising interface also enables your blog to adapt to multiple outputs, meaning that the look and feel of the blog can meet the design of a certain sponsor and brand its appearance accordingly.

3 New Features Raising the Bar for Live Blogging

New and Improved Advertising Interface

Blog Analytics – Track Unique Visits to Your Blog

Another great feature in Live Blog is our comprehensive statistics feature, Blog Analytics. This is a statistics endpoint tool which we developed due to the demands of our partners, and one which connects to the platform’s API. When you and other news organisations share and embed blogs as well as other types of media, Blog Analytics track how well they perform. It does this by counting and allowing you to monitor all of the unique visits which you receive while live blogging.

Blog analytics comes equipped with a configurator that you can synchronize with Google Analytics. Simply enter your Google Analytics code into the configurator and use it to learn more specific details about your audience. This is especially beneficial when you incorporate your findings with the Native and Remote Ads tool. When you combine these tools, you can monetise your coverage by using the information obtained and using it to help you develop advertisements and create sponsorships that suit your audience.

3 New Features Raising the Bar for Live Blogging

Blog Analytics – Track Unique Visits to Your Blog

Ready to begin liveblogging?

Getting started has never been easier.