October-December 2022
Fixed
- We added support for embedding YouTube Shorts in stories.
- A longstanding bug that could cause story previews to fail should be happening much less frequently—or not at all—now.
- If you change your email address or reset your password, you'll be logged out on any other devices where you use Chorus as a security protocol.
- The keyboard shortcut for adding a comment wasn't working on Windows machines. Read more about keyboard shortcuts in Chorus.
- Layout buttons could occasionally be misaligned, making it difficult to change the alignment of in-story components. This is fixed.
- When grouping images in on the layout screen, sometimes a confusing message would appear. We've clarified this language.
- Sometimes after copy-pasting an image to a different spot in a story, it would appear in both the old and new locations. This should no longer happen.
- The search icon in the assets manager would occasionally do…nothing. This is fixed so you can carry on with searching.
- User-generated profile pages were already "noindexed", but we added a "nofollow" to further prevent these pages from impacting your site's SEO.
- We've been giving our help center, Chorus.help, a fresh round of updates. Let us know if you spot anything that seems confusing or out-of-date.
July-September 2022
New
Try the escape key on the layout screen
When you’ve selected components to modify on the layout screen—say you’re applying drop caps, or grouping several images—you can now hit escape to deselect them and go back to the main layout options.
Fixed
- We made a major upgrade to the technology underpinning Chorus, to help ensure the continued security and stability of the platform.
- The New story dropdown has an updated look you’ll notice if you make a link or stream.
- When you embed a tweet that’s a reply or part of a thread in a story, we’ll no longer show the parent tweet by default. If you want that extra context, you can still toggle it on in the Advanced embed options.
- If you search the dashboard for stories updated “today,” the results will now use the time zone from your profile. More tips on how to search for stories are in our help center.
- We made the stories dashboard easier to scan on mobile devices, showing you more story cards with less scrolling.
- We tidied up some error messages so if something unexpected happens, hopefully it’s easier to know what to do next.
- We don’t allow audience members to sign up with Yahoo or Hotmail email addresses for security reasons. That hasn’t changed—but now folks will now see a more helpful error message if they try.
May-June 2022
New
Search a range of dates
When looking for stories in the Chorus dashboard, you can now search between any two dates, in addition to before, after, or on a date. Read more on the blog.
Fixed
- Modify buttons and checkboxes on the layout screen have a new look and feel, that’s more in line with the rest of the editing experience.
- The Assets link went missing from the dashboard for a bit, but it should be back in the usual spot again.
- Instagram embeds and Facebook login were both on the fritz for a few days. We’ve mended our relationship with Meta so things are back to normal.
- If you leave the dashboard open for a while, it may be disconnected when you return. We’ve updated the behavior and messaging here, so we’ll try to reconnect for you or let you know if you should reload the page.
- Pages marked as “do not index,” including user profile pages and stories where indexing was restricted, were erroneously being included in sitemaps.
April 2022
New
Count those characters
All headline and description fields—including those for search and social—now have character counters, for the times when every letter counts.
Fixed
- If you’ve ever had trouble uploading a photo from your iPhone to Chorus, it’s likely because we couldn’t support a proprietary file format from Apple called HEIC. Now, we’ll automatically convert any HEIC files to more web-friendly JPEGs.
- We added additional protection to newsletter signup forms across our sites. Don’t worry, we won’t be asking audiences to identify every picture with a car, but hopefully this helps prevent spammy sign-ups.
- The search sidebar could overlap with the story editor’s main dashboard at certain screen sizes. This is fixed now, so search away.
March 2022
New
Longer breaks between logging in
If you're not a consistent Chorus user, or if you've ever taken an extended break, you might have had your permissions automatically removed for inactivity. Going forward, you'll be able to go 90 days between logins, rather than 60, before you lose access. (Managers, you can also restore permissions for your contributors when needed.)
Fixed
- A byline containing an apostrophe could prevent a story from being sent to Apple News. This is now fixed, with our apologies to the impacted authors.
- Stories first published more than 6 months ago were blocked from sending to Apple News. This behavior has been updated, so your evergreen pieces will now update on Apple News when you re-publish them on Chorus.
- The word count in the story editor would sometimes count punctuation marks—like dashes & ampersands—as words, when they aren't. Thanks to the eagle-eyed copy editors who consulted on this fix.
- When adjusting the publication date of a story on mobile, some text on the finalize screen could start overlapping.
- Firefox fans, we've fixed a bug where the toolbar above the body in the story editor could appear out of alignment.
February 2022
New
Updated guidance for word count
We've removed a warning from the finalize screen that would encourage you to write at least 150 words per story. It's still best to avoid "thin" content, but our SEO team recommends thinking about what will best serve a reader's needs, rather than a strict word count. For a photo story or interactive, you might use fewer words, while for a newsy story, you might need more.
Fixed
- To keep up with the times, we’ve updated the preview screens for mobile and tablet to more accurately reflect modern device sizes.
- An autosave error message sometimes appeared while multiple folks were editing the same story. We’ve fixed this particular bug so hopefully you’ll see fewer red bars in Chorus.
- On the layout screen, a banner message would sometimes tell you to reload when you didn’t need to. This is fixed now, so enjoy the real-time updates.
- In Chorus Video, you can now search a filename and find any projects that file is attached to.