Metered Article Preview Threshold Doesn't Seem To Work

[Rogers_Publishi]

Hi there!

I have a project with the "Article Threshold" (for allowing non-paid users to preview content for free) set to 1 a day. My Home collection is retail and has a price associated with it. The articles within it are all set to "metered". When I open one I see the message at the top of the screen that says I am previewing content and I would hope/expect to see the lock icon if I try to view another article but I can see them all. I'm allowed to read every article in that collection even though my threshold is set to 1 and I am not signed in.

Is the Article Threshold function fully operational? Is there something I'm missing?

Thanks!

[NMarroquin · Accepted solution]

The threshold will be reached once the user has read an article, which is based on a timer while the user is dwelling on the article. The dwell time that triggers an article "read" to be sent to the meter is currently 25 seconds (iPad) and 15 seconds (iPhone). If the user quickly swipes through the articles they would be able to preview them; however, in your case, once one article has been viewed for enough time other articles will be blocked.

Are you seeing this behavior? If not there may be another requirement in your setup that is missing.

[Rogers_Publishi]

That may explain some of the behaviour we've seen! Good information to know - thanks! I'll pay attention to the time in an article and confirm.

[Rogers_Publishi]

There does seem to be a bug here. If I have a collection with 5 metered articles in it and my daily threshold for preview is set to 1 - I can open the first article, fairly quickly swipe through the others (within that 15 second window I guess) - and then return to any and all of them to read and will not be presented with the lock icon. It seems to get around the preview threshold. It's why I found the behaviour unpredictable earlier.

[NMarroquin]

The 15 second window is per article. If you never dwell on an article long enough it won't count as a read. So, in your case, if you just swipe for 15 seconds and view a bunch of articles we won't count any of those views against the meter. Once you've spent some time actually viewing the article the meter will get triggered.

Are you observing that behavior?

[Rogers_Publishi]

Not really - if I quickly go through the articles once within that first window I seem to be able to go back read them all at my leisure. I'm going to test on a variety of devices and confirm, but so far it's reacted that way on 2.

[Neil_Enns_-_Ado]

Nate's point is that you are quickly going through the articles, so the metering timeout never gets hit. Stop on one of the articles for 15 seconds, as if you were actually reading it instead of just flipping through fast. That should trigger a metering count, and then you'll see the paywall on the other metered articles.

Neil

[Bob_Bringhurst_]

Also, make sure that you're not using a preview app to test the threshold. If "Enable Preview" is selected, the preview app will show everything, published or unpublished, free, metered, or protected.

[Rogers_Publishi]

Yeah - I wasn't using a preview app. I can see the proper behaviour now - if I somewhat deliberately swipe through the articles and pause on one long enough (which I guess would be the user behaviour anyway). Every once in a while it will let me see a second one - but otherwise seems to work.

Any chance that we'll be able to customize the messaging on the lock screen at some point? Actually customizing the messaging on all of the transaction-based pages would be ideal.