It was a great solution for its time, but the digital landscape has changed dramatically.

In 2026, publishers are no longer competing only with social media or aggregator sites. They are competing with AI systems capable of scraping, repackaging, and redistributing content at scale. And unfortunately, metered paywalls are uniquely vulnerable to this new reality.

Why Metered Paywalls Worked — Until They Didn’t

The metered model was built on a the assumption that users behave like individuals. A single reader typically uses just one browser, a small number of devices, a limited number of IP addresses, and cookies that track article views.

Metered paywalls track article counts via cookies and IP logging. When the limit is reached, access is restricted. For human readers, this works reasonably well, but for AI-driven scraping systems, it doesn’t offer the same kind of content protection.

How AI Exploits Metered Systems

Modern scraping systems do not operate like traditional bots from a single IP address. Instead, they use:

• Rotating IP address pools
• Distributed cloud infrastructure
• Headless browsers that mimic human behavior
• Cookie resets and session spoofing
• Residential proxy networks

In other words, an AI system can access your content as if it were thousands of different “first-time readers.” Every request looks legitimate, and every session appears new; so the Meter never ticks down.

This means that AI systems can summarize and redistribute your content, republishing it on aggregator sites, using it to train AI models, or even sharing it freely to individuals via AI chat tools.

The Solution: The Hard Paywall

Although our platform engineers are frequently blocking bots and AI crawlers, it is virtually impossible to block them all and eliminate any risk of AI stealing your content. The most effective way of preventing this is to implement the age old “hard paywall.”

A hard paywall removes the “preview” model entirely and forces a user to purchase a paid subscription in order to access any content. Under this model, automated scraping by AI becomes significantly more difficult and costly. While no system is invulnerable, hard paywalls dramatically raise the barrier.

Of course, this change is not about punishing or limiting readers, but rather about protecting journalism. Metered paywalls were designed in an era where the biggest threat was casual sharing. Today, the threat is automated content scraping at industrial scale.

If you’re currently using a Metered Paywall and have concerns about your content being scraped or stolen, you may want to consider switching to a Hard Paywall model. Our team can help you make this change at any time. Just email our support team at ops@our-hometown.com to get started!

The post The Metered Paywall Problem in the Age of AI first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Our-Hometown invites you to join us for a LIVE WEBINAR highlighting our Digital Initiative program on September 4th at 1PM Eastern!

We are honored to be joined by special guest Betsy Edwards, the Executive Director of the Virginia Press Association (VPA), who will share her perspective on how the program has helped news publishers in Virginia, as well as answer questions from the audience.

The Digital Initiative program aims to assist newspaper publications nationwide by offering affordable web solutions and revenue opportunities through a partnership with local press associations and independent publishers.

Key benefits of the program are listed below:

• Offer members a high-value digital solution with no setup costs
• “Digital Initiative” discount for your members
  • 100% off setup costs for basic website
  • 50% off monthly costs first year
  • 10% “Association Discount” continues after first year indefinitely
• White-label or co-branded initiative puts your association front and center
• Easy onboarding for any size newspaper
• Trackable results and ongoing tech support

Newspapers who enroll in the program are entitled to a modern, mobile-friendly website designed on Our-Hometown’s WordPress Platform and equipped with a variety of features and plugins to help grow your audience and introduce additional revenue streams.

This webinar is free to attend. Please fill out the form below to register, or click the button below to join on the day of the webinar!

The post Register for a LIVE WEBINAR on Our-Hometown’s Digital Initiative on September 4th first appeared on Our-Hometown.

One of the most powerful aspects of the Block Editor is the ability to use multiple different types of blocks together to create a more dynamic final product without the need to learn how to code or design pages in photoshop. All of the tools you need are available right in the Block Editor!

Follow along as our host walks the audience through various different ways to format and present text in the Block Editor, as well as how to combine these elements effectively to create more compelling page layouts. Headings, Paragraphs, Buttons, Tables, Drop Caps — you name it, we’ve got you covered!

As always, this webinar is available to Our-Hometown customers at no cost! Just fill out the form below to register and keep an eye on your email for a link to join the webinar on the morning of May 16th!

The post Block Editor Overview: Creative Text Layouts on May 16th, 11AM EST first appeared on Our-Hometown.

The Block Editor makes adding media to your post, page or article easier than ever — whether that is a simple photo, a complete photo gallery, or more advanced Cover Image style block that you can add text on top of.

The Block Editor‘s formatting options allow for complete customization for every image or piece of media you add, including ratios, scaling, background colors, text colors and more!

There is a lot to cover on the topic; so we’d love for you to join us for this Friday’s LIVE WEBINAR. There is no cost to attend! Just fill out the brief form below to register.

The post Block Editor Overview: Media and Images on May 2nd, 11AM EST first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Block Patterns are a pre-arranged set of Blocks saved as a template that you can quickly re-use with the click of a button rather than creating each block individually. Not only can this feature save you a ton of time when creating Articles or Pages, it can also help you to ensure a consistent appearance across all of your content using the same pattern, and opens the door to using more complex and advance patterns made by other designers in the WordPress community.

There is a lot to cover on the topic; so we’d love for you to join us for tomorrow’s LIVE WEBINAR. There is no cost to attend! Just fill out the brief form below to register.

The post Block Editor Overview Part 3: Patterns on April 18th, 11AM EST first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Our team will help get you acquainted with the Block Editor‘s user interface, introduce you to the powerful block-building fundamentals and show you where you find traditional formatting tools that you’re more familiar with.

This crash course on Navigating the Block Editor is, as always, free for Our-Hometown customers to attend, and we hope to have some of you join us tomorrow!

The post Block Editor Overview Part 2: Navigating the Block Editor on April 11th, 11AM EST first appeared on Our-Hometown.

We’ve recently upgraded our platform to include the latest version of WordPress, as well as the latest versions of most of the plugins we offer. The core functionality has remained largely unchanged, but one thing is certainly clear: the Block Editor is here to stay.

The intuitive, block-based editor allows writers to quickly compose articles in an efficient manner with a live visual preview and access to a large collection of Blocks. These blocks allow authors to enhance their articles with everything from simple text formatting and images to more complex widgets and media integrations, such as embedded third-party content or YouTube videos.

This webinar will focus on the Block Editor and various ways it can streamline workflows in the newsroom, and how you and your staff can utilize these principles to get the most out of our platform. The presentation is free to attend — just fill out the brief form below to register!

The post Block Editor Overview for OHT Customers: April 4th, 11AM EST first appeared on Our-Hometown.

We will be performing routine server maintenance this weekend in the early-morning hours of Saturday, March 22nd. Due to the nature of this maintenance, all Our-Hometown websites and services will be offline for a brief period of up to 30 minutes. To limit disruptions to your readers, we will begin maintenance at approximately 3AM Eastern Time on Saturday, March 22nd and expect it to be completed within thirty minutes.

During the maintenance period, our engineers will be optimizing server and database settings to ensure a smooth experience for readers following our major updates last week.

We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your understanding!

The post Our-Hometown maintenance this weekend; brief downtime expected first appeared on Our-Hometown.

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Our-Hometown’s original founder, Stephen Larson (December 10, 1953 – February 27, 2025). We invite you all to join us in celebrating Steve’s life and his revolutionary contributions to the news publishing industry.

Steve founded Our-Hometown, Inc. in the late 1990s with the goal of helping communities leverage new technologies to share their local news online and establish an online identity. At a time when the internet was just reaching the mainstream — long before the days of Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and other social media platforms — this innovative approach evolved into a turn-key, no-hassle solution for newspapers to share their stories beyond city limits and reach readers across the country.

Steve’s vision and understanding of the importance of online publishing set the foundation for Our-Hometown — now managed by his son, President & CEO Matthew Larson, who took over leadership nearly 10 years ago — to continue growing into the industry powerhouse that it is today, providing digital publishing solutions and dedicated customer support to over 300 newspapers across the country for nearly 30 years.

Matthew has published a beautiful tribute to Steve on his Facebook page, which we have shared below. Any publishers who may remember Steve from their early days on our platform are invited to leave a comment or share a memory in his honor.

The post Our-Hometown mourns the loss of founder Stephen Larson first appeared on Our-Hometown.

In this webinar, you’ll learn how to leverage Our Hometown’s new AI tools to efficiently summarize lengthy YouTube transcripts of public meetings, such as city council or school board sessions. We’ll demonstrate how to create time-stamped summaries that highlight key discussion points and decisions, providing valuable resources for journalists and the public. Additionally, we’ll showcase examples from publishers already using these AI-generated summaries to enhance their coverage of local government meetings.

Some examples of summaries created with these tools can be found below:

•  St. Ignace:  https://www.publicmeetings.org/articles/michigan/mackinac-island-city-council-meeting-summary-january-8-2025/
• SLC School District:  https://www.publicmeetings.org/articles/board-of-education/salt-lake-city-school-district-board-meeting-december-10-2024/
• Fort Myers Beach:  https://www.publicmeetings.org/articles/fort-myers-beach/fort-myers-beach-town-council-meeting-summary-january-8-2025/

Registration is FREE for Our-Hometown customers and members of our partnered Press Associations, and is $25 for the general public to attend. Fill out the form below to register.

The post Webinar Announcement: AI Tools to Summarize Public Meetings on February 6th, 2025 first appeared on Our-Hometown.