1. Use Two-Factor Authentication

Two-Factor Authentication is probably the single most powerful tool you have to protect against criminals trying to access any of your online accounts.

Two-factor authentication adds an extra step to the login process requiring a user to enter a special verification code that is dispatched to the account owner via SMS/text message or e-mail before logging in. These verification codes are only active for a limited time before they expire and can no longer be used to verify the login.

This is incredibly useful because even if an attacker has somehow obtained your username and password, they still will not be able to access your account unless they enter the special verification code.

Equally importantly, if you receive a verification code that you did not request, you can be sure that somebody has attempted to access your account. This would be a good time to create a new password and re-secure all of your online accounts.

One thing to note is that Two Factor Authentication works best when used with SMS Text Messaging. Many websites and services will allow you to have the special verification code sent to an e-mail address instead of a phone number. However, consider a scenario where the attacker already has access to your e-mail account — they would then have an access to the verification codes as well. We highly recommend using SMS Text Messaging for all Two-Factor Authentication purposes.

2. Use Strong Passwords

Outside of large-scale attacks where hundreds or thousands of people are targeted at once, the majority of “hacks” are the result of a criminal gaining access to an account that utilized a weak password.

You’d be surprised how many people out there still want to use the word “password” as their password!

Fortunately, most websites these days have at least some standards in place that will require users to use at least a medium-strength password. For example, we require all staff accounts to use a high-strength password. You’ve probably seen this all over the internet, where you’re asked to include a certain number of letters, numbers and special symbols in your passwords.

You should always use a high-strength password. While the standards may vary from site to site, most will alert you when your password is too simple or will provide a meter gauging your password’s strength as you type it.

It used to be recommended that people change their passwords every “X” months or years, but data has actually shown that the majority of people end up using weaker variations of the same password so that they don’t forget it, which ultimately reduces the strength of the password. As a result, this practice is no longer recommended.

3. Don’t Share Accounts/Logins

With the two most obvious tips out of the way, we wanted to shift our attention to some issues that may have been overlooked over the past couple of years as publishers frantically searched for solutions to all of the obstacles presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.

With many employees forced to start working remotely with little-to-no notice, it would not be shocking to learn that some liberties were taken to meet deadlines and ensure a smooth publishing process. Depending on your newspaper’s workflow, this could include things like sharing account login information for certain websites.

Take a few hours one afternoon to touch base with your team members and make sure that everybody is using their own credentials to log in to whatever services they need, rather than using any universal/shared accounts. If anyone has been sharing accounts, be sure to have them update their passwords.

4. Adjust Former Employee Accounts

The COVID-19 pandemic put many newspapers into a tough position financially and forced them to make some difficult decisions, which may have included letting go of some valued employees.

Make sure that those former employees who are no longer with the newspaper aren’t able to access anything that they shouldn’t have access to. This could include a staff account on your website or an email account in your system. Depending on the level of access the staff member had, this could also include things like having access to your financial reports, subscriber data or other sensitive information.

5. Manage Screen Share/Remote Access Software

Using Remote Access Software is another practice that became exponentially more popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it allows workers to connect to their work computers from home and access all of the files and data they would normally use at the office.

It’s a big win for technology, but it also opens the door for some potential security threats.

Every remote access software will work a little differently, but you’re essentially opening up your office computer to outside connections. A well-educated attacker can take advantage of this and utilize that connection to take over control of your office computer.

But that’s not the worst part. Once they have control of your office computer, they can do a lot more damage. For example, if your passwords are saved in your browser at work, then a hacker controlling that computer would be able to login to pretty much any of your accounts — Facebook, YouTube, Email, PayPal, Stripe — whatever.

Two-Factor Authentication may or may not be useful in this scenario because the computer being used to access your account (your office PC) may be considered a “trusted device.”

If you’ve utilized some Remote Access software during the pandemic but have since returned to the office and don’t use it anymore, we recommend uninstalling that software.

If you continue to use Remote Access software, take precautions and refer to their documentation for information on their security standards.

6. Keep your Anti-Virus and Firewall protection up to date

As a general rule of thumb, it is always a good idea to keep your Anti Virus and/or firewall software up to date to ensure you are protected from all of the latest known threats. This can also help protect you from malware and ransomware, and can help identify potential phishing schemes and other suspicious emails that are opened on your machine.

If you have any questions about the above or want to submit your own tip, send us an email at ops@our-hometown.com at any time!

The post Website Security Refresher first appeared on Our-Hometown.

In lieu of a traditional gathering, Our-Hometown is hosting a Virtual Conference tomorrow, May 22nd, at 1PM Eastern — and you’re invited!

The conference will focus on different strategies and techniques publishers have used to spark revenue from both standard subscriptions and reader donations, specifically during the ongoing pandemic. Our-Hometown CEO Matt Larson will be joined by guest speakers Tom Lappas of the Henrico Citizen, Cecile Wehrman of JournalTrib.com, and Kyle Jorrey of The Thousand Oaks Acorn to discuss these strategies, as well as answer any questions from attendees.

Matt recently spoke one-on-one with Kyle for an upcoming Publisher Interview and touched on the topic of donations. Kyle expressed that their plea to readers asking for donations has been a resounding success with nearly $10,000 being donated in just over a month. We’ll have more to share from Kyle’s interview at a later date, but check out the clip below for a preview of what’s to come in tomorrow’s conference!

The conference is FREE to attend, and we’d love for you to attend, ask some questions, and share some ideas of your own. Visit our Virtual Conferences page to Register or find more information about the conference.

The post Feeling isolated from fellow publishers? Join us for a Virtual Conference tomorrow! first appeared on Our-Hometown.

As a customer of Our-Hometown, your website’s stats are automatically tracked and recorded, and you can access them at any time at the link above. This includes all of the standard metrics used in monitoring your website’s traffic and measuring your growth over time, along with some more in-depth tools you can use to analyze your online performance. This data, of course, is critical to entice potential advertisers looking to make a safe investment, and is uniquely useful during a time when many advertisers are transitioning from a print model where such exact, measurable information like this is not available.

In the video below, we take a few moments to go over looking up basic stats like Visitors, Pageviews, and Average Visit Length, before demonstrating how to find these numbers for specific pages and articles.

Visitors Overview

The first place you should visit once logged into our stats website is the Visitors -> Overview page.

Your Visitors Overview page contains the basic stats that most clients will be interested in: Visitors & Pageviews. Of course, in most cases, they will be more interested in Unique Visitors and Unique Pageviews, since those values do not count repeat visitors or pageviews from the same person, and is therefor a more accurate depiction of your traffic.

Other stats on the Visitors Overview page can be further explored in other sub-pages of the Overview section. See a Visitor Log of everyone who is visiting the website and where they are viewing from, or view that data on a Real-time Map to examine your national or international outreach. See what kind of Devices visitors are using, and even what Software they are using — like their browser or operating systems.

Page Stats

To find stats for a specific page or article on your website rather than the website as a whole, you can use the options under the Behaviour section to examine this data. The best place to start is the Behaviour -> Page Titles page, which lists pages and articles by their title rather than URL, making it a little easier to identify them. By default, these pages and articles are listed in order of traffic from best to worst over the selected time period.

Again, you can find more specific information on the other sub-pages, such as Entry pages and Exit pages to see what pages are being linked to the most and what pages users are looking at just before leaving the website. Monitor Site searches to see what users are looking for on your website, and check out the Outlinks to see where users are being directed to by links on your website.

Meanwhile, the Acquisitions section is a great place to see how users are finding your site and to examine the effect of search engine results and social media campaigns.

The Date Range Selector

One of the great feature of Matomo is how easy it is to view stats for a particular time period.

Using the Calendar Icon on the blue menu bar near the top of the page, you can select any Day, Week, Month, Year, or any Custom Date Range in-between to view stats for a particular period. Once you’ve set the period that you want to view stats for, any stats you view will be reflective of the selected date range!

If you’re ever using our stats website and the numbers look way off, double check to make sure you have the correct date range selected.

Email Reports

Finally, Matomo offers the ability for you to set up E-Mail Reports for yourself, other staff members, or event clients to receive a periodic report showcasing your website’s performance.

To setup an Email Report, click the large Gear icon in the top right corner of the page to access your Settings menu, then choose E-mail Reports and click the button to create a new report.

You’ll choose how often the report should be the dispatched, and who should receive the report. You can also select what format the report should be delivered in — basic HTML, a PDF, or a CSV file. Finally, select which stats and information you want to include in your report.

If you are a customer and have never used our Stats Website, please send an email to ops@our-hometown.com requesting access today!

The post Discover what your stats are saying during the COVID-19 pandemic first appeared on Our-Hometown.

One obvious way that newspapers can serve students is by offering Discounted Student Subscriptions to college students or households with school-aged children. Many newspapers already offer subscriptions to students at a discounted rate, although that often only includes delivery during the 8-or-9 month school year. Show students and parents that you support the value of education, even while it isn’t on the forefront of a lot of minds under these circumstances.

One publisher has explored requesting additional funds through a grant that would allow them to give out up to 300 local newspaper subscriptions for free to families with students in the district! This is particularly exciting because many of those free subscriptions may eventually translate into paid subscriptions.

If you have the resources, your newspaper could also experiment with including more educational material. With everyone cooped up at home, there may not be many exciting news stories to cover live — but history, math, and science haven’t changed! Spice up your traditional “kids” page with something a little more geared towards exercising kids’ brains rather than a simple picture to color. Maybe even collaborate with local schools to produce a packet of worksheets for parents to use in their home “classrooms!”

Contests are a great way to get readers to engage with your website; so maybe try some education-related contests that students can enter from home. Ask them to write a short story and share it online, or build a science project and submit videos through your website — where the winner can win a free subscription or gift certificate to a local business.

If you can highlight the educational value of your newspaper, parents will buy-in — and they’d be even more inclined to do so at a discounted price like mentioned above!

The post Schools Out: Serving students during a global pandemic first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Truthfully, a page like this is something that you could keep live year-round, but the support has likely never been needed as much as it is needed now. Fortunately, in a lot of communities, the readers have really risen to the occasion and donated substantial amounts to their local newspapers. A handful of newspapers on our network have launched their own donation pages, and together they’ve raised well over $10,000 in a little over a week! Don’t be ashamed to ask for help! 

The Donation Form itself can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. Generally, since your goal is to get the reader to give you money, you’ll want to keep it short and sweet so that they don’t get bored and leave the page. Most customers collect the contributor’s name and email address (for e-mail receipt delivery), while others elect to include address and phone number as well. If you want to have some fun with it, you could allow a place for the reader to leave an encouraging note for your staff or for the newspaper industry in general!

Your donation form can be setup so that the reader can choose from a few pre-determined donation amounts, or select an option to enter a custom donation amount. Alternatively, you could just allow them to enter a custom amount from the start. Once they’ve entered a donation amount, “checkout” is quick & easy using your preferred payment gateway.

Once the Donation Form is live on your website, you’ll want to attract readers’ attention to the page. There are a number of methods we can use to get the word out.

1. Popup Message & Button

One effective way to draw attention to your donation page is to have a message popup on the reader’s screen when they visit the site explaining the dire circumstances that the industry faces and offering a link for the reader to contribute. You don’t want to be too intrusive to the point where it is annoying and drive readers away, but a popup message that only shows up once a week for a reader is a fair compromise.

2. Message & Button at the end of Articles

Another method of getting eyes on your donation page is to include your plea for help in as many areas as possible — again, without being too intrusive or annoying to the reader. We’ve found that placing a boxed message at the end of every article on your website is a great way to achieve this. This way, your message is appearing on just about every page that the reader visits on your website, however, it isn’t getting in anybody’s way and is only really visible once the reader has reached the end of the article they are reading.

3. Prominent Ad or Button Placement

A more straight-forward way of doing things would be to simply place a button or advertisement prominently on your homepage. Whether it is just a simple button or you’ve developed an actual advertisement-style graphic, putting a link front & center where readers would normally expect to see a commercial advertisement is sure to grab their attention.

While these are three solid techniques for soliciting donations, the list doesn’t end there. Make sure to put a basic link on your site’s mobile menu and even in the footer. Include a note or message from the publisher in a newsletter or upcoming edition asking for donations. And definitely blast it out on social media if you have an active following on Twitter, Facebook, or the like.

If you’re interested in setting up a page to accept Donations from your readers, please contact us today by emailing ops@our-hometown.com.

The post Accepting donations on your website first appeared on Our-Hometown.

The team here at Our-Hometown, Inc feels a responsibility to help our customers deliver relevant information to their readers as quickly as possible during the challenging weeks and months ahead. One area that we feel has been lacking amidst all of the chaos is the streamlining of information from local businesses and their operating status. With so many businesses, restaurants, bars, and offices either closed entirely or scaling back their hours or services, getting that information to members of the community is absolutely paramount. Our new product aims to assist with this issue: the Business Updates Directory.

Our developers and engineers were able to re-purpose our existing business directory platform to create this new “Business Updates” format, allowing local businesses to post real-time updates to the website. These updates can contain information such as new hours of operation, special precautions they are taking to keep customers safe, or whether or not a particular service is available. The latest updates are displayed in a feed on the homepage, but readers can click to view the entire list of updates, or can search for updates from a specific business.

Each Business Update listing doubles as a Profile Page for that business, allowing the poster to add photos, logos, contact information, and more along with their update.

Each update is also plotted on a map on the homepage so readers can quickly identify changes to business in their area.

For a full list of features and information on how you can implement one of these directories for your community today, visit our Business Updates Directory Product Page.

A live example of our Business Updates Directory is now available: CLICK HERE

Meanwhile, we have been working closely with FloridaWeekly.com to launch the BETA version of their COVID-19 Business Updates Directory.

Florida Weekly has invited businesses from all over the state to create an account and add their listing, and have already generated an impressive directory of updates. The many communities they serve throughout the state of Florida will benefit greatly from the work they are doing.

The post Introducing our new Business Updates Directory first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Visit the Florida COVID-19 Business & Events Updates Directory page to see it first hand!

1. Links & Resources

The most important thing you can do as a newspaper during the coronavirus outbreak is help to get information out to the public and become a resource that members of the community can visit to find answers to questions they may have. Provide links to trusted sources like your state’s Department of Health website, or the Center for Disease Control & Prevention COVID-19 homepage.

In this case, we’ve added links to some Florida Department of Health pages about COVID-19, as well as a link to some information about bridge loans for small businesses and a link where those who have lost their jobs due to the virus can apply for unemployment. We’ve also chosen to display tweets from the Florida Department of Health’s twitter account.

2. Business Updates Directory

The main feature of the page, though, is the Business Updates Directory, where local businesses have been invited to create an account and begin posting updates regarding changes to their operating hours, precautions being taken, disruptions in services or deliveries, or any other information that may be relevant during the outbreak.

The latest updates appear on the directory homepage along with a large map that plots each business that has submitted an updates, so that viewers can easily locate the nearest locations to shop.

Of course, visitors can also click to see a full list of businesses that have submitted updates.

3. Business Profile Pages

Every update that a business submits also serves a profile page for that business, where owners can enter more in-depth details such as the phone number, address, and website. Each profile page also includes a map with the business plotted, and the ability to post photos or logos to make the page standout.

4. Network Advertising

While the main point of this page, of course, is to serve the general public and act as a line of communication for businesses to get information to the public, your own financial well-being is equally important. Depending on the size of your community and the scope of your coverage, a resource page like this could generate a substantial amount of page views. Including ads from a advertising network like Google AdSense could help your bottom line.

The post FloridaWeekly.com launches new COVID-19 resource page and directory first appeared on Our-Hometown.

If you have any ideas of your own, feel free to e-mail us at ops@our-hometown.com and we’ll do whatever we can to help implement your idea.

SignalsAZ: Directory for Take-Out, Deliveries, and Specials

Our friends at SignalsAZ have created a special Directory for Take-Out, Deliveries, and Specials that readers can access to stay up to date on which local businesses are still open and what services are being offered.

They were able to sell some sponsorship ads on this page, making it a “win” for both SignalsAZ and the businesses they are informing on.

Click Here To View SignalsAZ’s Directory

FloridaWeekly: “We Are Here” COVID-19 Update Directory

FloridaWeekly.com has built a resource for their readers to gather important info about the virus itself as well as changes to area businesses and restaurants, reminding the community that they are there for them during these difficult times. Florida Weekly will seek out sponsors for this directory as well, and are also using Google AdSense to generate a few extra dollars from all of the traffic the page is expected to generate.

Click Here to View FloridaWeekly’s COVID-19 Business Updates Directory

Other Digital Revenue Opportunities

Additionally, you may be interested in some of the revenue-generating ideas discussed in our February Webinar. Many of these techniques could be used to help offset the losses suffered by fleeing advertisers or a lack of a print edition.

Click Here to View Our-Hometown’s February Webinar Recap

The post Staying Afloat During a Global Pandemic first appeared on Our-Hometown.

1. Posting Breaking News

You can create a “Breaking News” article the same way that you create any other article, by navigating to the Articles tab on your WordPress Dashboard and clicking the Add New button. Below the article textbox itself, you’ll see a section titled “Breaking Story” with a simple checkbox. Mark this checkbox to designate this article as breaking news.

Breaking News stories will display prominently near the top of the page under your website’s logo, and will include a red “Breaking News” banner in other article widgets.

A breaking news story will remain highlighted for exactly 24 hours after the publish date. (Similarly, you can mark an existing story as “Breaking News” only if it has been published within the last 24 hours.)

2. Setting an Article to FREE Access

If you’re posting breaking news related to the COVID-19 virus outbreak, you’ll likely want to make sure that your article is FREE so that the information is available to as many people as possible.

This can be achieved from the Edit Article page, or when publishing a new article.

Under the Category selection box, you’ll find a section titled “Paywall” that poses the question: “Is this content protected?”

Select “No” if you want this article to be free to all readers regardless of their subscriber status.

3. Broadcast Breaking News

Once you’ve published an important article to your website, you may want to consider sending it out as an e-mail blast as well to make sure your subscribers see the story as quickly as possible.

To do this quickly and easily, simply Edit your article and look for the box titled, “Broadcast Options” in the right column. This box will contain a simple hyperlink that read, “Share via Email Newsletter.”

Clicking that link will dispatch a simple e-mail newsletter containing only the article you’re editing.

Alternatively, you could create and send a more customized newsletter using the Newsletter plugin’s Drag & Drop Composer.

4. Keeping Breaking News on your Homepage

Although articles will only retain their “Breaking News” designation for 24 hours, you’ll likely want to make sure that these articles are visible for days to come.

Make sure the article is assigned to a category that is displaying on your homepage. Then, navigate to your homepage while logged in with your staff account. Each section of articles on your homepage is a different article widget, and each widget will have a link to the right of widget that reads, “Edit Order” and is only visible to staff members.

If you click this link, you’ll be able to adjust the order of the stories displaying in that widget. You can move your breaking news story up to the top of the list after newer content has been posted to make sure it remains on your homepage.

If you have any questions or need any help publishing your breaking news, please reach out to ops@our-hometown.com.

The post Using Our-Hometown’s “Breaking News” Features first appeared on Our-Hometown.

In any case, setting up Articles, Editions, and PDFs for Free Access is quick and easy.

Setting an Article to Free Access

If you just want to make a single article free, you can do so by editing the article.

Locate the article in question and use the Edit Article button to begin editing.

In the right hand column, under the Publish and Category options, there is a box titled Paywall that asks, “Is this content protected?”

Your choices are: Yes, No, or Use Category-level Setting.

By default, articles will be set to “Use Category-level Setting,” meaning the article inherits the setting from the category it belongs to. Some customers offer things like Obituaries or Public Notices for free regardless of subscription status, so articles assigned to those categories would be free with the “Use Category-level Setting” option selected.

Most articles will belong to paid categories, though, and the category-level setting will designate them as being protected.

You’ll want to override that setting and select “No” instead – indicating that the content is not protected, for any reason. This makes the article free.

Setting an entire Edition to Free Access

Setting an entire edition to free access is slightly more involved. We are essentially doing the same thing, but doing this article-by-article for an entire edition would be time consuming – so we’re going to do it in bulk.

Navigate to Articles → All Articles from your WordPress Dashboard.

Use the Filter Options to select the Edition that you want to set as free access.

This will return a list of stories that belong to the edition you selected.

From there, mark the checkbox column at the very top of the list to “Select All”, and then use the Bulk Actions drop down menu to select Edit, then click Apply.

This will bring up a Quick Edit window that allows you apply changes to all of these articles at once.

Under the Paywall box, begin typing the word “Free” – you should see a option drop down with the word “Free” that you can select to designate this article belongs to the “Free” paywall.

Then click update to apply this change to all selected articles.

This entire edition is now free access.

Setting a PDF Edition to Free Access

One final thing to go over is how to set a PDF Edition to free access. Fortunately, this is nearly the exact same process as doing it for a single article.

Begin by navigating to the PDFs tab on your dashboard, and locate the PDF Edition that you want to make free. Click edit.

Once again, you can use the Paywall box in the right hand column to select whether the content is protected.

The post Setting an Article, Edition, or PDF to Free Access first appeared on Our-Hometown.