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 using Grids, Groups and other container blocks.

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 June 13th!

The post Block Editor Overview: More Text, Plus Grids and Groups on June 13th, 11AM EST 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.

The new Author Profiles feature creates a profile page on the website for each author where visitors can read a short biography and find links for the author’s social media profiles. Importantly, the Author Profile page acts as a hub listing other articles credited to the author, allowing readers to quickly find more content from their favorite writers or columnists.

In addition to the user-facing benefits, the Author Profiles feature also assists with Search Engine Optimization.

Join us on March 28th at 3PM EDT for a feature overview and live demonstration! Registration is free for Our-Hometown customers — just fill out the form below and expect an email invitation on the morning of March 28th!

The post LIVE WEBINAR: Introducing Author Profiles first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Our-Hometown will be hosting a LIVE WEBINAR on Protecting Your Content from AI next month on September 21st at 2PM Eastern.

With so much focus lately on new AI technologies and the limitless potential they represent for news publishers, one negative that has often gone overlooked is the risk of AI scraping your content without your permission.

One way that AI language models train themselves to remain current is to scrape news content from across the internet, making that information available in its database to share with users or applications who may benefit from it. For news publishers who are charging subscribers for access to that information, seeing AI bots scrape and share this information for free is problematic, to say the least.

In fact, some big names have already taken action: Business Insider reports that Amazon and the New York Times are blocking OpenAI’s web crawler.

Join us for a presentation on how Our-Hometown helps to protect our customers from this threat with various safeguards. This includes utilizing paywalls to protect your content, as well as additional options such as blocking AI crawlers and robots.

Fill out the short form below to register for the webinar. As always, registration is free for Our-Hometown customers and members of our Partnered Press Associations.

The cost to general public is $25.

The post LIVE WEBINAR: Protecting Your Content from AI on September 21st first appeared on Our-Hometown.

We’ve recently hosted live webinars on AI Generated Content and AI Generated Imagery, demonstrating how publishers can leverage the power of popular AI models like ChatGPT and DALL-E to produce written articles and related stock imagery for their websites.

Now, we’re ready to tie it all together and demonstrate how you can use the Our-Hometown WordPress Platform and our Reverse Publishing tools to quickly export any AI generated content for placement in the printed newspaper.

Join us on July 20th at 3PM Eastern for a complete overview of exporting your AI-generated content for use in the print edition. As always, the presentation is free to Our-Hometown customers and members of our partnered Press Associations. 

Just fill out the short form below to register now!

The cost to the general public is $25.

The post LIVE Webinar: Reverse Publishing AI Generated Content on July 20th first appeared on Our-Hometown.