Press releases arrive from local businesses. Legal notices come from city and county offices. Staff members send story ideas while they’re away from the office. Community organizations share event information, photos, and announcements.

The challenge isn’t receiving information—it’s getting it onto your website.

Copying and pasting text, downloading attachments, creating drafts, uploading images, and organizing submissions all take time that could be spent reporting and publishing local news.

That’s why Our-Hometown created Email-to-Post.

Publish by Email—No Copying and Pasting Required

Email-to-Post gives your publication a unique email address that automatically creates draft content on your website.

When content arrives in your inbox, simply forward it to your site’s Email-to-Post address. Within moments, a draft is waiting in your website dashboard, ready for review.

No logging in. No copying and pasting. No starting from scratch.

Just send an email and let the system do the rest.

Your Documents and Photos Come Too

Email-to-Post doesn’t just process the text in an email—it can also build a complete draft from supported attachments.

Attach a Microsoft Word document or PDF, and the system automatically extracts the document’s text to create the body of the article. If no supported document is attached, Email-to-Post simply uses the email itself.

Photos included with the submission are also carried into the draft automatically. The first image becomes the article’s featured image, while additional photos are placed within the article for editorial review.

The result is a draft that more closely reflects the original submission, preserving the text and accompanying images together while eliminating repetitive copy-and-paste work.

Three Ways Publishers Are Using Email-to-Post

1. Write Stories From Anywhere

Not every story starts behind a desk.

Whether you’re covering a community event, attending a meeting, or following up on a breaking story, you can draft an article directly from your phone using your favorite email app.

Send it to your Email-to-Post address, and a draft will be waiting on your website when you’re ready to continue editing.

It’s one of the fastest ways to capture ideas while they’re still fresh.

2. Simplify Legal Notices and Official Documents

Many publishers receive legal notices, public notices, agendas, and official documents through email from municipalities, attorneys, and government agencies.

Traditionally, those documents require several manual steps before they ever reach your website.

With Email-to-Post, staff simply forward the original email.

The system extracts text from supported Word and PDF attachments, includes accompanying photos when available, and prepares a draft for editorial review.

Better yet, you’re working from the original submission—not a copied-and-pasted version—making it easier to preserve accuracy while reducing administrative work.

3. Turn Press Releases Into News Drafts

Press releases remain an important source of local content, but they often require editing before publication.

For publishers using our optional AI-assisted workflow, Email-to-Post can automatically transform emailed press releases into news-style article drafts.

Simply forward the original email to your publication’s Email-to-Post address. The system creates a draft using the submitted documents and images, then applies the AI-powered rewriting process to produce a cleaner, publication-ready article for editorial review.

Editors remain in complete control, spending less time rewriting routine announcements and more time adding local context and deciding what deserves publication.

Built Around Your Existing Workflow

The best technology doesn’t force you to change how you work.

Email-to-Post fits naturally into the workflow your newsroom already uses. If your staff knows how to send or forward an email, they already know how to use Email-to-Post.

The workflow couldn’t be simpler:

1. Send or forward an email.
2. Email-to-Post extracts text from supported attachments—or uses the email body when no document is attached.
3. Attached photos are added to the draft automatically.
4. Review, edit, and publish when you’re ready.

That’s it.

Optional AI—Without the Technical Setup

Not every publisher wants AI involved in every submission—and that’s okay.

Email-to-Post works perfectly as a straightforward email-to-draft system. When you’re ready, you can also enable our optional AI-powered workflows for tasks like rewriting press releases into news-style articles.

Our-Hometown can even provide and manage the required OpenAI API access as part of the service, eliminating the need to create your own OpenAI account or manage technical configuration.

You decide when—and where—AI fits into your newsroom.

Technology That Supports Editors, Not Replaces Them

Email-to-Post isn’t designed to replace editorial judgment.

It’s designed to eliminate repetitive tasks.

Instead of spending time copying text, downloading documents, uploading images, and creating new drafts, your staff can focus on what they do best: verifying information, adding local context, and producing quality journalism for your community.

Automation handles the busy work.

Your newsroom stays in control.

Ready to Simplify Your Publishing Workflow?

Every publication receives its own dedicated Email-to-Post address, making it easy for reporters, editors, and office staff to submit content directly to the website.

Whether you’re forwarding a legal notice, emailing a story from your phone, or transforming a press release into a polished article, Email-to-Post helps move information from your inbox into your editorial workflow in seconds—so your team can spend less time managing email and more time publishing local news.

Reach out to us at ops@our-hometown.com if you’d like to learn more about getting this pipeline set up for your team.

The post Drowning in Email? Turn Any Message Into a Website Draft. first appeared on Our-Hometown.

1. The Recommended Standard: OHT PDF Export Preset

For the most reliable results, we provide a standardized Adobe PDF Preset (.joboptions). This file automatically configures all technical requirements, including compatibility modes, font embedding, and transparency flattening.

Installation Instructions:

1. Download: Save the OHT-PDF-Export.zip file to your workstation.
2. Extract: Locate the ZIP file on your computer and double-click (or right-click and select “Extract”) to reveal the OHT-PDF-Export.joboptions file inside.
3. Load: In Adobe InDesign, navigate to File > Adobe PDF Presets > Define…
4. Import: Click Load, select the downloaded file, and click Done.

Usage: When exporting your final layout, go to File > Export, select Adobe PDF (Print), and choose “OHT PDF Export” from the Adobe PDF Preset dropdown menu.

2. Manual Configuration & Audit Guidelines

If you are incorporating our requirements into an existing custom workflow, please audit your settings to ensure they match the following specifications:

General Specifications

• Compatibility: Must be set to Acrobat 4 (PDF 1.3).
  • Technical Note: This legacy standard ensures that text layers remain accessible to our extraction tools without being obscured by modern transparency containers.
• Export Layers: Set to Visible Layers. This prevents non-printing “slug” or “pasteboard” content from interfering with the extraction of the text elements.

Compression & Image Handling

• Compression: Use Bicubic Downsampling to 300 ppi with Maximum JPEG Quality.
• Crop Image Data to Frames: (Default: Checked)
  • The Full-Extraction Option: By default, our preset is configured to crop image data to the frame to keep file sizes manageable. However, if you prefer that we extract the full, uncropped source photo for use on your website, simply uncheck this box. This allows our system to access the entire original photograph even if it is tightly cropped in your print layout.

Font & Transparency Integrity

• Font Subsetting: Set to 0%.
  • Requirement: This forces the embedding of the complete character set, eliminating the risk of “garbled” text or missing glyphs during the conversion to web content.
• Transparency Flattener: Set to High Resolution.
  • Requirement: Since Acrobat 4 does not support live transparency, this setting ensures that text overlapping transparent elements remains “Live” and searchable rather than being rasterized into an image.

3. Content Integrity: Best Practices

To maintain the highest data quality, please observe the following “Do Not” rules during your production process:

• Do Not Convert Text to Outlines: Our extraction engine requires “Live” font data. Converting text to paths/outlines renders the content unreadable by our system.
• Minimize Hidden Layers: Ensure that “ghost” text boxes or old versions of stories are deleted rather than simply hidden behind other objects. Our tools may still attempt to extract data from overlapping hidden elements.

4. Managing External Advertising Assets

Display advertisements provided by third-party agencies often contain complex nested PDF data or non-standard fonts that can disrupt the extraction of surrounding editorial content.

• The Rasterization Standard: If a specific advertisement consistently causes PDF errors or contains “invisible” OCR text, we recommend opening the ad in Photoshop at 300 dpi (CMYK) and saving it as a High-Quality TIFF or JPG.
• The Result: Placing this flattened image into your InDesign layout removes all problematic background code while preserving print and web quality.

Technical Support — If you require assistance installing the OHT PDF Export preset or would like a member of our team to review your current export settings, please contact our production support department at ops@our-hometown.com.

The post PDF Export Guide: Optimizing for Our-Hometown Web Publishing first appeared on Our-Hometown.

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.

What is 2FA?

Standard passwords can sometimes be guessed or stolen. 2FA adds a second layer of protection by requiring not just something you know (your password), but also something you have (your phone or email access).

How to Log In with 2FA

Once 2FA is active on your account, the login process will look like this:

1. Enter Credentials: Log in with your username and password as usual.
2. Verify Identity: You will be prompted to enter a 6-digit verification code.
3. Submit: Enter the code from your email or app to gain access to the dashboard.

Your 2FA Options

You can choose the method that best fits your workflow from your user profile:

How to Set Up or Switch Your Method

You can update your security settings at any time:

1. Log into your WordPress dashboard and go to Users > Your Profile.
2. Scroll down to the OHT 2FA Settings section.
3. Select your Preferred 2FA Method from the dropdown menu.
4. If you choose SMS: * Enter your mobile number in the Phone Number field.
   • Note: US numbers do not require +1; our system adds it automatically.
   • By selecting this, you consent to receive security codes via text; message and data rates may apply.
5. If you choose Authenticator App: * A QR code and manual setup code will appear. Scan this with your app. More details are provided in the next section.
6. Click Update Profile at the bottom of the page to save your changes.

Setting Up an Authenticator App

If you choose the Authenticator App option for maximum security, follow these steps to link your device:

• Step 1: On your profile page, select “Authenticator App.” A QR Code and a Text Setup Code will appear on your screen.
• Step 2: Open your preferred app (Google Authenticator, Authy, etc.) on your smartphone.
• Step 3: Tap the “+” icon in the app and select “Scan a QR Code.”
• Step 4: Point your camera at your computer screen to scan the code.
  • Note: If your camera isn’t working, you can manually type in the provided Setup Code instead.
• Step 5: Once the account “[Your Website]: username” appears in your app, enter the current 6-digit code into the confirmation box on your WordPress profile to verify the link.

Pro-Tips

• The 30-Second Rule: Authenticator codes refresh every 30 seconds. If the code is about to expire (usually indicated by a blinking red timer in your app), wait for the next code to ensure it doesn’t “time out” while you’re typing.
• Switching Back: If you ever lose your phone or find the app inconvenient, you can always log back in (using a backup method or admin help) and switch your setting back to Email.

Frequently Asked Questions

What if I don’t receive my SMS or Email code?

• Email: Check your “Spam” folder and whitelist @our-hometown.com.
• SMS: Ensure you entered your number correctly without the “+1” prefix. Codes usually arrive within seconds, but network delays can occur.

Which Authenticator apps do you recommend? We recommend Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, or Authy. All are free and available on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.

Will I have to do this every single time I log in? You can check the “Remember this device” box during login. This will keep you authenticated on that specific browser for 30 days, so you won’t need a code every morning.

I’m locked out! What do I do? If you lose access to your phone or email, don’t worry. Please contact the Our-Hometown Support Team at ops@our-hometown.com for further assistance.

NOTE: Never share your 2FA code with anyone. Our-Hometown staff will never ask you for your 6-digit code over the phone or via email.

The post Enhancing Security: A Guide to Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Our-Hometown’s Digital Initiative is a program aimed at helping newspaper associations grow their members’ web presence with a modern, mobile-friendly website program that will help them attract new audiences and new revenue opportunities.

Publishers who are enrolled in the Initiative will get a brand new website designed by Our-Hometown, pre-equipped with all of the tools needed for growing an audience and bringing in some additional revenue.

First and foremost, Digital Subscriptions offer a brand new stream of revenue for any newspapers who don’t currently have a website or don’t offer paid digital subscriptions. Our Social Media Autopost tool allows publishers to immediately share their newest content to various social media platforms to help bring in some new readers, while our Newsletter feature allows publishers to reach existing readers in just a few clicks.

If this sounds like a program that could benefit your Press Association’s members, you can use the options below to learn more about the Digital Initiative!

Click Schedule a Meeting Today to set up a meeting with Our-Hometown’s team to discuss the program and how it can help your publication, or click Attend Upcoming Webinar to register for our live informative session about the Digital Initiative on September 4th at 1PM EST!

If you’ve heard enough and are interested in enrolling in the program, simply fill out the application below and our team will reach out within a few business days!

The post Join our Digital Initiative! first appeared on Our-Hometown.

The three pillars of accountability established by the Government in the Sunshine Act include the distribution of public notices, FOIA, and open access to public meetings. Serving as a neutral entity that is both free from outside influence and publicly accessible, newspapers have held the distinction of being a community’s primary source for public notices. These notices, in turn, have provided papers with a consistent revenue source that has helped maintain their operations.

As news coverage across the country shrinks, many communities have been left without a consistent source of local news. The UNC Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media defines these “news deserts” as “a community, either rural or urban, with limited access to the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information that feeds democracy at the grassroots level.” 

Based on 2025 reports by Northwestern MEDILL, the number of communities without a reliable local news source has hit a record high in the past year. 136 newspapers have closed in the past year, leading to 213 counties being considered “news deserts,” and an additional 1,524 counties only having one active newspaper.

There is some hope, though, as many publishers and local governments are taking steps to adapt to the modern media environment. In 2025, 80% of local news startups in the past five years have been digital publications. With new publications adopting a more digital-focused and cost-effective model, state and local legislators are revising many of their guidelines around public notices.

The past year has seen the passage of at least nine pieces of legislation directly referencing the lack of newspapers in specific communities, which now allows public notices to be published either on a digital news website or within a newspaper adjacent to or related to the region without a dedicated publication of its own. These laws span across multiple states, including Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, South Dakota, and Texas.

While some may see this loosening of guidelines around public notice publication as a step towards reducing the role newspapers play in community accountability, it is preferable to the move towards removing newspaper publication requirements entirely, as some states have begun passing. 

The main takeaway from this development is that digital news publications can now be seen as equally valid as print newspapers. This is further enforced by the number of states that have moved within the past year to begin developing digital databases exclusively dedicated to public notices. 

As these trends continue, companies like Our-Hometown are developing paths forward to both help legacy papers increase their digital publication capabilities through programs like the Digital Initiative and increase coverage areas to combat news deserts through their Public Meetings tools.

The post How News Deserts Impact Public Notice Legislation first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Whether it’s a distinctive locale such as “Mackinac” (pronounced Mackinaw), or a local councilmember’s surname, this new capability allows you to make sure the audio output reflects your publication’s authentic voice.

What’s New

A new Pronunciations section is now available in the WordPress Dashboard. From this screen, editors can create custom entries for any word or phrase that might otherwise be mispronounced. Each entry lets you specify how the word should sound, either through a simple text alias or using phonetic notation. You can preview the pronunciation before saving, and options are available for handling case sensitivity and word boundaries.

Once saved, these rules are automatically applied whenever an Audio Article is generated on your site, ensuring consistency and accuracy across all future recordings.

Why It Matters

Local newspapers often include names that automated systems can’t easily recognize or pronounce correctly. This update allows you to preserve the character and credibility of your reporting by making sure these names are spoken the way your readers expect to hear them. The result is a smoother listening experience that better reflects the identity of your community.

How to Get Started

To begin using this feature, log in to your site’s WordPress Dashboard and open Audio Articles → Pronunciations. Click Add New Pronunciation, enter the word and its desired pronunciation, and preview the result. Once published, your pronunciation settings will take effect automatically the next time an Audio Article is created.

Example

In this example, the editor has entered:
Word: Mackinac
Alias text: Mackinaw

The audio system will now pronounce “Mackinac” correctly as “Mackinaw” in all future audio articles. To regenerate the audio version of an existing article, you will need to edit and update that article to trigger processing of the audio anew.

Using Phoneme Mode (IPA)

For advanced control, editors can switch to Phoneme (IPA) mode and specify pronunciations using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). This is especially useful when the standard alias text still doesn’t produce a natural result.

For example, instead of entering “Mackinaw” as a text alias, you could enter its phonetic equivalent:
/ˈmækɪnɔː/

Here are a few commonly used IPA symbols that may help with local or regional names:

This standardized approach can be a powerful option for sites serving multilingual audiences or regions with distinctive dialects. Here’s a downloadable chart from the IPA for reference.

Available Now

The custom pronunciation feature is available immediately for all customers using Audio Articles. We encourage you to try it out and refine your publication’s audio output for your local audience.

If you have any questions or would like assistance setting it up, please contact our support team at support@our-hometown.com.

Would you like me to create a shorter version (2–3 paragraphs) of this same announcement for inclusion in your customer newsletter or Mailchimp campaign?

The post Custom Pronunciation Settings for Audio Articles first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Some state governments have recently begun attempting to implement new laws to mandate a digital-first publishing policy for public notices. Citing the waning relevance of print media, these institutions argue that digital notice publication would increase the accessibility of this information to the wider public.

Beyond the negative impact this change would have on their financial viability, many newspapers argue that digital-only public information would actually reduce the trustworthiness of this information. With government-controlled public information dissemination, facts can be skewed or omitted that otherwise wouldn’t be if published by an independent institution. Digital records are also much easier to change or outright remove than information that is physically printed and preserved.

This debate has prompted many states to come to a compromise where all records that are required to be published in a Newspaper of Public Record must also be made available on that publication’s website or within a statewide directory of notices. Currently, 20 states have outlined guidelines and requirements for the digital publication of public notices in partnership with newspapers. 

In order to maintain this compromise, it is more vital than ever for newspapers to establish an online presence. A thriving digital news website proves that a publication has the relevance required to justify its designation as a Newspaper of Record and that it is the best possible outlet for disseminating public information. 

Many statewide press associations have taken on a critical role in preserving the connection between public notices and newspapers. Part of their strategy in working with lawmakers to strengthen this connection has been ensuring as many members as possible are publishing digitally. As Betsy Edwards, Executive Director of the Virginia Press Association, explains: “We would not want those legislators to drill too deep and find out that there were a dozen newspapers that were VPA members that didn’t have a website because that kind of like ruins our argument quite honestly.”

Forty-five states, including Virginia, have also created digital repositories of public notices that are linked to each newspaper’s website in the state. , This removes some of the administrative burden of publishing notices online for individual papers while keeping them separated from government institutions. 

While public notices are just one element of a publication’s responsibility and business model, they serve a critical role in maintaining the public utility of each region’s newspaper. Adding digital public and legal notices not only helps to strengthen this connection but also opens these local institutions up to wider visibility and revenue opportunities.

The post The Fight to Save Public Notices Relies on Digital Publishing first appeared on Our-Hometown.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) recently announced it will end its print edition on December 31, 2025, becoming a fully digital publication starting in 2026. That’s a major milestone for Georgia media — but it raises an important question: what does this mean for legal notices and the AJC’s status as a “legal organ”?

Georgia’s Public Notice Rules

Under Georgia Code § 9-13-142, each county must designate a legal organ — the official newspaper that publishes required public notices like foreclosures, tax sales, and probate filings.

To qualify, a paper must:

• Be a printed product, multiple pages in length.
• Publish weekly for at least two years.
• Maintain paid circulation (not free distribution).
• Keep its advertising content under 75% of most issues.

If a paper stops printing, it no longer qualifies. That’s exactly what Fulton County decided in 2023, when its prior legal organ lost standing after going digital-only.

What This Means for the AJC

When the AJC goes digital-only in 2026, it will no longer meet the statutory definition of a legal organ. That means:

• The AJC cannot continue publishing official public notices under current law.
• Counties currently using the AJC will need to designate a new legal organ that still meets print requirements.
• Governments, law firms, and businesses will have to shift their notices elsewhere.

Could the Law Change?

There have been rumblings about modernizing Georgia’s law to allow digital-only newspapers to qualify. Bills in recent years have tweaked fees and circulation standards, but no change has been made yet to allow online-only publications to serve as legal organs.

Unless legislators act, Georgia will remain a print-first state, even as major papers like the AJC move digital.

Bottom Line

The AJC’s move to digital-only is historic, but under current Georgia law it means the paper will lose its ability to run legal notices. For now, public notices in Georgia remain tied to print newspapers — a reminder that while journalism is going digital, the law hasn’t quite caught up.

The post What Happens to Public Notices When the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Goes Digital-Only? first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Many newsrooms are overwhelmed by the constant flow of press releases from civic and government organizations. Manually creating new posts and copying content is time-consuming and inefficient.

We’ve developed a powerful solution to streamline this workflow, so your team can focus on what matters: reporting. Our new Press Release workflow integrates an email-to-post plugin with a custom AI agent to automate the process from start to finish.

How it Works

Simply forward press release emails to a dedicated email address—or set up an automated rule to do it for you. The plugin instantly pulls the email content and any attachments (like images or documents) and synthesizes them into a new Press Release post on your site.

You have complete control over the final post, with options to:

• Automatically assign an author and category
• Set a featured image
• Determine the post status (e.g., set as Draft for review or Published immediately)

This AI-powered system integrates with OpenAI’s chat models, and the prompt can be customized to your specific needs, handling formatting and content inclusion or exclusion. With a bit of tuning, you can generate a publish-ready post with dramatically less effort, eliminating the need for constant manual work.

Getting Started

To get started, your team will need to provide us with an OpenAI API key and a unique email address to handle the forwarded press releases. You can then simply start forwarding Press Release emails to the new address and let the plugin do the rest!

If you are interested in trying this out for yourself, please reach out to us at ops@our-hometown.com.

The post Struggling to manage a flood of press releases? first appeared on Our-Hometown.