
At long last, 2020 is coming to an end.
It goes without saying the past year was not quite what we, or anyone else, expected last January.
Despite all of the chaos caused by the Coronavirus and the uncertainty permeating throughout the newspaper industry, Our-Hometown has been able to make great strides this year, particularly in terms of product development and customer resources.
As a service provider for many publications already making the leap to a more digital-based service, Our-Hometown was in a unique position to take the reigns and help our customers and other newspapers to survive during the height of the pandemic.
Of course, not everything went exactly as we had hoped this year, but we’re thankful to be in a position to offer our expertise and assistance to our customers and other publications who could use it. We will continue to improve and expand our service, and we’re excited for what 2021 has in store.
Take a look through the timeline below and check out some of our most popular blog posts from 2020!

Creating Newsletters with Drag & Drop Composer
Our-Hometown StaffThe newsletter you are reading now was created on the WordPress Drag & Drop Composer. This tool is a new way of creating custom and unique…

Announcing our iOS and Android App – 2.0!
Our-Hometown StaffOur Hometown is happy to announce the release of our iOS and Android Applications (2.0) for mobile devices! We’ve been working with a few publishers throughout…

Our Hometown Introduces Audio Articles
Our-Hometown StaffAudio Articles allows visitors to Listen to the news, using cutting edge text-to-speech technology to convert your website’s articles into audio files that are played…

VIDEO: Digital Revenue Opportunities for Local Newspapers in 2020
Matt LarsonToday we had our first public webinar and discussed some of the top digital revenue opportunities for newspapers in 2020. We covered the following topics:…

Tools & Software for Working Remotely
Our-Hometown StaffDue to the COVID-19 outbreak, employees of many businesses are being asked or mandated to work from home to help prevent the spread of the…

Creating a dedicated COVID-19 Resource Page on your website
Our-Hometown StaffLocal newspapers will play an important role in keeping the general public informed throughout the COVID-19 outbreak. Readers will turn to their local newspapers not…

Staying Afloat During a Global Pandemic
Our-Hometown StaffThe ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to push many small business and local newspapers into dire financial straits. We aim to help our customers below by…

Introducing our new Business Updates Directory
Our-Hometown StaffThe 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…

Accepting donations on your website
Our-Hometown StaffThe newspaper industry has been flipped upside-down in a lot of ways due to the effect the coronavirus pandemic has had on our society. Understandably,…

Schools Out: Serving students during a global pandemic
Our-Hometown StaffSchools across the country have effectively ended their school year because of the coronavirus, but that doesn’t necessarily that mean summer vacation is starting early!…

Starting a Podcast: Publisher Interview with Tom Lappas of the Henrico Citizen
Our-Hometown StaffIt has been clear for some time that digital journalism is king in today’s world, but the COVID-19 outbreak has really accelerated the need for…

Discover what your stats are saying during the COVID-19 pandemic
Our-Hometown StaffThroughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve worked with publishers to provide tips on retaining advertisers, shared advice on new revenue sources like podcasts, and introduced innovative…

Thriving in a Digital-only Landscape: Publisher Interview with Tom Lappas
Our-Hometown StaffAs the COVID-19 pandemic continues, more and more publishers are being forced to discontinue their printed edition. Although some are hopeful that this will only…

Using the Gutenberg Block Editor
Our-Hometown StaffOur-Hometown recently upgraded our customer websites to the new Wordpress 5 release, which includes a major change with the introduction of the Gutenberg Block Editor. The new…

Auto-Renewing Subscriptions with Stripe
Our-Hometown StaffOne huge benefit to taking subscription orders through your website is the ability to enable Auto Renewing (or Recurring) subscriptions with the use of Stripe, our…

Virtual Conference Recap: Donation and Subscription Strategies During COVID
Our-Hometown StaffOur-Hometown hosted a Virtual Conference this past Friday, May 23rd, focusing on Donation and Subscription Strategies During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Our-Hometown CEO Matt Larson hosted…

Publish Interview with Jim Dickerson of Florida Weekly
Our-Hometown StaffEarlier this year, Our-Hometown assisted Florida Weekly in creating a statewide COVID-19 Business Updates Directory, which was launched alongside a total re-design of their homepage and nine community-specific…

Virtual Conference Recap: Helping Local Businesses from Shutdown to Re-Opening
Our-Hometown StaffOur-Hometown hosted another Virtual Conference this past Friday, featuring speakers Alison Kase of Rockaway’s The Wave and Kristen Weaver of the Wilson County News, who joined…

Virtual Conference Recap: Digital to Print Publishing
Our-Hometown StaffOur-Hometown’s Virtual Conference on Digital to Print Publishing took place this past Friday, with CEO Matt Larson welcoming Garden City News Publisher Meg Norris as a guest…

Feature Highlight: Automated Newsletter Coupons
Our-Hometown StaffIn the past, we’ve demonstrated How to Create Coupon Codes in Memberpress and discussed how you can then use those coupon codes in an e-mail marketing…

Feature Highlight: Paid Print Upgrades
Our-Hometown StaffNewspapers using Our-Hometown’s publishing platform have long been able to offer Free Online Access to their offline print subscribers using our Print Upgrade Membership system, which allows…

New Privacy Policy Popup for GDPR & CCPA Compliance
Our-Hometown StaffOur-Hometown is happy to introduce a small but important new feature to help websites on our platform comply with GDPR and CCPA Regulations: the Privacy…

Feature Highlight: Adjusting the “Related Stories” Block
Our-Hometown StaffOur-Hometown recently released an update introducing several improvements to the Related Stories block, including a new panel of settings you can use to customize how the…

Virtual Conference Recap: Producing High Yield Content with Live Video Interviews
Our-Hometown StaffOur-Hometown’s latest Virtual Conference on Producing High Yield Content with Live Video Interviews took place this past Friday. In this presentation, Our-Hometown CEO Matt Larson highlighted…

Virtual Conference Replay: Re-Thinking Paywalls (Part 1)
Our-Hometown StaffOur-Hometown hosted another Virtual Conference on Friday, August 21st on the topic of Rethinking Paywalls for Paid Print Newspapers. During the conference, Our-Hometown CEO Matt Larson introduced…

Virtual Conference Replay: Re-Thinking Paywalls (Part 2)
Our-Hometown StaffOur-Hometown’s upcoming Virtual Conference on Rethinking Paywalls for FREE Print Newspapers took place this past Friday. In this session, Our-Hometown CEO Matt Larson reviewed a case…

Announcement: Reverse Publishing now included for Full Service customers!
Our-Hometown StaffNOTE: This offer has been extended through the end of October! Our-Hometown CEO Matt Larson announced some exciting news at today’s session of Office Hours:…

Congratulations to NYPA’s 2019 Better Newspaper Contest Award Winners
Our-Hometown StaffOur-Hometown would like to pass along our congratulations to award winners in the New York Press Association’s 2019 Better Newspaper Contest — especially to our…

NNA Virtual Conference Leads Newspaper Industry
Our-Hometown StaffOur-Hometown’s President and CEO Matt Larson recently contributed the following article to the September issue of the National Newspaper Association’s Publisher Auxiliary publication! The article…

Virtual Conference Replay: Reverse Publishing from WordPess to InDesign
Our-Hometown StaffOur-Hometown’s latest Virtual Conference took place this past Friday, featuring one of our most popular platform features: Reverse Publishing! Our Reverse Publishing Suite allows publishers to draft…

Selling Products on Your Website with Shopify
Our-Hometown StaffMany customers at Our-Hometown have expressed interest in selling physical items on their website, and while we’ve always had the option of setting up a…

GDPR Privacy Policy Popup is now live on your site!
Our-Hometown StaffThe recently announced Platform-wide Rollout of the GDPR Privacy Policy Popup has been completed successfully and this feature is now live on your website. When visiting the website for the first…

Our-Hometown Virtual Conference: Getting Started with Video
Our-Hometown StaffOur-Hometown is excited to announce that our next Virtual Conference: Getting Started with Video will take place on Friday, October 16th at 12PM! Adapting to…

Virtual Conference Replay: Getting Started in Video
Our Hometown, Inc.Our-Hometown President & CEO Matt Larson hosted another live Virtual Conference this past Friday, this time focusing on incorporating video content into your digital product. Matt…

Limit active sessions with our new “Logged In” feature!
Our Hometown, Inc.Our-Hometown is happy to announce that we’ve released a new update granting our customers more control over subscribers visiting their website — most notably the…

Virtual Conference Replay: Getting Started with Audio Podcasts
Our Hometown, Inc.Our-Hometown’s latest Virtual Conference on Getting Started with Audio Podcasts took place this past Thursday, where President & CEO Matt Larson was joined by Tom Lappas…

Does Google News manipulate search results to prioritize national outlets?
Our Hometown, Inc.Back in September, Nature.com published an article titled, “Auditing local news presence on Google News” (Free PDF) by Sean Fischer, Kokil Jaidka and Yphtach Lelkes. The…

Virtual Conference Replay: Six Innovations in Local Online News
Our Hometown, Inc.Our-Hometown President & CEO Matt Larson hosted another Virtual Conference last week, focusing on Six Major Innovations in Local Online News developed by Our-Hometown and offered exclusively…

Our-Hometown to present for the Illinois Press Association
Our Hometown, Inc.Our-Hometown is happy to announce another Virtual Conference focusing on Increasing Digital Subscriptions, slated to take place on Thursday, December 17th at 10 am EST….

Iowa Newspaper Association hosts Our-Hometown!
Our Hometown, Inc.Our-Hometown is excited to announce that President & CEO Matthew Larson will be presenting for the Iowa Newspaper Association in an upcoming live webinar on December…

General tips for Internet Security
Our Hometown, Inc.After last week’s mandatory password reset announcement, we thought it would be an opportune time to share some general tips for keeping your online accounts…

Illinois Press Association – How to Increase Digital Subscriptions
Our Hometown, Inc.We’re grateful to the Illinois Press Association for their invitation to present some creative options for print and online publishers to help increase and retain…

Online Media Campus / America’s Newspapers – Webinar on “Rethinking Paywalls”
Our Hometown, Inc.We’re grateful to Iowa Online Media Campus for their invitation to present some creative options for print and online publishers to help increase and retain…
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