Continuity first

Migration plan for owners

A practical path from anewspaper.net to this platform — preserving Herald Archives, Chieftain Archives, and weekly publishing habits.

1
Inventory what matters
Articles, obituaries, public notices, classifieds, print PDFs, and archive deep-links. No mass scraping without authorization.
2
Map categories 1:1
News, sports, schools, agriculture, opinion, and community land in the same reader mental model they already know.
3
Connect archives without copying everything
Keep external Herald/Chieftain hosts linked by year/month while new editions publish natively here.
4
Train the newsroom
Editors use Draft → Review → Published. Reporters write in TipTap. Events from the public stay pending until approved.
5
Soft launch
Staff QA on mobile, obituaries tone, notices accuracy, subscribe/advertise flows — then cut DNS when ready.
6
Keep the phone number & PO Box front and center
Readers still reach Auburn the same way. Digital is an upgrade, not a replacement of community access.

Inventory what matters