HardinLocal.com Goes Live — First Real Website Since 2018

Key Takeaways

• HardinLocal.com is live as of Wednesday, May 14, 2026 — the first real Hardin Local website since the original news platform that ran from 2014 to 2018. For the last seven years, everything Hardin Local published lived on Facebook, YouTube, or Linktree.
• What's on it: Election Interview library (every 2026 primary candidate, organized by race, with a Find Your Ballot tool) · weekly articles for every segment of every show · every past episode in a searchable archive · weekly rolling events calendar · direct-to-inbox email newsletter (one per week).
• Why it matters: content on Facebook and YouTube alone is at the mercy of algorithms. A website + email list means Hardin Local can reach the audience directly, without a platform deciding who sees what or when.
• Tech under the hood: self-hosted open-source Ghost on Phil's own server, custom in-house theme, and a custom email-delivery system designed to actually land in inboxes — not third-party newsletter tools.
• The membership ask: the site is free, but signing up creates an account that helps Hardin Local monetize the audience and unlocks the weekly newsletter. No paywall. Sign up at HardinLocal.com.

Summary

The lead story this week — and the reason the show opened with a live screenshare — was the launch of HardinLocal.com. The new website went live last Wednesday, May 14, the first real Hardin Local website since the original news platform Phil ran from 2014 to 2018. For the entire seven-year run of the podcast era, everything has lived on Facebook, YouTube, and a Linktree page. As of last week, that changed.

Rachel and Phil walked viewers through the new site on air: the Election Interview library organized by race (timely — the primary was happening as the show aired), the weekly articles hub auto-built from each Tuesday's broadcast, every past episode, the events calendar, and the direct email newsletter that bypasses social-media algorithms.

The closing CTA: bookmark it, sign up for the newsletter, send it to a friend.

Watch the screenshare tour: https://youtube.com/watch?v=o1Q_54D4auw Full episode: https://youtube.com/watch?v=bLUZL3xv0A8

Full Article

Rachel set up the segment: "First up, I've got something we've been waiting a long time to share. Phil and I have to show you something. I know I've been bragging on HardinLocal.com already, but Phil has revamped the website and it is officially a standalone website with all of the content that we talk about every single week. So it went live last Wednesday, May 14th. It's the first time in seven years that Hardin Local has had its own home on the web. For the entire run of this podcast, everything was live on Facebook, YouTube, and Linktree page. As of last week, that has changed."

Then Phil shared his screen.

The homepage. "What you're looking at right now is HardinLocal.com — you can get to it by just typing in HardinLocal.com," Phil said. The header is set up so the menu collapses on mobile or smaller desktop windows. The latest podcast episode is always featured at the top, alongside quick links to the happenings this week and the housing market info. "You can also watch on Facebook, watch on YouTube, wherever you want to watch it live."

The weekly article hub. "Every Tuesday night or Wednesday morning when I get all the videos edited, now we're having all that content created into articles. So this was last week's. If you click watch this episode, it's going to take you to a page where you can watch the edited version of the video. If you're not a big video watcher, you can also just read everything that we talked about in here. This pretty much talks about everything, and it will continue to be that way." Articles are auto-generated from the transcripts and reviewed before publishing — every weekly segment gets its own article, plus a pillar that summarizes the episode. "You can also then go and check out other segments and click to go just watch those segment videos."

The Election Interview library — the most timely piece during a screenshare on primary day. Rachel pushed Phil to walk it next: "I want you to click on Election Interviews specifically because the polls are open right now." The flow: click "Find Your Ballot," enter your district or precinct (Phil demoed with Cecilia, Republican ballot), and the site returns a page showing all the candidates on your specific ballot with interview videos for each race, plus a map with all 15 Hardin County vote centers.

The setup, in Phil's words: "This is segmented out the videos we've made by what you'll see on your ballot. So this one will show like the two Republic, the three different people that we did interviews — we don't, we did two of them — and it'll show you the videos. So you can kind of, they're shorter videos, but you know, they still take like 10–15 minutes. But you can watch them and you can, if you don't know who you're going to vote for, then you can check that out."

Rachel, in real-time on air: "I'm completely blown away by that. Because I haven't gone to vote yet. I've been fielding phone calls from family and friends talking about who it is I'm voting for, but there's a couple races that I'm still torn between, and you better believe the minute I get off this podcast, that's where I'm going to go. Because I can look at exactly who is in my voting ballot and then look at their videos side by side and kind of get a key on how they stand on the same political agendas. Very interesting. Incredible work."

Phil's note on what's next for the Election library: "Once the primary is done, I'll have it converted to the general election. So we'll put all the winners up, and then we'll give people that we haven't interviewed yet — that are in the general — a chance to be interviewed as well before the general election."

The article archive — browsable by topic, searchable by business name. Phil's example: type "Domino's on Publix" and the site pulls up the Business Buzz article from the episode where Nate covered that opening. "Not only can you watch the segment of this video, you can also read everything in the summary of what he said, as well as a full article if you're that interested in that topic. So over the next few weeks, I'll backfill all of our past year-long episodes."

The podcast page lists the last 10 episodes for easy browsing, and the full archive is searchable from there.

The membership piece — why it exists. "If you click on this and you haven't subscribed for free, you won't be able to see the page. In order to see the page, the recent pages, you'll have to click sign up, give us your name and your email. It'll send you an email. You just create yourself a free password. Then you can see everything on this site. We're not putting a paywall up or anything like that. It just helps us to be able to monetize our audience a little bit better and helps us to be able to send you a newsletter every week too, that'll have this data in it too, so you don't have to come look for it." Phil noted he's keeping the wall low for the first week so people can preview without an account.

The email newsletter — the real strategic point. "The email newsletter is going to be pretty cool. I think we're going to — it'll keep it to where, you know, Facebook's algorithms and some of these other things that always try to tell you what you can see and what you can't see — this will take that away. Where you'll be able to see it yourself, whatever you want, whenever you want." Rachel: "I'm nerding out about it. I'm super excited."

Under the hood — Phil's quick thank-you to anyone who builds: "Building this took a lot of late nights. If anybody at home wants to know what's actually under the hood, it's open-source Ghost — not like which, you know, some people are nerd out on that stuff. And it's actually on my own server. I've created my own theme and our email system that we're trying to use to make sure you don't get spammed and make sure you actually get it delivered. So we're not using any of these third-party things. So I'm pretty excited about it."

Scott Lucas — a former web designer himself — added unprompted: "I was a fellow web designer. I've built thousands of websites, funnels and blogs, and what you've done here with AI — I mean, the possibilities to create a website with AI is just — so you've done a great job."

The closing CTA, from Rachel: "Bookmark it, send it to a friend. That's how you make sure that you never miss what we cover, regardless of what Facebook decides to show on that day — because none of us trust the Facebook algorithms, okay?"

Why this is the lead story: when a community brand lives entirely on someone else's platform, that platform owns the relationship. A website plus a direct email list is the only way a local outlet can build something durable — because algorithms shift, and email lists don't. For seven years, Hardin Local has lived on Facebook's terms. As of last Wednesday, that's no longer true.

Go bookmark it: HardinLocal.com. Sign up for the free newsletter while you're there. Send it to a friend who didn't see it on Facebook.