Every community has its stories: the restaurant everyone is talking about, the volunteers placing wreaths at a veterans cemetery, the neighbor who shares a family recipe. In Carroll County, Maryland, Carroll Magazine has been telling those stories for well over a decade. Its app calls itself “your best choice in Carroll County, Maryland to find out whats going on,” bringing articles, events, recipes and coupons together in one place. It is built with AppPresser.
In this featured app spotlight, we take a closer look at the team behind Carroll Magazine, what the app does, who it serves, and why it is such a strong example of what happens when a WordPress site and a mobile app work together.
Who Is Behind Carroll Magazine
Carroll Magazine is the lifestyle magazine of Carroll County, Maryland, published from 83 East Main Street in Westminster and online at carrollmagazine.com. It comes out every other month in print and publishes daily online, covering the county’s restaurants, events, people and businesses. According to its publisher, more people read Carroll Magazine than any other publication in the county, and the magazine says it maintains the largest countywide distribution for a lifestyle publication.
The magazine is published by KōHN Creative, a full service marketing agency in Westminster that brothers Matt and Josh Kohn started in the mid-1980s. The company began as a graphic design firm, brought printing presses in house so it could design and print, and added web design and development in the mid-1990s and digital marketing after that. The App Store lists the app under Kohn Design and Printing, Inc. As KōHN tells it, Carroll County “was ready for a magazine targeted to the local lifestyle and community,” and the response since the start has been tremendous. Longtime editor Lisa Moody Breslin and associate editor Kym Byrnes helped the Kohn family launch it, and Kym Byrnes now serves as editor.
The magazine has adapted with its community. When the pandemic hit in 2020, its April and May issue had just gone to the printer, and the team kept the magazine on schedule and in readers’ mailboxes. It also developed new tools like a New Movers Guide and the Carroll Business Quarterly to help local businesses stay in front of their customers, and it has published special sections such as Women in Business.
What the Carroll Magazine App Does
The Carroll Magazine app takes the magazine’s mix of stories and local information and puts it in readers’ pockets. It is built for browsing, with articles and recipes shown alongside big, bright photos, and it works on both iPhone and iPad, where the larger screen gives features and recipes a true magazine feel.
Here are the main areas the app covers:
- Articles about what’s great in the community, from local businesses to stories like Wreaths Across America.
- Restaurants, to help readers find local places to eat.
- Events, where readers can look up what is happening and even post their own event.
- Recipes, which the app says is “like having an entire cookbook of recipes at your fingertips.”
- Faces and Places, the magazine’s photos from community events, where readers can find images of their friends.
- Coupons, with deals from local retail and business establishments.
The app is a natural extension of what has made Carroll Magazine popular in print. Readers have always loved looking through the magazine to see interesting stories and people they know, and the Faces and Places section brings that experience to the phone. Combined with events and local coupons, it turns the magazine into a practical everyday guide to life in Carroll County, not just something to read once and set aside.
The app launched on the App Store in March 2018 and is free on iPhone and iPad.
App Screenshots
Here is a look at the app. Use the arrows or the numbered buttons to move through the screenshots.
Test Drive the App
The best way to understand Carroll Magazine is to try it. Download the free app, read a few local stories, then look up this weekend’s events and find a coupon for a local business.
Key Features That Stand Out
Community Articles
Articles are the heart of the app. Each story opens with a large photo and a clear headline, covering the people, places and causes that make Carroll County special, like local participation in Wreaths Across America, which honors veterans. It is the same engaging, local reporting readers know from the print magazine, available any time.
Recipes
Recipes bring a taste of the magazine’s food coverage into the kitchen. Dishes like Somethin’ About Pumpkin come with photos and full instructions, and readers can browse a growing collection of recipes right on their phone, which is much easier than flipping back through old issues to find a favorite.
Read on iPad
The app is designed to look great on iPad, too. On the larger screen, articles and recipes read cleanly with big photos and comfortable text, giving readers an experience that feels close to paging through the printed magazine. It is a perfect fit for a lifestyle publication built around beautiful images and local stories.
At a Glance
- Free to download on iPhone and iPad.
- Local articles about the people and places of Carroll County.
- Recipes with photos, like having a cookbook at your fingertips.
- Restaurants, events and the option to post your own event.
- Faces and Places photos from community events.
- Coupons from local retail and business establishments.
Who Carroll Magazine Serves
The first audience is the residents of Carroll County. They turn to Carroll Magazine to see interesting stories and people they know, and to find out what is going on around their community. The app makes it easy to keep up between print issues, with daily stories, events and photos from community gatherings.
The app also serves local businesses. Coupons from local retail and business establishments help bring customers through the door, and the magazine’s broader work, from the Carroll Business Quarterly to its special sections, reflects a long commitment to helping Carroll County businesses reach their neighbors.
Finally, the app serves newcomers and visitors. Someone who has just moved to the county, or who is visiting for the day, can use the app to find local restaurants, events and stories that capture the character of the area. For new residents especially, it is a quick way to start feeling at home.
Technology Behind the App
Carroll Magazine is powered by its own WordPress site, carrollmagazine.com.
The app is built from WordPress, and WordPress drives it. Articles and events are published on the WordPress site, and AppPresser carries that content straight into the app, so updates made on the site show up in the app without a separate system to manage.
Looking at the site itself, these are the platforms behind the experience:
What Carroll Magazine Shows About AppPresser
Carroll Magazine is a great example of how AppPresser can bring a local publication to mobile. The magazine publishes daily on its WordPress site at carrollmagazine.com, where articles, recipes and events are already managed. With AppPresser, that same content powers a native app for iPhone and iPad, so every new story and event can reach the app without a separate publishing system.
That matters for a magazine that publishes in print every other month. Between issues, the app keeps readers engaged with fresh local content, and it gives advertisers and local businesses another way to reach the community through coupons and events.
It also shows how a design and marketing company can use AppPresser for its own products. KōHN Creative has been designing, printing and building websites in Westminster for decades, and Carroll Magazine’s app is a natural next step: a polished, branded app built on the WordPress site the team already runs. For any local magazine or community publisher, it is proof that WordPress and AppPresser can extend a trusted print brand onto the phone.
Congratulations to Matt and Josh Kohn, editor Kym Byrnes and the Carroll Magazine team on building an app that keeps Carroll County connected. We are proud to have AppPresser behind it.
Do You Want Your Own App?
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If you need help or have any questions, tell us about your organization and what you’d like your app to do, and we’ll get back to you with a clear answer on costs and next steps.