Documentation

Get your platform
live and running.

Everything your team needs to deploy, configure, and operate PressGenAI — from first login to daily editorial workflow.

Platform Overview

PressGenAI is a white-labelled hyperlocal news platform. When deployed for your newsroom, it runs entirely under your brand and domain — your readers never see PressGenAI. The platform has three user roles:

🏭
Publishers
Configure city pages, manage branding, add editors, and set news categories.
📊
Editors
Review, refine, and approve stories before they publish on city pages.
✏️
Contributors
Community members who submit and draft stories through the contributor portal.

Stories flow in one direction: contributor submission → AI drafting assistance → editor review → publication on the city page. Nothing reaches readers without editor approval. The editorial chain of responsibility is preserved at every step.

Not a self-service SaaS. PressGenAI deployments are set up by our team — including domain configuration, branding, city page setup, and editor onboarding. You do not need a developer to operate the platform once it is live.

Onboarding Checklist

After signing your service agreement, your deployment follows this sequence. Most newsrooms are live and publishing within three weeks.

  • 1

    Kickoff call (Day 1)

    30-minute call with your PressGenAI contact. We confirm your city list, news categories, branding assets (logo, colours), and custom domain details.

  • 2

    Platform deployment (Days 2–5)

    We configure your white-label deployment: domain setup, brand colours, logo integration, city pages, and editorial routing. You receive admin login credentials.

  • 3

    Editor training (Days 7–10)

    Live training session for your editorial team covering the dashboard, story review workflow, and the approval process. Recorded for future reference.

  • 4

    Contributor onboarding (Week 2)

    We provide a contributor onboarding guide customised for your newsroom. You share it with your community through your existing channels.

  • 5

    First stories published (Week 3)

    Platform is live. Contributors are submitting. Editors are reviewing. You are publishing community stories under your brand.

First Login

After deployment, you will receive an email with your admin credentials for your PressGenAI publisher dashboard. The dashboard is accessible at community.yournewsroom.com/admin (or your configured subdomain).

On first login you should:

  • Change your admin password from the default
  • Verify your city pages are configured correctly
  • Add your editors as users with their email addresses
  • Review your editorial routing rules (which editor handles which city)
  • Submit a test story as a contributor to walk through the workflow end-to-end

City Pages

Each city page is an independently managed news feed under your main domain. For example, if your domain is citynews.com, your Maricopa city page lives at citynews.com/maricopa.

City pages can be added, renamed, or archived at any time from your Publisher dashboard. Each city page has:

  • A news feed of contributor-submitted, editor-approved stories
  • Assigned editor(s) responsible for story review from that city
  • News category tags specific to that community
  • A contributor pool of local residents registered to submit stories for that city

There is no limit on the number of city pages. Publishers covering a single city typically start with one city page and several neighbourhood sub-categories.

Branding & White-Label

Your platform is configured with the following brand elements during deployment. Prepare these before your kickoff call:

  • Logo file — SVG or PNG, minimum 200px wide, transparent background preferred
  • Primary and secondary brand colours — hex codes (e.g. #1A1F5E)
  • Custom domain or subdomain (e.g. community.yournewsroom.com)
  • Publication name / masthead as it should appear to readers
  • Editorial voice guidelines — used to calibrate AI drafting to your style

Brand updates after deployment — logo changes, colour palette updates — can be requested by email and are applied within 2 business days at no additional charge during the active service period.

News Categories

Categories allow contributors and editors to tag stories by topic. They also drive editorial routing — a "City Government" story can automatically route to your politics editor, while a "Business" story routes to your business desk.

During deployment we configure your initial category set based on your editorial brief. Typical categories include: Local Politics, Business & Economy, Schools & Education, Community Events, Public Safety, Environment, Sports, and Arts & Culture.

Categories can be added or removed from your Publisher dashboard. If a category is removed, existing stories in that category are not deleted — they are uncategorised until reassigned.

Managing Editors

Add editors from your Publisher dashboard under Users → Editors → Invite Editor. Each editor needs:

  • A name and email address
  • City assignment(s) — which city page(s) they review
  • Category assignment(s) — which story categories they handle (optional; editors can be general-assignment)

Editors receive an email invitation with login instructions. They do not have access to Publisher-level settings — only the editorial review dashboard.

Editor Dashboard

Editors log in to a centralised dashboard showing all stories routed to them by city and category. Stories appear in four columns:

  • Pending review — newly submitted stories awaiting a first read
  • In revision — stories returned to contributors with editorial notes
  • Approved — stories cleared for publication (scheduled or immediate)
  • Published — live stories, with view counts and contributor attribution

All editorial decisions (approve, revise, reject) are logged with a timestamp and editor name. The log is visible to Publisher admins.

Reviewing Stories

When an editor opens a pending story they see the full article draft, the contributor's profile, the city and category tags, and the AI-generated confidence score for factual consistency (where applicable).

From the review screen, editors can:

  • Edit the story inline before approving
  • Add editorial notes visible only to the contributor
  • Return the story to the contributor for revision
  • Approve the story for immediate publication
  • Schedule the story for a future publication time
  • Reject the story with a reason (contributor is notified)

Approving & Publishing

Approved stories publish to the relevant city page immediately or at the scheduled time. Published stories appear with:

  • The contributor's name and public profile link (byline)
  • City and category tags
  • Publication timestamp
  • Your newsroom's masthead — not PressGenAI branding

Editors can unpublish a story at any time from the dashboard. Unpublished stories are moved back to the Approved column and are not visible to readers.

Contributor Portal

Community contributors access a separate portal at your platform URL. They register with a name, email, and city affiliation. Registration is open by default; you can require editor approval for new contributors from your Publisher settings.

Once registered, contributors can:

  • Browse open story opportunities posted by editors
  • Submit original story ideas with or without AI drafting assistance
  • Track the status of their submitted stories (pending, in revision, published)
  • View and manage their public contributor profile and byline history

AI-Assisted Drafting

When a contributor begins a new story, they can choose AI drafting assistance. The process:

  • 1

    Select city and category

    Contributor picks the city page and news category for their story.

  • 2

    Answer guided prompts

    5–8 questions covering who, what, where, when, and why. Contributor fills these in from their own knowledge or reporting.

  • 3

    Review the generated draft

    PressGenAI generates a complete article in your newsroom's editorial voice. Contributor reads and edits before submitting.

  • 4

    Submit for review

    Story enters the editor queue. The editorial review process is identical whether AI drafting was used or not.

Editorial voice calibration: During onboarding, we configure the AI with your publication's style guidelines — sentence length, formality, story structure. The output reflects your voice, not a generic AI style. Voice calibration can be updated on request.

Contributor Profiles

Every contributor has a public profile page showing their name, city, a short bio (optional), and a portfolio of their published stories. Profile pages are linked from every published story byline.

Profiles build community journalist identity and create an incentive for contributors to maintain quality — their published bylines are publicly visible.

Publishers can disable public profiles from their dashboard settings if preferred, replacing named bylines with "Community Contributor."

Languages

PressGenAI supports multilingual deployments. The platform interface, contributor portal, and AI drafting can be configured for any Unicode-supported language.

Currently in production: English, Marathi, Hindi.

In active configuration: Spanish.

To enable a language for your deployment, email sameer@pressgenai.com with the language and any dialect or regional preferences. Spanish-language deployments can be activated within your standard onboarding timeline.

Custom Domain Setup

Your deployment lives on a subdomain or path of your existing domain. You will need access to your domain's DNS settings to add a CNAME record.

Steps

  1. Decide on your subdomain (e.g. community.yournewsroom.com or local.yournewsroom.com)
  2. We provide a target DNS hostname during onboarding
  3. Add a CNAME record in your domain registrar pointing your chosen subdomain to our hostname
  4. SSL/TLS is provisioned automatically — no certificate management required on your side
  5. DNS propagation typically takes 24–48 hours
; Example DNS record community.yournewsroom.com. CNAME platform.pressgenai.com.

If you prefer a path-based setup (e.g. yournewsroom.com/community), this is possible with a proxy/reverse-proxy configuration on your existing server. Contact us to discuss.

Support

All active deployments include email support for the duration of the service agreement. First-90-days onboarding support is included in every deployment at no additional charge.

  • Email: sameer@pressgenai.com
  • Standard response: within 1 business day
  • Urgent issues: mark subject line with [URGENT] for same-day response
  • Onboarding support: dedicated first-90-days support included

What to include in a support request: Your deployment domain, a description of the issue, any error messages you see, and the email address of the user experiencing the problem. Screenshots help.