Baker Publishing Platform

Objective: Take a 50-year-old print business online, without losing what works

Baker Publishing has been putting buyers and sellers together in print for more than fifty years. Michigan Farm Trader is the most comprehensive monthly farmer’s buying guide in the state, mailed to more than 25,000 Michigan farmers working 160 acres or more. Michigan Truck Trader reaches more than 18,000 owners of Class 7 and 8 trucks every month. Carolina/Virginia Truck Trader, in print since 1975, does the same for truck and heavy equipment owners from Appalachia to the Eastern Seaboard. Farmers, haulers, dealers, and equipment builders rely on these magazines to move trucks, trailers, tractors, parts, and buildings.

Behind the scenes, though, the business ran on phone calls and a FileMaker database. Advertisers called in classifieds, artwork arrived by email, invoices went out by mail, and staff re-keyed everything. Baker Publishing needed a modern storefront where readers, advertisers, and staff could each do their part online, and it needed to work for three publications that are separate legal entities with their own branding, pricing, and bank accounts.

What Web Ascender Did

Web Ascender designed and built the Print Publisher Platform: a self-service commerce and content platform that is the shared foundation behind all three magazines. Each publication runs its own install of the single codebase with its own database, Stripe account, domain, and admin. Branding, pricing, and page copy are data, not code, so a new publication launches by changing settings rather than shipping a build.

For readers

• Online classifieds with photos, an advertiser page for every business account, and a featured ads page showing paid display ads at their purchased size
• A digital magazine reader with an in-browser PDF viewer, multi-edition selector, and issue-to-issue navigation, plus per-page download for subscribers
• Print subscriptions with online purchase, saved payment methods, automatic yearly renewal, and self-service cancellation
• Newsletter signup pushed straight to Mailchimp, a site-wide announcement bar for deadlines, and a contact form

For advertisers

• Place a classified in minutes - a multi-step flow with live character counters, phone auto-formatting, photo uploads, term selection, and a running total
• Place a display ad - fifteen ad sizes, one to twelve insertion commitments, artwork upload, and a live preview that matches exactly how the ad will render
• Pay online through Stripe by card or US ACH bank transfer, or by mail, with a configurable card surcharge on display ads and a public pay-an-order page for anyone holding an invoice number
• An account dashboard showing active ads, ads in review, unpaid orders, balance due, and account credit, with credit applied automatically at checkout

For staff

• An approvals queue for reviewing classified and display ad submissions, with approve, reject, and complete actions
• Orders, billing, and subscriptions management - admin-entered orders with custom pricing, mark paid, void, apply credit, ACH tracking, and subscription status
• Digital issue publishing - upload a PDF by date and edition and the platform compresses it in the background and puts it in the reader
• Total control of the site without a developer - a built-in CMS with rich-text content blocks and token substitution, a media library, keyed site photos, and branding settings for logos and every color on the site
• Configuration, not code - pricing, term limits, feature flags, Stripe test and live mode, and Mailchimp audience sync are all settings stored per install
• User and business account management with search, activity history, credit adjustments, and super admin, staff, and sales rep roles

Under the hood, the platform runs on Ruby on Rails 8 with PostgreSQL, Hotwire, and Tailwind CSS, with Stripe for payments, Mailchimp and Postmark for email, Ghostscript for PDF processing, S3-compatible storage for artwork and issues, and a full automated test suite.

The Outcome

Baker Publishing now runs three magazines on one platform. Advertisers place and pay for ads at any hour without a phone call, readers get the digital edition the day it’s released, and staff spend their time approving ads and closing the books instead of re-keying them. Carolina/Virginia Truck Trader is live on the new platform, with Michigan Farm Trader and Michigan Truck Trader following on the same codebase.

Because every publication is a configuration rather than a fork, the next magazine Baker Publishing wants to launch is a settings change away.