Steps to design a news website

Design a news website takes a number of important steps in order to be able to keep pace with the continuous development and competition among a large number of news websites. We are always happy to receive your inquiries regarding all types of website design.

First: Determine the specialty and name of the news site

Choosing the site name is one of the most important steps for success in creating a news site, and then determining the site’s specialization. There are many specializations for news sites, such as sports, cinema, technical, political, health, miscellaneous, and many other types.

You can combine different specializations on the news site, making sure to divide the site in an appropriate way to display these specializations so that they are easily visible to visitors. The site’s targeting must also be determined, whether covering news around the world or allocating it to a specific region, such as news from the Arab world.

Second: Purchase hosting and domain

After you have finished determining the name of the site and making sure to choose it to attract visitors to it, you can move to the next step, which is obtaining the appropriate hosting and domain for the process of creating a news website:

Domain name

Choosing a domain name depends on the name of the site, as you can search for it on domain-selling sites, which are many and varied, including some that sell the domain name for free if you purchase hosting on their company’s servers. First, after choosing several names and nominating one of them to be the nucleus for the name of your news site, you must start searching for the best one in terms of price as well.

If you want to start from scratch, you can choose a new name, so its price will be lower. If you want to go half the distance to easily spread your site, you can turn to expert domain sellers and buy a domain name that has a good Domain Authority, which is just an evaluation of the domain based on multiple factors.

You also need your site to have a good Spam Score, which gives you a result that indicates the extent to which this domain is exposed to and issues sending annoying and harmful emails to your site. Besides knowing if there are also good backlinks for the domain name, which will be very helpful for the popularity of the site.

Hosting

The next step is purchasing hosting, which is a step that must also be carefully studied. You can start large according to your financial capabilities, or start gradually until the site has a clear spread and then develop it after that. Important notes on purchasing domain and hosting:

The domain can be purchased from multiple websites specialized in this field. In many companies, the domain is free, if you purchase hosting from the same company.

The cost of hosting varies depending on the company. You can start with low-cost hosting until your project begins to mature, then purchase premium hosting in case of success and transfer your site to it, or develop the plan on the same hosting, if it allows this and is more efficient.

Third: Design and development of the template

In order to have a successful project, it is necessary to have a well-designed template and codes. It is well programmed. This is not a simple matter, and you need to choose a distinctive template that has been well-developed by a reliable company or developer if you are going to rely on ready-made templates. Or hire a professional developer with good experience to implement the design you want.

In fact, purchasing a ready-made theme from popular theme stores like Bekalia is easier than hiring a developer to develop the theme from scratch. However, each option has advantages that are not available in the other option. Purchasing a ready-made template is characterized by a good price, the ability to obtain the template and use it quickly, in addition to free technical support for a specified period.

But at the same time, ready-made templates lack the ability to effectively customize so that the template fits the nature and specialty of your website. And the nature of the plugins you use to make your site more convenient for visitors.

Fourth: Choosing the types of important additions to the news site

In no case can you do without WordPress plugins, as they are a key factor in the success of the process of creating a news website. For news sites, these sites are especially important, as they help team members accomplish their tasks. The important types of additions and their benefits include:

Security add-ons

Security additions are one of the most important features of any website, not just news. For example, you do not want to be surprised, for example, in the first month of your site’s launch by hackers attacking it and destroying it. That’s why you need a strong security plugin. You can upgrade to the paid version for complete security.

Backup add-ons

In the event that your site is hacked as a result of easy passwords, for example, easy access to the database, or being injected with malicious codes, or for any reason. You will need to add daily backups to your site.

Backup plugins ensure that if your site is destroyed, you will be able to restore it within a short time, without causing huge losses to you. One of the most prominent backup additions is Updraft, and you can upgrade to the paid version for daily automatic backups, perhaps several times a day.

SEO plugins

The third reason why add-ons are important is to improve the ranking of your site’s articles on search engines, or SEO for short. This requires a specialized addition and a good understanding of the benefits of SEO and how it works. The importance of the news website’s compatibility with SEO should not be overlooked.

One of the most prominent SEO plugins that you can rely on is the Yoast SEO plugin. The free version of which is sufficient and you will not need the paid version. The paid version may be important if you need technical support in case it has a problem or causes a problem for WordPress.

Contact and newsletter plugins

Contact and newsletter plugins are some of the most important plugins in creating a news website. The communication add-on specializes in everything that visitors want in terms of knowledge and questions. They send you their questions through the Contact Us form and wait for an answer from you and from the site’s support.

A good contact form plugin is WPForms Lite, the free version of which is sufficient. You can develop for the paid version, to create models such as opinion polls to find out what your visitors like about new additions to the site.

Newsletters are important to keep visitors interested in the latest news from your site. That leads to lower bounce rates and returning previous visitors. If your site’s bounce rate is low. This will raise your site’s ranking in Google search results. That increases their interest in your articles and raises them in the always-high rankings.

The newsletter service is usually associated with the newsletter-sending service. There are specialized companies, including those that give you 2000 messages per month for free, to those registered on your site. After that, we hope that your site will develop, have more visitors, and increase the number of registrants, and thus purchase a larger plan.

Newsletter add-ons, some free and some paid are linked to email services. The same plugin can be used as WPForms Lite. And linking it through the service for bulk mailing. If you want to develop this service, you can pay according to the number of subscribers you have in the newsletters.

Analysis and statistics additions

Your site needs to add an analysis linked to Google Analytics. It is very important to keep track of the development of your site. The most popular articles, and the most trusted writers among readers. Therefore, you benefit from this data to make appropriate decisions to raise the level of your site. An example of a Google Analytics add-on is Monster Insights, which is free.

Social media sharing add-ons

Most templates come with social media buttons. If not, you must choose a suitable plugin to participate in social media, which is a marketing campaign in itself without any payment.