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A detailed step-by-step guide will show you how to make news site with WordPress from scratch. Buckle up; let’s get started.
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Starting News Site In 2022, Is It Worth It?
The first question you should ask is, “Why do you do what you do?” If you got your answer, here is the second question. “Do you know your niche or the audience for whom your news website will serve?”
If you are clear on those two questions, your choice to make news site with WordPress is definitely worth it. Today people carry mobile phones with them, not newspapers. People tend to be informed on the go; they prefer news to reach them via their email and app notifications.
It’s high time you create a news website that is unique, targeted, and scalable. You can either make news site that is global or local or that focus on specific topics like NFT, Fashion, etc. However, you have a fair share to attract a particular audience.
Making News Site with WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org – Things To Know.
Once you have decided to make news site with WordPress (which is an excellent decision because of the ease of creating websites), you should know the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.
WordPress.com is owned by a company called Automattic, whereas WordPress.org is a free open-source software.
WordPress.org
With WordPress.org, you will need a domain and hosting provider (which include a few initial costs). Hence, it’s called self-hosted WordPress. You will have complete control over whatever you want with your news website. It is entirely flexible as you can add any number of plugins or choose the best WordPress themes.
Your news website will have a custom domain, have full monetization options, remove the WordPress brand name from your site, and possess complete analytics & SEO control. You can create an eCommerce store or membership site with your website.
On the other hand, you have to take care of the maintenance and have monthly or yearly expenses for domain & hosting providers.
WordPress.com
WordPress.com comes for free upto 3GB of storage space. You cannot have a custom domain, and you cannot customize your site for free. Moreover, WordPress.com will run ads on your site unless you upgrade to a pro plan or purchase their No Ads addon.
You have limited theme options, plugin options, and monetization options. You have to pay to remove WordPress branding from your site. You cannot create an eCommerce store or membership site.
The pros are with WordPress.com, you don’t need to take care of any maintenance, updates, or backups, as the company will take care of everything.
Since WordPress.org provides flexibility and freedom to customize and monetize your website, we will show you how to make news site with WordPress.org in this article.
How To Make News Site With WordPress?
1. Choose Your Domain Name
Your domain name is how your site will be called and how visitors will reach your website. For example, multifoxtheme.com is the domain name of this website. Other famous examples are google.com, apple.com & amazon.com.
Do you have a name in your mind? Let’s see if that is available using domain name search.
Enter the name you want for your website with .com as an extension (xyz.com) and click search.
You can check for the lowest prices in different domain registrars if the name is available.
If the name is unavailable, you will have two options.
- Proceed with the same name but different domain extensions like .org or .in or .net
- Modify the name till it is available in .com domain extension.
We suggest you use a .com domain extension because it is more reliable. Try other names and related words, or add a prefix/suffix to the name you have in mind.
You can either purchase the domain from the domain registrars or wait for the next step and see if you can get it for free. The next step is to host your WordPress News website.
2. Select A Webhost
Web hosting is nothing but a computer server where all your website files will be stored (hosted) and delivered to your visitor’s web browser whenever someone clicks your web page links.
There are many hosting providers who will provide their servers for rent. Of course, you can host your website independently, but that takes a lot of time, resources, and technical expertise. It’s preferable to go with a hosting provider so that you can focus on building your website.
Choosing the right web hosting provider is essential since it will affect your website performance.
Our Top 3 Picks For The Best Hosting Providers Are:
- Hostinger: $2.99/month – Hosting + Free Domain
- Bluehost: $2.75/month – Hosting + Free Domain
- Kinsta: $35/month – Hosting
Few hosting sites provide you with a free domain for a yearly subscription. You can choose them if you wish not to spend on the domain externally.
Compare the plans and purchase the hosting plan that you need using your card details. Create your account on the web hosting providers with a password for login. Next, you have to install WordPress on your website.
3. Install WordPress
You can install WordPress with the Auto installer feature available in your web hosting provider.
For example, if you are using Hostinger as your hosting provider, log in and go to Hosting Account > Search Auto Installer and click it. From auto-installer, select WordPress and click Install. This will install WordPress for you.
Since WordPress is famous, almost all hosting providers will provide options to install WordPress directly, which takes only a few minutes. You can also install WordPress locally on your PC.
4. Choose And Install A WordPress Theme
Once you have installed WordPress, it’s time for you to choose the design for your news website. You can find many free themes and premium themes that have been pre-built to suit your needs. All you have to do is install a theme and start customizing it to your needs.
Check out our detailed guide on how to install a WordPress theme using different methods (both free and premium).
Our Top 3 Picks For The Best Free News WordPress Themes:
Our Top 3 Picks For The Best Premium News WordPress Themes:
5. Install & Activate Plugins
A plugin is a software added to your website for extra functionalities. For that reason, it is also called addons. Few WordPress themes offer a set of plugins along with their themes, like the Multifox theme that offers its free plugin called Multifox plus.
You can also install any plugin from the WordPress.org repository for free to add a specific functionality like a Contact form plugin, page builder plugin, SEO plugin, etc.
Here is a step-by-step guide for installing a WordPress Plugin.
Top 3 Free Useful Apps To Make A News Site With WordPress:
6. Create Website Pages
One of the best and beginner-friendly ways to create your website pages is to edit them with the Elementor Website Builder plugin. Install and activate the plugin from your WordPress dashboard as mentioned in the above steps. Once the Elementor plugin is activated, follow the below steps:
- Go to Pages > Click Add New
- A page will open, as shown below. You can now easily drag and drop the widgets from the left side and start building your pages. While doing so, you can see the changes in real-time. Once you are done, click the publish button to add it to your live site.
7. Creating And Publishing Content
The crucial part of making a news website is the content. Your content is your brand voice. Make sure you create new, well-written, trending content that is in-depth and informative. This will improve your website’s user engagement and session duration to perform well and reach more eyes.
Let’s come to the part of publishing the content.
- From the dashboard, go to Blog Posts > Add New. This will open up WordPress Default Block Editor, also called the Gutenberg editor.
Add your headlines, content, and images using the + icon and publish it once done. You can also add a featured image to your post, add links to images, change typography, segregate the articles based on categories and tags, etc. Once done, you can publish it to make it live.
8. Provide Access To A Team
In the beginning, doing everything by yourself sounds great. But as your website grows or to grow beyond a certain level, it needs a lot of work. Wouldn’t it be great if somebody like your friend can share your work in scaling up? Why not hire a freelancer to write and publish content?
You can do that on your WordPress news website. Add new users to your website and assign them specific roles on what they can do. Read this guide on how to add new users in WordPress and their roles in detail.
9. Monetize Your WordPress News Website
Once you see your news website growing, it’s time to monetize your website. After all, you deserve a reward for your hard work. There are a few different methods to earn money with your news website.
- Affiliate Marketing: The first thing you can do to earn money is through affiliate marketing, where you will place affiliate links on your pages (wherever relevant) so that you get a commission if your reader buys something using that link.
- Exclusive Content for Subscribers: You can turn your readers into subscribers with a monthly or yearly subscription, providing them exclusive content.
- Integrate WooCommerce: You can run an eCommerce store and sell products. Dropshipping with the best dropshipping product is one of the most profitable businesses today.
- Google AdSense: Display ads on your website by signing up for Google AdSense. Google will show ads per the user’s interest on your site, and you will be paid. Also, ensure you do not stuff your site with ads that result in a poor user experience because people need to read your news, not the ads.
Other Useful Resources To Make News Site With WordPress:
We understand that sometimes creating a news website with WordPress and customizing it might be overwhelming. Hence we have made a series of how-to articles and videos that will help you at different stages in building your news site.
Here are a few links with a brief:
- How to Create a Blog Roll in WordPress? – This shows you how to add a series of related blog links or website links in the sidebar or the footer of your website.
- How to Remove Proudly Powered by WordPress Footer Link? – Helps with branding for your WordPress news website.
- How To Unpublish WordPress Page, Post & Site? – Useful to block the visitors and search engines from viewing the page.
- How to Change Author URL Slug and Base in WordPress? – Give your authors recognition by creating a unique link exclusive for them.
- How to upload PDF to WordPress? – Give more information to your readers and improve your website quality and user engagement.
- How to Find Page ID and Post ID in WordPress? – Helps you to find and track the internal pages on your website.
Wrap Up:
We hope now you are aware of all the steps to make news site with WordPress. So why do you wait? Do have a look at our free WordPress theme with multiple demos that are conversion optimized for any website. The hugely customizable demos of this theme can be customized with various page builders o fit any business needs.
Here you can read our related article how to hide page title in WordPress and also know how to hide or show widgets on specific WordPress pages. If you are a new WordPress user these two articles is really helpful for you.
Are you confused about finding what WordPress theme a website is using, here is our free WordPress theme detector tool.
For more tutorials visit our blog. If you have any questions regarding creating a news website, leave us a comment, and we will get back to you.
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