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Quick, easy and powerful Web publishing

So you want to be a Web publisher? Thankfully, today’s technology makes it easy for anyone to jump in and produce a content Web site with a professional look and performance.

There are other sections of this site that detail how to build and host a Web site the “old fashioned way.” But if you are planning to build a news or content site that will be updated frequently, building a static site is probably the wrong way to go. You need dynamic Web technology, which means you create content in a database, and then the web site pulls from it to update the pages. While this sounds complicated (and until a few years ago, it was), there are a multitude of Web services and open-source technology that make this even easier than building and publishing a site the old way. (To learn more about the difference between static and dynamic Web sites, visit the Wikipedia entry on Web sites.)

Oh, but you don’t have a budget and don’t know code? No worries. Most of the services and technology detailed in this section are free. (And the ones that aren’t free are really cheap.)

This module will help independent Web publishers with a limited amount of technical ability publish a Web site, with or without a budget for hosting the site. Explanations provide clear analysis of why one system or process for publishing is different than another. It also provides brief explanations of why a publisher should consider some of the new technologies now readily available.

Choose your weapon

There are so many options available, the difficult part is trying to figure out which one is best for you. Every situation is different, so let’s break it down: First, identify the category that most closely fits your situation, then analyze the offerings explained in that section to find the best available solution.

1. You need something simple and you don’t plan to publish new content more than a few times a week: See the section on Easy Web sites construction, which is most appropriate for publishers who won’t have more than 2-3 people working on the site and need something in a hurry at no cost.

2. You want to publish a news blog or use a blog platform: See the section Powered by blog software, which is most appropriate for publishers who plan to publish several times a day and will accommodate publishing staffs from one to dozens of writers and editors. It will tell you how to get going with Wordpress and turn it into a content management system (CMS) that will power a professionally designed news site.

3. You want to build a professional news site with many types of content and many people on staff: See the section on Open-source CMS solutions, which is most appropriate for an organization that plans to publish many times a day and grow in scale over time. This section takes a look at a few of the dozens of options out there and takes a deep dive into Drupal, the most popular and powerful option for a free, open-source CMS.

4. But wait, there’s more! No matter which solution you choose, there are several extra add-ons and other goodies you should consider including as part of your Web publishing strategy.  Visit the section on Add-ons and extras to find the right accessories for your new Web content vehicle.

READY TO GO, OUT OF THE BOX

If you are looking for someone to take all the guesswork out of launching a news Web site, consider one of these solutions that aim to deliver a full news site experience immediately, depending on your needs:

Beginner - Neighborhood news blog: If you are specifically planning to create a neighborhood news blog, check out Neighborlogs, which is a free, hosted neighborhood blog platform with an integrated local advertising service. It is designed for local content entrepreneurs and organizations to document the news and information that matters most in their communities and gives local businesses a relevant, engaged audience for their advertising messages.

Intermediate - ProsePoint: If you need a more robust solution and like what Drupal has to offer for a news site, check out the Open Publish project or ProsePoint. Both are bundles of modules and customizations tailored for online publishers. Features support everything from basic news coverage needs to Web 2.0 trends, social publishing and topic hubs. ProsePoint is more basic but could get you up and going in a hurry. It features a newspaper and magazine centric data architecture so stories can be aggregated into editions, and editions are versions of a publication series. If you’re curious, be sure to check out the demo on their site: http://www.prosepoint.org/

Advanced - Open Publish OpenPublish has a starting kit of modules and configurations for the needs of publishers and integrates application program interfaces (APIs) from Reuters OpenCalais, Flickr and Yahoo, so it’s more advanced and robust compared to ProsePoint. Each component bundled in the distribution is well supported, documented and modularly designed according to Drupal’s architecture: http://drupal.org/project/openpublish

> READ NEXT ARTICLE: News Site in a Box

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