How to Build a Professional News Website in WordPress (Step-by-Step Guide)

In an increasingly digital world, having a functioning computer is enough to share your knowledge and passion in the form of news, articles, or blogs.
Creating a professional news website is simpler than you might think. With WordPress, a news magazine theme, and just a few straightforward steps, you can begin sharing your passion with a global audience.

Why should you build a News website?

Writing something and sharing with your audience is always the passion and hobby. But having a news website is straight-forward business. You have to constantly cover your topics with latest updates, strategize in such a way that you get more user retention and relentlessly look for breaking stories.

So, having a hobby or passion is not always enough to fuel your news website, as you need to determined as well. From business point of view, here’s why you should build a news website:

1. Constant Demand and Never-ending topics: The news never stops. In every field, there’s something happening in the world. Meaning that you will always have fresh content opportunities to cover.
2. Strong Monetization potential: News websites live and breath by ads and other multiple revenue streams like Sponsored posts, affiliate links, subscriptions and memberships.
3. Highly Scalable to various niches: If you can, you don’t have to sit with same genre. You also can explore other genres and publish about them like Local News, Trending News and others.

Choose a Domain, Web Host and Install WordPress

There are several processes that you’ll need to look at beforehand, even before creating a website. Choosing a domain, an appropriate web host, and most importantly, installing WordPress is the key process to get started in creating your website.

Selecting Domain Name

Start by selecting a domain name like mynewswebsite.com or ournewswebsite.org. As per my research, the pricing for the domain name is hugely based on the demand of TLDs (Top Level Domains) like .com, .org, and .net and availability. But typically, you might have to pay around $10 to $20 per year for a domain.

Choosing Hosting for your News Website

Another step is to choose a web host. This is a platform where you store your website resources, including code, databases, and other important information that can be accessed via the internet. Many web hosting platforms like Hostinger offer a free domain name if you purchase their services.

Moreover, the pricings are affordable, especially if you purchase longer-period plans. Typically, you can expect the pricing to be around $2 to $15 for basic hosting and more for additional services.

Choose the Best Hosting Services for your website

Installing WordPress

Perhaps the easiest step in this whole process is to install your WordPress. After you’ve selected the web host and domain name, you just have to set up the core WordPress on your hosting platform, and then you can get started with your website. Or you can go to WordPress.org and download it and add it in your website folder.

Learn how to install WordPress in your local PC

Though the installation of WordPress now are generally handled by hosting providers along with the setup, within a few clicks. There’s no need to download and install WordPress and do a whole lot of things that are not required to do, especially if you are not from the technical field.

Choosing the Right WordPress Magazine Theme for your News Website (Key Criteria)

Now, after setting up the basics for the news website, it is time for perhaps the most essential step: choosing a news magazine theme.

It is necessary to make sure that you do not make the common mistake when choosing an ideal theme for your website. To put it shortly, you just have to focus on:

1. Responsiveness of the theme
2. Functionalities and Styling
3. Compatibility with the plugins
4. Features for Niche websites like News websites
5. Low Plugin Requirements
6. Up-to-date and dedicated support is available.

Besides them, there are many points that you need to focus on to make sure that you are getting the perfect resource for your website.

We recommend you use News Portal for your website, especially if you are just starting out on your WordPress journey. It looks at everything you might need to build a news website in WordPress, with great support and tools that are already built in for the niche.

Why News Portal by Mystery Themes Is a Perfect Choice

News Portal is regarded as one of the best WordPress themes when it comes to news websites. The theme includes all the necessary features, including multiple layout options, news tickers, and unlimited color options.

• News Portal is built for the news websites. The layouts available prioritize headlines, categories, breaking stories, and featured sections.
• It uses clean typography, structured grids, and smart spacing for long-form content, making it highly readable.
• Category-wise sections allow you to make your news website feel like a real media site rather than a blogging website.
• The SEO-friendly foundation of News Portal enables you to rank higher than your competitors bringing more readers.
• High responsiveness allows your readers to access your website from any device they have.
• Monetization matters for News website. News Portal allows you to effectively add ad-banners in strategical sections and enable other monetization options so that you can earn money alongside sharing your passion to your readers.

Learn more about News Portal WordPress Theme.

Step-by-Step Setup Using News Portal in your News website

Adding News Portal in your website is relatively easy and straight-forward process.

Simply, go to your WordPress Dashboard after all the setup is done, then look for Appearance from the side pane of the dashboard. Click on the Themes then Add New Theme in the upper portion of your screen.

Then search for ‘News Portal‘ in the search in the top right corner of your screen.

Install and Activate the News Portal theme from the prompted options.

After installation, you can use the ready-made starter sites from the theme by using Mystery Themes Demo Importer plugin. You can choose from multiple options (more if you buy the pro version of the News Portal) to quickly get started.

There are other ways to download the theme and install it. If you have no idea about it, you learn to install WordPress theme easily.

Monetization Options for News Websites

Although the News Portal theme doesn’t have built-in monetization tools like paid subscriptions or affiliate management, it does features support monetization through third-party plugins or codes.

Besides them, there are more ways to monetize your website with News Portal

• Display Advertising or Banner Ads enables you to add ad codes into multiple sections like Header, Footer or other given areas.
• Use Custom HTML widget codes to paste your ad scripts anywhere where the widget areas are available.

Moreover, the theme is highly compatible with most of the WordPress plugins, so that you can use them freely without any type of issues.

Tips for the contents in your News Website

After you’ve done everything for the website, now it is time to create a high-quality contents that will attract the readers like moth to flame. I’ll share some much-needed tips to help you easily kick-start your publishing journey for your passion.

1. Pick a Clear Publishing Angle (Do not be Generic): Find what genre you prefer, maybe its travel, fashion, finance or culture. Cover news and updates around them and build a core audience. If you have to, then you can expand the genres later on.
2. Don’t strive for ‘perfect’ from the start: Start publishing and learn what you have to change then do it in every posts thereafter. You will get to your best as the time goes by.
3. Simplify your Content System: Define clear categories, and daily posting scheduling for your news website.
4. Always write for Humans: SEO is very important, but if your audience likes it, so will the Google bots. So, do not worry to much about the SEO, write naturally and make it up later on.
5. Utilize Data you gain: Add Google Analytics or other tools on your website. Look what works from the data and double down on it.
6. Have some patience and play a long game.

Wrapping Up!

Building a professional news website is just chasing the complexity and generic content, it’s generally about your choices from the beginning. There are many crucial steps like choosing a proper news magazine theme, necessary plugins, a clean site structure and whole lot of passion for the niche.

Our given steps are necessary to have a proper startup, but for the long term you will always have to publish with purpose and try to connect with your readers.

Happy Publishing!