For running a successful online newspaper venture you will need a lot of tools which
will make publishing very easy and economical. These days we find a software for
about everything but there are tools available in the market which are free or open-source
and using them to publish your online newspaper becomes a child's play. You don't
need to know any html code or other similar coding language, by using newspaper
website builder you just need to copy paste or embed such scripts on your site and
CMS does the rest of the work. Here are some tools and services which will enable
you to publish with ease.
1. Web Traffic Analysis: One of the most popular services to keep track of your visitors is by using Google Analytics. This is a free service and signing up is very easy, after signing up you need to go through some easy steps like giving the site URL and after completing the steps you get a tracking code which you need to place on your site. After the code is placed you can start to see results within a few days. They offer in-depth analysis and you can keep track about not only how many visitors but where did the visitors come from, which was the most viewed section, from which region did the visitor come from, the devices used by the visitors and so on. Google also offers the webmaster services and you can integrate this account with other Google services. It's easy, fast and most importantly reliable. You can also opt to use other such services including the ones which give you a real time analysis of your online newspaper visitors.
2. Video Publishing: Publishers are often faced by the dilemma when it comes to video posting, some prefer to upload them on their own servers but the most popular way is to upload your videos on sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, etc. You can create your channels and upload videos there, best part is you also get the embed scripts from these sites which can be used on your online news publication. It offers very flexible embed codes which can be adjusted in size according to the video window you want on your news site. It also ensures that your site isn't affected by overload as the video is displayed on your site but behind the scene it's coming from YouTube servers.
3. Comments Plugin: Allowing comments for the stories posted on your online newspaper templates is also a very important and popular feature. It gives the readers an opportunity to share their views on the subject. You should ensure that your newspaper host has an inbuilt comment tool in addition it should have the flexibility to accommodate other similar tools like Disqus and Facebook. These tools also give you the flexibility to login and post comments using your Google, Yahoo, Aol, etc. accounts.
4. Social Media Sharing: People love social networking and whenever they stumble across an interesting article they immediately look for sharing buttons like addthis , sharethis . These plugins can be easily placed at the top, bottom or both the places of an article to give the readers the flexibility to share the story online on various platforms.
5. RSS Feed: RSS(Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is also a very popular way to publish latest site updates over the web. Sites like feed2js allows embedding RSS feed of other sites on your own site, by providing feed link which then provides JavaScript code that can be used on your site. This all sounds tricky but it's real easy to both bring other feeds to your site and place your news feeds over the internet.
6. Social Networks: It's now a trend to create Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus pages for your site as the viewership base due to this vast network is so enormous that you simply can't afford to neglect them. Platforms like these help you to spread the word in a manner which reaches the subscribed parties with similar interests for any particular topic. Business pages of various news portals are present on these platforms and sharing the news has never been so easier.
7. Email Newsletters: Newsletters help you to directly engage with your subscribers. It's very important to choose the right company for this job as it involves sending emails in bulk and all parties involved should follow the anti-spam policies. Having a newspaper host which provides inbuilt newsletter feature which allows you to integrate your account with such services so you can directly send the newsletters from your newspaper CMS account is a big plus considering the hectic task of uploading and managing email lists and latest news feeds. Some of the websites providing these services are mailchimp , constantcontact
8. Flip Books: News publishing can also be present in print or digital format. Often the replica of print version is converted into digital editions so users can refer to them online. These are also known as e-editions. Issuu.com provides such services for publishing online flip books. All these formats are very popular but the online newspaper is the one which is more flexible as the latest news can be uploaded in minutes and updated frequently which isn't possible with the print and digital versions.
9. Audio Publishing: Audios and flash are also often used on various newspaper templates. Radio station sites also use these and publishers often subscribe to free services from sites like Soundcloud and Audioboo to generate the scripts/code for such feeds.
10. Other Tools: Some other tools and services which can be easily used by publishers are:
Storify - is a great tool for pulling feeds from twitter, Flickr, Facebook into one place to tell a story.
Pinterest - is a smart way to share images and links.
Delicious - is a simple bookmarking and sharing tool.
Kizoa - is also a good source for making slideshows.
Evernote - acts as a digital notebook accessible from any online device with an internet connection, allowing you to save photos, audio files, web pages and notes for later use.
If you look around the internet you will come across a lot of similar service providers who offer both paid and free services. You should try to zero upon a host and try their services to see whether it helps you to make the news site better in any way. With the flexibility offered by the newspaper CMS software, publishers should also take full advantage and use these scripts on your news site to promote the daily in an effective manner.