Hi all,
Even before I start, I know that most of the hackers here go way beyond the standard "site with content" model when you innovate, nonetheless it would be very helpful to get some tips from you all on start a news website.
Here's the background; because to my profession I have an expert advantage when it comes to one industry, especially locally. Seeing some potential, I had bought a
very nice domain and started a news website on Joomla. Although I have never promoted it, search engines have picked it up and its captured some very fine keywords.
However, I am facing some specific roadblocks in this project where your suggestions will be of immense help:
1) CMS - Joomla is OK, but I am not too excited about it. I looked around the net but did not came upon any news-specific CMS. What CMS + addons will you recommend for the site?
2) Humans. I single handedly can only contribute to a limit. I am considering getting some more people in. Is it a better idea to get a copywriter who can reproduce articles based on my idea or someone with knowledge about the subject matter (who may not be be well versed with the fine art of web copywriting). Also, where do you get to recruit good people?
3) If you have run a news site, any other tips you may have.
Thanks everyone.
Around a week ago Bengtan posted his startup on the following thread. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=352987
http://www.prosepoint.org
He describes it as "Online Newspaper Software". It's opensource too. This might help you. Also there are a lot of new site plugins for Joomla.
But If you want a better CMS (in general), I would suggest Drupal. Joomla (and Mambo) lacks documentation. There's even sufficient tutorials to create some cool plugins.
Drupal on the other hand has a lot of plugins and clear docs. If you wanna create plugins for Drupal you won't need any tutorials. Just start off with the docs. It teaches you from the scratch and is good for beginners.
Apart, the best would be to try everything possible and then choose according to your and your users needs.
2.) where do you get to recruit good people?
If you wanna recruit people, but don't have a solid revenue base, try and get some freelancers working for you on a per post basis. Amazon Mechanical Turk has proved useful to a lot of guys who need small stuff done. Just toss a few cents and your job is done.
3.) If you have run a news site, any other tips you may have
CREATIVITY!!! CREATIVITY!!! CREATIVITY!!!
There are some data that you cannot have access to. A lot of large corporations have access to this data and offer APIs. So consider using external data too(mashup).
A lot of guys run new sites. Creative ideas are what would work if you wanna penetrate into a crowded market.
(shameless self promotion:) I developed a news site for a contest by Daylife. A part of the site was news search but there is another page where users can read news by their Delicious tags. Its at http://jaxly.com/deliciously
You'll find more of the content entries at http://challenge08.daylife.com
Also checkout the news mashups at ProgrammableWeb.
And there's another news site run by another HN member, http://jaanix.com which allows you to read news by assigning strength to keywords.
As I said before, it's just about how you can enthrall your users with your creativity (and the usefulness of the site).