This website template enables IMS to offer media partners a digital platform, where they can publish text, galleries, video & podcasts. The template is fast, secure, rich on features and modern – and built for journalists by journalists.
The template is excellent for journalists starting from scratch but also for existing sites that need more speed, security and/or other features already paid for.
Even though it is a ‘template’ it is important to stress that the flexibility of the platform is literally limitless. We are in the universe of WordPress – the most popular open source CMS in the world – and every element in the template can be modified or replaced.
For every interested IMS partner there will be a process of adapting the template to the partner’s reality and needs.
Depending on the dialogue with the IMS partners in regards to wishes, context and skills a website can be ready within 2-3 weeks.
The template offers some short-term benefits for the partner:
- inexpensive,
- if time is an issue it is possible to get the site up and running in less that a week,
- a platform built and tested by journalists (it works as a publishing platform)
- training videos,
- expert support from the developer (skype, chat, email, face-to-face).
And some more long term perspectives:
- A web based forum to easily meet and exchange experiences with other IMS media partners using the platform. Technical solutions, business models etc. can be exchanged and discussed.
- A new kind of relation between IMS partners based on frequent exchange of questions and recommendations around news publishing on a common platform. This can lead to more cooperation around journalistic projects.
Economy:
All plugins have already been paid for so the expenses to the actual development of the site can be kept to a minimum.
Costs to introduction/training depends of skills and if it has to be on-site or digital (according to the IMS/Danwatch agreement). But if the website-solution is used by several IMS partners, the on-site training/introduction could eventually be done by other IMS partners, which would encourage digital collaboration as well as editorial cross-country, -region or -border.
Hosting/server:
For hosting we suggest cloud hosting that makes it very simple to set up your own server anywhere in the world. Also with regards to backup, staging environments and uptime we believe this is the best solution. We can suggest a company if needed. Price example:
Vodhodnews.com in Cambodia is on a 80$ per month server placed in Singapore that should serve up to 200.000 daily page views. See other prices here.
Time frame:
A new site will take between 2-3 days and 3 weeks to set up depending on the amount of requested non-standard features and design changes. The first step will always be to establish a common understanding of time frame and end-product (like any web agency would do).
Training:
WordPress is used by millions all over the world. It is a quite intuitive system and the internet is full of updated “How-to”-articles and -videos about this CMS.
Having a staff member with IT skills is always a good thing, but it is not necessary. The day to day use of WordPress (and this template) is pretty straight forward.
That said having a super user on the ground – in house or external – is an advantage in utilizing the full potential of the platform.
In order to make the partners staff confident with the new platform we offer:
- a series of “How to”-videos explaining the more specific features of this platform,
- support on email, Skype-chat and Skype-sessions,
- OPTIONAL: 1 or 2 training sessions of 2-3 days on the partners location.
Feature list:
- Security – a security plugin (iThemes Security Pro) is paid for and set up
- Speed – the template is built on a fast theme and a fast and flexible page builder. Caching is set up. And premium image optimization is set up. We suggest using cloud hosting (like Cloudways.com).
- All the categories needed.
- Insert highlighted quotes and fact boxes in articles easily and where ever needed.
- Sign up forms for you preferred newsletter handler.
- Advanced ad administration.
- Advanced article search.
- Integration with Social Medias (links and sharing options + Facebook-commenting if requested)
- Supports Donation/Membership/Paywall
Optional features:
- “Popular articles” – let the audience see which articles are most popular.
- Making the site multilingual.
- Embedding of YouTube channel.
- Handling of podcasts.
- Push-messages.
Under the hood:
The site is build in WordPress which is the most popular open source CMS in the world (at the time of writing WordPress is under the hood of 53% of the worlds websites).
On top of that we have invested in a list of tested premium plugins. They have been handpicked with care emphasizing speed, stability, inter-compatibility and being backed by a stable team of developers.
- ACF Pro: Extending WordPress in many ways
- iThemes Pro: Security Plugin
- Oxygen Builder: Flexible and very fast page builder
- Restricted Content Pro: Membership / Paywall / Donations
- WP Gridbuilder: Gridbuilder with advanced facets and filtering
- Elementor Pro: Flexible page builder
- WPML: Multi language site
- Kadence Blocks Pro: Advanced Guteberg Blocks suited for media use
- Kadence Conversions (Beta): Popups, slideins etc with stats
- Add Pro: Add administration
- Short Pixel Premium: Image Optimization
- Happy Forms Pro: Form builder for creating quizzes, polls, taking donations and more.
- HappyFiles Pro: Organize the media library with folders
- Snapshot Pro: Makes it possible to backup the site to external servers.
- The Crocoblock suite: Extending Elementor in many ways
- And a handful of free plugins…
Security:
As mentioned a security plugin is part of the IMS News Template. The plugin is called iThemes Security Pro and its main features are:
- Two-Factor Authentication (App / email / backup codes)
- WordPress Brute Force Protection
- User Security Check
- File Change Detection
- 404 Detection
- Strong Password Enforcement
- Lock Out Bad Users
- Hide Login & Admin
Read more about these features here: https://ithemes.com/security/
All these methods relates to what you can call “security on user and application level”.
Statistically most breaches and/or takedowns happens on account of bad security on user and/or application level, but security on server level is also essential. We are not experts in this but are recommending cloud hosting with well known hosting companies having servers situated in Europe.
Several news sites using the IMS News Template are hosted on Cloudways. This is cloud hosting which gives at least one advantage: It is very easy (3 clicks) to copy the site to another server with another IP-address.
Also worth mentioning is that a premium backup plugin (Snapshot Pro) is part of the IMS News Template. So on top of the automatic backups created by Cloudways (or another cloud hosting) you can have daily copies of the site sent to servers of your own choice.