Thanks to the Internet, staying updated with the latest news is quick and easy—provided, of course, that your preferred news outlet has a fast and responsive website. That’s why, if you’re starting work on your own media site, you need to deploy it on the correct hosting platform.
Today, we’ll explore the important factors to consider when choosing a solution for your project and see if the managed cloud VPS hosting is up to the job.
What is a News Website
News websites are the modern-day version of print newspapers. Instead of printing physical copies, the news is published digitally. The most limiting factor that used to govern the news – distribution – is no longer a prime issue.
The names that have dominated the newsstands for decades – The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Herald – all have websites where they regularly publish the latest news. They enjoy the fact that digital reporting doesn’t require printing and distribution expenses. At the same time, however, they’re faced with competition from thousands of smaller outlets that also publish news and battle for people’s attention.
From a user’s perspective, this is all good news (pun intended). The competition should improve the quality of reporting (at least that’s the theory), and it means that you’re never more than a couple of clicks away from multiple media sources offering different coverage and perspectives on the world’s most important news events.
However, it also means that if you’re trying to get in on the action yourself, you need to be well-prepared. Let’s go over some of the things you should consider.
Types of News Websites
In the strictest sense of the word, news websites are focused on one thing only – delivering information about the latest events. All the content must revolve around a factual representation of what has happened locally and around the world. However, this doesn’t mean that all news sites are the same.
In fact, finding the best web hosting for a news website may be tricky, given how many different types of outlets there are out there. You can classify them according to various criteria, but today, we’ll take a look at the ones that should have the most significant influence on your choice of hosting service.
Types of News Websites According to Reach
You must first identify what type of events you will cover and where they will occur. Depending on this, you may build:
• A regional news website
A regional website usually focuses on news in a particular city but can also cover a broader geographical region (for example, a county or a state).
• A national news website
If your headlines are concentrated around what’s happening in your country, you’ll be developing a national news website.
• An international news website
The priority here is global news, and the events are always covered from an international rather than a regional perspective.
Types of News Websites According to Content
Depending on the topics you cover, you may have:
• A general news website
You discuss everything from sports to crime and from politics to show business.
• A sports news website
Scores, news, and analyses from the world of sport. You can focus on a particular sport or cover a wide array of events in different competitions.
• A political news website
The news outlet may be leaning towards a particular political movement but can also be completely neutral.
• An entertainment news website
The focus is on all the latest showbiz news and gossip.
• A health and lifestyle news website
These outlets cover the latest health and wellness trends.
• A science and technology news website
This type of website targets people interested in the latest technological innovations and their influence on our everyday lives.
News Websites vs. Web Magazines
There is also some confusion around the difference between news websites and web magazines. On the face of it, they do roughly the same job – presenting visitors with information on significant current events and developments. However, distinguishing between the two is essential for steering your project in the right direction.
Let’s look at the differences.
News Websites
The sole purpose of a news website is to provide up-to-date, factual information on local and/or global current events. The design is usually fairly clean and functional, aiding the quick presentation of the facts through text, images, or videos.
When it comes to content, the priority is firmly on the five Ws of news reporting: Who? What? When? Where? Why? The articles tend to be aimed at a relatively broad audience and are usually fairly short. Bullet points and bold text are common, as are frequent updates, particularly when the article covers a developing news story.
Web Magazines
Web magazines usually focus on a particular sphere (for example, politics, sports, economics, etc.). The emphasis isn’t on the event itself but rather on its impact.
Instead of short reports of who has done what, you have long-form analyses, essays, interviews, and other content targeting people with specific interest in the subject. Editors usually have more time to work on images, videos, and audio, so you can expect heavier use of multimedia.
High-quality photographs and less conventional fonts and layouts make for more artistic designs, and there are fewer ads because the revenue model often revolves around a monthly subscription.
How to Choose The Best Hosting for News Website
We now have more media outlets than ever before. The flooded market means that many web hosting providers say that they can provide the best environment for your new project. However, it’s up to you to decide which of them can actually deliver on that promise.
Some of the factors you need to consider include:
- Speed – Users have become much less tolerant of slow websites and often abandon pages that fail to load quickly. Many factors contribute to loading speeds, but if you want to ensure excellent performance, you have to start with a host that uses modern hardware and keeps up with the latest technological innovations.
- Bandwidth – The more people visit your website, the higher your bandwidth usage. Some hosts advertise plans featuring “unlimited bandwidth.” In reality, the bandwidth cannot be unlimited. What you should be looking for is unmetered bandwidth. In such a setup, your host won’t limit your data transfer unless it goes up to the point where it will affect your service quality. If the configuration is properly done, this is the better option for you.
- Reliability – Every second of downtime results in revenue loss and has a number of other negative effects on your project. When you’re building a news website, however, users may also be left with the impression that you’re an unreliable source of information.
- Cost – Given the choice, you’d probably prefer to deploy your news site on a free hosting platform. However, this is not possible. Not if you’re serious about the project, anyway. At the cheaper end of the premium web hosting plans, you have shared solutions, which also don’t really fit a website that will attract any sort of meaningful traffic. The best option is to look at the VPS cloud hosting plans, which are more cost-effective than the shared deals because they offer dedicated resources and a number of other benefits.
- Features—Web hosting companies offer different extra features with their solutions. Some may be more useful than others. For example, you may need the ability to host multiple news websites on the same server. Free nightly backups and other security features would be a nice addition to the service. Consider your project’s requirements and check which hosting packages fit your needs.
Last but not least, technical support. In this day and age, the mere availability of 24/7 customer support is not enough. The best web hosts invest a lot of time and resources into assembling and training teams of technical support and customer care specialists who can resolve any issue quickly and efficiently.
How VPS Hosting Can Help a News Website
Take a closer look at its defining characteristics, and you’ll see that a properly configured virtual private server can provide the best web hosting service for a news website.
Let’s see why.
Stable Performance
Many web hosts can give you a hosting service that runs well when traffic levels are low. In fact, they can provide it for as little as a few dollars per month through their shared plans. The problem is that with numerous projects hosted on the same server, nobody can predict the performance. Even if your own site isn’t under heavy load, a traffic spike on another account could cause the entire machine to slow down.
This isn’t a problem with a VPS hosting plan. The entire virtual server is reserved for your site only, and you’re completely isolated from any other projects. As a result, you can expect much more consistent, predictable performance.
Better Loading Speeds
Speed is important. It’s critical for the overall user experience and can determine how likely visitors are to return and read the news on your site again. The performance also affects your search engine rankings, so running a slow website automatically decreases your visibility, which is particularly bad in the fiercely competitive world of news reporting.
Unlike a shared plan, a VPS gives you guaranteed resources. The memory and processing power are available all the time, so provided they are configured correctly, your website will load quickly, even under heavier loads.
Scalability
Dedicated hosting plans also have guaranteed resources and can handle significant traffic volumes. However, they’re not very flexible.
A dedicated server is a physical machine. Changing its hardware configuration means powering it down and asking a technician to swap actual components. It’s practically impossible to customize the server to your needs, and updating the configuration when those requirements change is very tricky.
This isn’t a problem with a VPS service, especially if it’s deployed in a proper cloud environment. Your virtual server is infinitely customizable. You can choose how much memory, processing power, and storage you’ll have, and you can change the configuration at any time with no more than a couple of clicks.
The setup allows you to start with a less powerful server, which will help you launch your news website and guarantee excellent performance during the first few months. Then, as your audience grows, you can gradually upgrade the CPU, RAM, and storage to meet your website needs while keeping the hosting bills at bay.
None of the other popular web hosting services give you this sort of flexibility.
Ease of Use
Running your own server, virtual or physical, needn’t be difficult. Managed hosting services allow you to enjoy the benefits of guaranteed resources and an isolated environment without configuring the machine yourself. You leave all that to your host’s technical support specialists.
They’ll install the operating system, set up things like the web server, firewall, and automated backup system. They’ll also be in charge of updating and installing security patches on all these components.
Meanwhile, you can focus on building your website. To help you out, you have a control panel for monitoring the server’s health and managing the accounts hosted on it.
Security
Your news website may not process user data, but this doesn’t mean security is less critical. Imagine, for example, that someone manages to compromise your hosting account and publishes fake news through your website. You may be able to delete the false information reasonably quickly, but it could take years to undo the reputational damage.
A VPS works as a standalone machine. It has its own IP address, and if full virtualization technology is used, it has its separate operating system and kernel. This means your website is deployed in a fully isolated environment and is more secure than those hosted on shared plans.
Of course, ultimately, the project’s security depends on you making the right calls when building and maintaining your website. And it all starts with the choice of a hosting provider.
ScalaHosting and News Websites
For almost two decades, we at ScalaHosting have helped all sorts of projects get off the ground. From personal WordPress websites to large, custom projects commissioned by government agencies, we have seen it all. News sites are also within our scope of operation.
We know these projects need a hosting environment with top-notch performance, excellent reliability, and impeccable security. Every aspect of our web hosting services – from the data centers hosting our servers to the software installed on them – aims to deliver just that.
Our managed VPS plans are the center of our portfolio and are perfect for your news website project. They’re deployed in a cloud environment, meaning they’re pretty much endlessly customizable.
From the very start, you can configure the virtual server hardware yourself—you choose how many CPU cores and how much memory and storage it contains. Then, as your site grows, you can upgrade individual components as and when you need them. This flexibility means that the service is both powerful and cost-efficient.
Because it’s a managed service, you don’t need to worry about the server’s technical setup. Instead, you’re given access to SPanel – an all-in-one platform that helps you manage your project through an intuitive graphical user interface.
The control panel has everything you need to build your website. You can use an auto-installer to set up a CMS, there are tools for managing things like files, databases, and emails, and you get dozens of features that make everyday development and maintenance tasks completely effortless. For example, integrating your website with the Cloudflare content delivery network and improving its performance is done almost entirely through the SPanel interface and takes a few minutes.
SPanel is built by ScalaHosting, so it’s developed with our customers’ requirements in mind. In fact, the project is almost entirely community-driven. A unique feature request platform lets users suggest new features and improvements, and the ones that attract the most interest are put into the development pipeline. Our customers’ feedback is invaluable, and we’re confident it will enable us to turn SPanel into the world’s leading web hosting management platform.
Conclusion
People like to get their news from reputable sources only. To create a reputable source, you need good reporters, quick reactions to changes and new developments, and a sleek website that conveys the information in a precise and easy-to-digest way.
You also need a platform to deploy this website. A properly configured VPS does the job better than any other form of hosting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What does hosting a website mean?
A: A web hosting provider offers the infrastructure and resources your website needs to stay online. It typically comprises hardware (processing power, memory, disk space), software (anything from the web server to paid or free SSL certificates), and the network needed to allow everything to interact together. Some hosts also package their accounts with a free domain registration for the first year.
Q: Can I use a WordPress website to report news?
A: Yes, a WordPress installation can act as the basis for a news website. There are enough suitable themes, and with the help of a few plugins, you can introduce the required functionality. However, to get the most out of the world’s most popular CMS, you must deploy it on a reliable managed WordPress hosting platform.
Q: How much will hosting a news website cost?
A: Web hosting expenses depend on a number of factors, but one of the most indicative ones is the traffic volumes the site generates. The higher the number of people visiting the website, the bigger the demand for hardware resources and the higher the cost.
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