Who is the Netrix iCMS news portal framework the best for, and why you should choose it?
What happens when the technology of one of your news portals has reached the limits of its growth, and in order to remain operational, you need to level up a bit? Netrix iCMS is an obvious and cost-effective choice in this case as well.
How do you know you need Netrix iCMS for a news portal?
As a publisher or a company
- you already have one or more websites, but need a more complex, more precise modularization system in the background
- you decided to strengthen your online presence, for which you need the proper technical background
- you are about to launch a new project and want a future-proof solution still working even if the site grows, and even if you have five different versions for a frontend in the meanwhile.
Is the free solution for a news portal really free?
One of the most commonly used content management systems today is open-source, free Wordpress. Small and medium publishers then add a variety of unique features - plugins - to get what they want. However, Wordpress-based systems tend to get vulnerable unless you upgrade them regularly, but upgrading a variety of plugins to suit your individual needs can be tricky: you cannot avoid hiring a developer, and it’s not even sure that the updated versions of the custom plugins will eventually work properly. No wonder that most newsrooms will sooner or later consider replacing Wordpress, without wanting to change the frontend they and their audience is used to.
An additional challenge of free systems is the lack of load optimization: there is no use in having a high-capacity server unless the system is able to make optimal use of it. Many times, if the news portal keeps growing, the increased number of visitors makes the site unavailable for hours. That’s why we are convinced that Wordpress is a great tool for static pages and blog-based interfaces, but the news portal framework is about something completely different: it certainly requires its own, customized, complex backend with a proper load optimization.
In many cases, the solution is to keep Wordpress as the frontend, but the CMS behind it will be a more complex, higher load bearing system - this way the newsroom won’t have to deal with the mess of a Wordpress migration.
And now, what are the benefits of the Netrix iCMS?
- Netrix offers a ready-made solution (the complete package can be installed within 1-2 days after subscription, with modules fitting the portal’s needs)
- This solution is more load-bearing, capable of serving multiple users, and is the perfect terrain for growth
- More complex functions can be added to the site, articles may arranged on the frontend according to rather sophisticated patterns if needed, as a good news portal is entirely content-driven
- Workflow becomes more convenient and practical, content producers can work together in a completely collaborative system, without having to email documents to each other
- In the past 20 years, Netrix has worked with a wide range of publishers, so they definitely recognize all the recurring, typical news portal needs: there is a video database, audio database, paywall, event calendar, voting, multilingual support, etc., but you may request any type of additional custom features to fit your newsrooms needs.
- If you choose to use the existing plugins, you don’t have to hire a web developer to make things work, but your monthly license fee includes a 24 hour support, helping you with customization, too
- The system works: in the past two decades, dozens of news portals have been running under Netrix. So you don’t just buy a product, but also purchase a kind of know-how, which is a guarantee of success.
How does all this happen in practice?
If you purchase a backend for an existing, perhaps even Wordpress-based system, an online project manager will set it up for you within a couple of days, and the support will help you customize it. If you are about to launch a completely new project, Netrix is more than happy to provide you with a frontend as well - it usually takes a month or two, with a completely unique design.