A news website script for small local papers

• A headline and a breaking-news strip; search by category, tag and article text.
• Writing articles and uploading images; draft, publish at once or schedule for a later date.
• Administrator and editor roles; users can be disabled and passwords changed.
• RSS, an XML sitemap and NewsArticle structured data on article pages.
• Five ad slots, including a top banner, a sidebar and one below the article.
• A WhatsApp tip line: for the number written in the settings there is a button in the top bar, the footer and under every article; the reader’s WhatsApp opens with a message ready, headline included. If the number is empty the button does not show.
• Guidance for a publisher who has never used the program: a step-by-step setup guide, a “Setup %…” bar on every page, a “What is this screen for?” box on every screen; in the demo “Start with an empty site” and “Restore the sample data”. A “Share the site” page: a ready WhatsApp message, copy the link and an A4 poster with a QR code; the software sends readers no messages on its own.
• A PHP setup wizard, a SQLite database and an option to start with sample articles.

1. Write the article

   The editor writes the headline, standfirst and text, adds the image, and picks a category and tags.

2. Publish or schedule

   The article stays a draft, is published at once or is scheduled for a later date; the headline and breaking-news marks arrange the home page.

3. The site updates itself

   The article appears on the home page, the category page, in search, in the RSS feed and in the sitemap.

4. Manage ads and settings

   Categories, pages, the five ad slots and users are managed from the same panel.

Screen-by-screen guide →

• The live demo runs version 1.2.3 and is still a candidate; it has not been delivered to a client or used by a real news organisation. The articles and names in the demo and screens are made up; the news photographs are sample images.
• The live demo runs on PHP 8.3 and SQLite. Installation with install.php on a customer’s own hosting, other PHP versions and real devices were not tried.
• The demo is closed to writing, deleting and uploading; its sample data is set to refresh every six hours, and that interval has not yet been observed to run regularly on the live site.
• The interface is in Turkish only. There is no MySQL, membership, comments, multi-step publishing approval, automatic RSS import, e-mail or SMS.
• There is no automatic image resizing on upload; no load or performance measurement was done for high traffic. Google News or AdSense acceptance is not guaranteed.