The Economist Magazine, Fox News Magazine, AL DÍA News, and Top7news. These are just some of the news & magazine portal examples written with the help of Drupal CMS. Do you have wonders, how to create a news website? In this article, you’ll find answers to questions concerning possible dev costs of such a portal and overview of its nice-to-haves.
Drupal: right tech stack
Drupal website development certainly has much to offer when it comes to the creation of a news and magazine portal. While there’s nothing perfect in this imperfect world, Drupal has its pros and cons as well. Nevertheless, its scalability offers great opportunities to small-to-medium sized businesses with a strong intention to grow their user base. In this piece, we’ve highlighted the list of nice-to-have features (modules) for a typical news portal. They can be surely modified depending on your unique idea and vision. All the data concerning functionality, design and time are based on the long-term experience of R-Style Lab company. When making an estimate, an average hourly rate for European developers that ranges from $30 to $35 was taken into account. This range is a happy medium for this region. While the mid-price segment is considered, there are surely companies that charge more. Nevertheless, European software developers’ hourly rates are well below those in the U.S. If you’re looking for more affordable vendors to bring your project to life, then outsourcing might be just what the doctor ordered! Basic features and dev costs UX/UI Be it a desire to maintain the physical newspaper experience, or a clean and uncluttered design with a great deal of responsiveness in mind, it would take around 100-150 man-hours to create a custom solution that would cost you from $3,000 - 3,500 to $4,500 – 5,250. Drupal also offers multiple pre-tailored themes (Open Publish 3, Gazette, NewsCenter, TheNews, for instance) that are worth to give consideration to. They are freely available or can be purchased for about $100 - $200. It will take around 20-50 man-hours to customize pre-tailored themes and cost from $600-700 to $1,500-1,750.
Articles and news display
This is quite an essential module that has an abundance of clickable items to guarantee smooth navigation from one article to another. Depending on the source topic, you can include:
Readers’ feedback
Today multiple readers have a soft spot for comments. If you want to create a news website, providing this option can serve as a tool to both keep readers engaged and trigger motivation of your journalists. You can offer comment options either to the registered readers or to anonymous users with certain validation requirements (captcha, for instance). The choice totally depends on your intention whether to build a community around your news portal or not. Based on that decision you can offer an option to leave comments only to the registered users. The dev time for this module with the use of built-in components will account for around 50 man-hours and cost you from $1,500 to $1,750. Social media sharing While 62% of U.S. adults get news on social media – according to Pew Research Center – providing this option today is a must-have. Facebook now is used by nearly eight-in-ten online Americans or 79%, Twitter – by 24% ones, Pinterest – by 31% of users and LinkedIn – by 32% [2]. Integration of sharing possibilities with at least some of these social networks will certainly play into your hands, especially if you intend to create news website with the highly engaged user base. Drupal offers social media sharing as a built-in functionality. Its configuration will take about 20-30 man-hours and cost you from $600-700 to $900-1,050.
News submission form
This feature can be one of the means to engage readers from the community by offering them a chance to forward to the editor, for instance, ideas and goings-on in their locale. This to-be news can be researched by the portal’s journalists and highlighted further on. The dev time will be around 30-50 man-hours depending on how much options your readers will be offered (photo, video or just text sharing). This will cost from $900-1,050 to $1,500-1,750. Podcasts In 2017, 40% of the U.S. population or an estimated 112 million over the age of 12 had listened to a podcast at least once [3]. While being always on the go, news portal readers love keeping an ear to the ground. Your developers will need approximately 60 man-hours to have this module done, which will cost around $1,800 – 2,100. Sum up Having made all the necessary calculations with the above-mentioned features in mind, we get from $17,700-20,650 to $24,600-28,700 for a solution with a custom design and from $15,300-17,850 to $20,160-25,200 for a solution with the use of a pre-tailored theme to build a news and magazine portal based on Drupal. These numbers are surely approximate and depend heavily on the features and vendor you choose. Make sure to take an unbiased look at the software development company that you’ve selected as high hourly rates do not guarantee the quality of the same level. Low hourly rates will allow you to save a little, but it may cost much more in the end. For example, at R-Style Lab, it will cost you from $17,700-24,600 to $16,320-23,040 correspondingly to build a news portal with Drupal. While the choice of an experienced vendor when outsourcing can be a hard nut to crack, the project’s success fully and completely depends on your decision!
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