News websites — the News Desk

The Desk in one screen

Open News Desk from your sidebar. The top row is your queue — Drafts, In review, Scheduled, Published — with + New story and a Breaking button beside it. Under that sit the rooms you work in.

Dashboard → News Desk

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1. 1WriteHeadline, story, section, author — then publish or schedule.
2. 2Breaking barLive on your site in seconds, with no publish step.

Publishing your first story

Breaking news and the ticker

A breaking bar and a scrolling ticker are the two things a news site needs to feel alive, and neither needs a publish step. There are two ways to feed the bar: the Breaking button on the Desk opens the story composer with the BREAKING label already set — a story marked that way always leads the bar — and Live Updates → Ticker itemstakes one-line entries (“Board results at 2 pm today”) with no story behind them. Every page is built with the current lines already in the bar, so it moves from the first moment, and each page refreshes them as it opens: a line you type now is with readers inside a minute.

Live updates is the longer form: a running post you add entries to during an election count, a match or a civic event. That one really does refresh itself — readers with the page open get new entries every half a minute, without touching anything.

Charging readers — reader passes

Mark a story paid and readers see an opening teaser, then a prompt to buy a pass. A pass is a simple time-based purchase — a day, a month — not a recurring subscription you have to manage.

Money reaches you through your own payment gateway, exactly like a shop order.

Sponsored stories work the same way.

On the free plan a commission of 5% — never more than ₹50 on any one payment — is taken from your account credits when a pass or a sponsor booking is paid. On any paid plan it is nothing at all.

Earning from advertising and sponsors

• AdSense. Paste your AdSense publisher ID (the pub-… number) in the Advertising room, then set each position on the page to Google AdSense, a banner you sold, your own promo, or Off. The space is reserved in advance, so ads never make the page jump while a reader is reading. Google's own approval needs your own domain, about twenty original stories and filled About and Contact pages — the readiness checklist in that room walks you through it.
• Verification is automatic. The moment your publisher ID is saved, every page carries the AdSense verification tag and the ads.txt line Google looks for — nothing to paste into a file, nothing to ask anyone for.
• Your own banners. Sell a slot to a local business directly and upload the image. You keep everything. Type your own daily rate against each position and the Sponsors room suggests prices from it.
• Web Stories. Two more positions: Between stories — a full-screen page with a Visit button after every few stories a reader watches, filled with a banner you sold or your own promo — and Google's story ads, which Google places inside your Google Web Story pages and pays through AdSense. A story a business paid for is marked "Paid partnership with …" from its Story settings.
• Sponsors. A shop pays to sponsor a story. Send them a payment link from the Sponsors room; the story is marked as sponsored the moment you link it, which is what disclosure rules require — not when the money lands.

Getting paid for anything else

A paper is asked for money all day — a classified line, an obituary notice, a matrimonial listing, coverage of an event, a press release, a reader who wants to support you. The Payment Linksroom turns any of those into a link in about ten seconds: say what the payment is for, type the amount (₹10 or more), add the payer's name and number if you have them, and share the link on WhatsApp. One tap pre-fills the common ones.

The money goes into your own payment gateway account, the row moves from Awaiting payment to Paid by itself, and anything you collect in cash or on your own UPI you simply mark as received — that one carries no fee at all.

What it costs you

A news site is priced on readers, not on products — that is the only fair way to charge a publisher.

The Trafficroom shows this month’s page-view count, so there are no surprises. The number there is the same one your Analytics page shows — staff visits are excluded from both.

Comments

Comments are off until you turn them on, and when on, every comment waits for your approval before anyone else sees it. Commenters verify their phone number first, which removes almost all spam before it reaches you.

The e-paper

If you also print, upload the day’s PDF and readers get a page-turning edition on your site — a strong reason for print readers to visit you online, and a page advertisers understand immediately.

Choosing a look

The news designs are genuinely different papers, not colour swaps — a broadsheet, a Hindi daily, a sports desk, a magazine weekly — plus a blank-canvas option if you would rather build the home page block by block around the same newsroom. Everything in this guide works identically on all of them, so pick on looks alone — and open each design's live demo first: every word, colour and photo can change afterwards, but the design itself cannot be swapped with a button later.

Common questions