What is Indie Journalism?

Indie journalism is taking the industry by storm. With the dawning of the Internet, it is now possible for journalists to publish their reports or articles using various methods of publishing content. With the prominence of free services such as Wordpress or Blogger, they need not worry about paying for hosting as these sites require zero or minimal start-up costs.

The good thing about indie journalism is that it can provide them with plenty of rewards at the end of the day. Not to mention the fact that it can help journalists establish a name for themselves. By establishing their own journalism website, one can become a source of information to other people.  This can be an excellent opportunity to showcase their work and add on to their portfolio. At the same time, it can help them find greener pastures, whether as a freelancer or as an employee of an organization.

Basic Considerations

If you are planning to setup your own journalism website, bear in mind that it will not be that easy. There are some things that you need to consider in order to become successful in starting your own journalism website. Here then are some tips and advice on how to get started with this endeavor.

The Price of Starting Up

Perhaps your biggest investment when starting up with an indie website is your time. Thanks to open-source platforms such as WordPress, the cost of launching a journalism website has become manageable. However, unless you seen signs of success, do not give up your day job just yet. During the early stages of the website, you may need to do the business part-time and work full time with your day job.

Advertisements and Sponsorships

Another consideration that you need to bear in mind when setting up your own journalism website is getting advertisers and sponsors to your website. The main obstacle that indie journalists may face when it comes to advertising is their belief in the church vs. state stance. This can be resolved by establishing connections with advertising networks. On the other hand, when it comes to sponsorships, you can tie-up with several companies who will pay on a consistent basis. This way, you need not worry about selling your site but concentrate on writing content.

Choosing A Design

Another factor that you need to address when setting up your journalism website is the design. This will depend on the kind of website you intend to put up. If your content is about a particular area only, the best option is to use the built-in themes in Wordpress. If your site offers technical support, recommended platforms are Drupal or Joomla.

Target Market

In order to drive traffic to your website, you need to establish online presence through different social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook. Likewise, you can get the support of your community as what other journalists are doing. Being recognized by your neighborhood will be crucial as well as being respected by your readers.

Before setting up your website, it would be worthwhile to get help or advice from industry experts or respected names in the industry. Launching your business without knowledge is like going to war without enough ammunition’s. Follow these tips and you will be on your way to becoming successful with your journalism website.

Blogging

Facebook is obviously one of the most popular social networking sites on the World Wide Web nowadays. Every netizen is likely to have a Facebook account. If you are into blogging, it is now possible for you to merge a Facebook account into your blog. This guide will teach you the steps on how you can make your blogging more productive and meaningful by integrating Facebook.

CMS or XHTML Websites

For most people,  Wordpress has been the most common platform for creating their blogs. However, other people also use custom CMS or XHTML websites such as Ruby or Django. Recently, Facebook Connect Wizard and Facebook Connect Playground was launched making it much easier to integrate the application into your blog. The beauty of this feature is that you can add sample codes and widgets for making comments, Facebook Connect buttons, to name just a few.

Wordpress

One of the most popular blogging platforms is Wordpress. With its vibrant features, it would be easy to think that Facebook integration will be easy as A-B-C. Although, there are plug-ins available, it would be still difficult to set everything up. Fortunately, there are excellent resources and tools in place for integrating your Wordpress blog into Facebook.

• WP-FBConnect. Introduced by Facebook engineer Adam Hupp, this plugin has not been upgraded much compared with the other options but it does provide a way to integrate Facebook Connect with WordPress. Here, users simply use their Facebook login to leave comments and have their avatar appear on your website. For more information on how to connect this plugin, you can check out this link: http://www.adambreckler.com/setting-up-facebook-connect-for-wordpress
• Sociable Facebook Connect. Another tool you can consider integrating into your blog is the Facebook Connect plugin of Sociable.es. This is frequently updated and provides other features such as adding a box displaying recent visitors, commenters, and friends. The drawback of this option is that it will always create a new user on your blog which is not always the ideal scenario.
• WPBook. This plugin is unlike any other because it allows you to cross-post all the contents of your blog into Facebook. Another feature of this plug-in is that it has the ability to make comments on one entry visible on the other. This is ideal if you do not want to share your content to other people but want to avoid tracking down separate conversations.
• Add A Blog Feed. If you are not after the comments but simply want the content of your blogs to be visible on Facebook, Six Apart provides a helpful guide on how to add your external blog feed. Although this is intended for users of TypePad, it is an excellent tool if you have a blog that has RSS feed.

TypePad/Movable Type

Six Apart has a couple of blogging platforms that can be considered for integrating Facebook into your blog namely MovableType and TypePad. In December 2008, the company introduced Facebook Connect Commenters plugin for the former while for the former, they added Facebook compatibility in its latest release, the TypePad Motion, which allows posting your blog from Facebook, show the updates and allow user comments with the user’s Facebook or Twitter account.

Drupal and Joomla for Facebook

Drupal and Joomla are among the top open source content management system platforms that provides robust features ideal for larger sites and communities. They offer powerful tools that allows you to integrate Facebook into your blog.

Comment Systems

If your principal aim is to have the users leave their comments, you can check out third-party commenting systems that can be integrated into various sites and platforms.

Given all these tools and resources, it is now possible for you to integrate the highly-popular Facebook into your blogging website.