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Media and Publishing CMS Development

In the media and publishing world, every minute matters. Custom CMS we develop accelerates the content workflow and publishing process and introduces ad management enhancements.

Development Services for Media and Publishers

Every industry needs a different approach to website development. Having over a dozen years of experience in building content management systems for publishers, we know what features and solutions work best. It applies to new projects, existing systems, hosting, and integrations.

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Custom Content Management Systems

We’ll start by getting to know your content creation and management processes and collecting requirements for the future platform. Then we’ll design it and plan its architecture, considering the vast possibilities of Thunder, a tool based on Drupal CMS and intended for the media and publishing industry. After the development phase, we’ll implement the publishers’ CMS in your company and train your team in using it.

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CMS migration

Do you have CMS performance issues or encounter some limitations? We can migrate your platform to Drupal - a fast, scalable, mobile-friendly, and secure content management software. Due to its flexibility, we can develop many functionalities tailored to your business needs. We often handle migrations from other systems as well as from different versions of Drupal (e.g. from 7 to 10), so we know how to plan and smoothly conduct such a process.

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CMS support and optimization

For the existing publishing CMS systems based on Drupal, we can conduct an audit to identify bottlenecks, performance and SEO-related issues, and other errors. Once we gather our findings and improvement suggestions, we can implement them on your website. Besides one-time analysis, we also offer regular care of your website, which includes fixing bugs, performing security updates, and adding new functionalities.

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Hosting solutions for publishers

The websites for publishing articles, and other types of publishers’ platforms, face high traffic spikes, e.g. when the editors add some groundbreaking content. We know how to choose and configure a reliable hosting solution to keep the website up and running, even in the most challenging conditions. After the implementation, our DevOps team can still look after your hosting by uptime monitoring and carrying backups.

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Ad management solutions

We can integrate your CMS with an ad server, like Revive Adserver, OpenX, or Google Ad Manager, that enables serving advertisements and managing campaigns. For displaying the ads on your website, we can also create a form inside your publishing CMS in which you determine the page and position for showing a particular ad, set the displaying dates, upload the graphic or animation, and add the link to the target place.

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Media and marketing tools integration

Various tools support work in the media and publishing industry. We know how to properly integrate your CMS platform with many of them, like marketing automation tools (e.g. HubSpot), analytical solutions (e.g. Google Analytics), or social media channels. The latter integration will allow for automatically adding a post on your content published in the CMS on Facebook after you click a button under a chosen article.

Media and Publishing CMS Features

Drupal and its distribution Thunder provide a wide range of functionalities that we can use to develop a custom content management and publishing platform. Below you’ll find some of the possible features of your future software.

Ready-made content elements

Usually, media and publishing teams need a set of specified components for their content so they can select them and fill them with text and media. Together with your team, we can determine which content elements are most often needed. We can develop, for example, the sections to embed related articles, Twitter posts, ads, audio, and video. We can also prepare a complete editable paragraph with a predetermined look and feel.

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Publishing workflow

You can determine different roles and access levels in your publishing CMS. The access for your employees can be allocated depending on the area of their work, e.g. one editor will have access only to the sports category. In the publishing workflow, you may also define the content creation and approval stages and the roles assigned to them.

Version control

Several people may be working on the particular article in your web publishing CMS. The version control functionality allows them to track changes. They are able to see who made them, when, and what exactly changed. Also, when an editor makes a mistake in the content or accidentally deletes something, they can easily restore the previous version.

Content categorization and tagging

Article publishing websites contain a host of various content. Categories organize it into thematic groups, like news, sport, and economy, so that the readers can easily find what they’re looking for. Tags can be even more specific and collect, for example, all articles about a particular event such as the Olympics in 2024.

Digital assets management

To speed up your work with multimedia, we can implement a tool for digital assets management. Thanks to that, you can upload your graphics and videos and manage them in one place. Every file is reusable - you add it only once, and then you can use it in different places on your publishing website. Each of the assets also contains a field for inserting a meta tag.

Search functions

We can implement search functionalities on your website, like faceted search. It allows the users to filter the results using relevant content features. When you’re looking for sports reports, facets suggest football games and volleyball leagues. Faceted search is provided by the tools like Apache Solr (a fast search engine) that we can integrate with your CMS.

WCAG compliance

Modern media and publishing portals should meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to be suitable for users with visual, auditory, motor, cognitive, and neurological disabilities. Our developers and designers know how to build a platform aligned with the WCAG principles regarding elements like text, images, code, and scripts, to name a few.

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Ecommerce functionalities

The publishers’ CMS may need the features not only for adding and managing content but also for selling some products like books. The ecommerce functionalities we can implement allow for selling physical and electronic items such as ebooks and online magazines. Your users would easily find the products by browsing the catalogs and categories or by using filters.

Paywall and subscription management

We can select and integrate the best payment gateway (PayPal, Braintree, Authorize.net, etc.) or another payment method with your online publishing store. For subscription or paywall functionality management, we’ll choose and configure a gateway that enables one-time or recurring payments (monthly or annual).

Content comments and scoring

To spark the users' interaction with your content, we can add the comment section to your publishing CMS. To maintain the appropriate level of discussion, we’ll set the administrator's review option. Another feature to enhance interaction is scoring. It allows for rating a particular content or product (e.g. ebook).

Dynamic content

We can integrate your CMS software with a marketing automation platform that will gather your users’ data and dynamically provide them with relevant content types based on their previous choices. For example, someone who searches for information about stock quotes, next time will see more financial news.

CMS for publishers and media - case studies

For years, we’ve been advising and helping media and publishing companies in developing their existing content management systems. We’ve also been creating custom software from scratch. Thanks to this, we got to know these industries very well. We understand their challenges and needs and know solutions that perfectly answer them. Take a look at some of the projects we completed.

Tools we use for content publishing platforms

We choose open source tools for our projects. As their source code is available for everyone, we can modify them to meet the specific needs of the media and publishing industries. Having a base to work with reduces the implementation cost. Also, the fact that open source code is accessible to everyone implies that there's no vendor lock-in. It means that when you don't like collaboration with one software development company, you can choose other experts.

Logo of Thunder - a Drupal distribution for publishing

Thunder is a CMS based on Drupal equipped with the features most suitable for media and publishing companies.

Logo of the Drupal content management system

Drupal is a flexible and secure content management system for building websites of any size.

Logo of Drupal Commerce - a platform for ecommerce websites and apps

Drupal Commerce is a solution for developing ecommerce websites selling both traditional and electronic products.

Logo of Mautic - an open source marketing automation tool


Mautic is a marketing automation tool that enables collecting readers' data and using it to provide better experiences.

Media and publishing content on our blog

Take a look at our articles with tips, tricks, and good practices for media and publishing companies.

Contact us

Please fill out the form and tell us more about the custom CMS you need or about an existing solution you'd like us to take care of.

After sending the form, our consultant will contact you to discuss your project.