Weekly Wildcat is rebuilding the technology behind its website to make it faster, more dependable and easier to improve over time.
Our current site runs entirely using WordPress, and is hosted by a cloud provider. That means one system is responsible for everything (the public website readers see, content distribution, photos, design and our staff dashboard) While that setup works, it can make the site slower and it gives us less control over how it performs and looks.
The new website will split those responsibilities into two separate parts: one workspace for staff to publish stories and manage content, and a new public site designed specifically for readers.
How It Works
Staff members will still use WordPress to write stories, upload photos, schedule articles, organize categories and edit posts. It will remain the main workspace for the newspaper staff.
The difference is that readers will no longer visit WordPress directly.
Instead, WordPress will work behind the scenes, storing articles, photos and other information. A separate public website will take that content and present it in a cleaner, faster format for readers.
This lets Weekly Wildcat keep the publishing tools staff already know while creating a website that is not limited by a traditional WordPress theme.
The Weekly Wildcat CMS includes more than 3,000 sports game records, with coverage dating as far back as 1915.
You can find the data here.
Byline: A New Site for Readers
Byline is Weekly Wildcat’s custom website frontend, built specifically for the newspaper using Next.js. It connects to our WordPress server behind the scenes and pulls in stories, photos, categories and other content, then presents everything through a faster and more flexible static website.
Instead of building an article page from scratch every time someone visits the site (a dynamic site), the new system can have pages ready ahead of time, which should make the site much faster.
It also gives Weekly Wildcat more flexibility to improve the design, navigation and article layouts without changing how staff members work & collaborate.
A More Reliable Hosting Setup
The staff publishing system will be hosted separately and locally, giving the newspaper more control over updates, backups and maintenance. The public site will be hosted through Cloudflare, a service designed to deliver websites quickly and reliably.
The new setup also helps protect the public site from behind-the-scenes problems. If the CMS needs maintenance or has an issue, already-published stories will stay available for readers.
Why This Matters
The goal is not just to make the website look newer. It is to build a stronger foundation for Weekly Wildcat as it grows.
A faster, more reliable website makes it easier for readers to find stories, stay on the site and return for future coverage. It also gives the staff more room to improve the publication without being held back by an outdated or slow website system.
WordPress will continue to support the newsroom behind the scenes, while the rebuilt public website will help deliver Weekly Wildcat’s work to readers more quickly and reliably.
The source code for the new website will also be publicly available on GitHub, and anyone with an account can open a pull request to help us fix issues with the site.
