News Forge-News Website with Admin Panel.

NewsForge is built for publishers who want a real editorial workflow — not just a blog with categories bolted on. Reporters draft and submit; editors review, reject, or publish; admins manage the whole operation from one clean dashboard.

It installs on ordinary shared hosting in minutes and runs entirely on plain procedural PHP and MySQL — no Laravel, no Symfony, no Composer, no build step. Everything you see in this description is included in the base price; there are no premium add-ons or recurring fees.

Header & Navigation

• Sticky header that stays visible while scrolling, with a subtle glass-blur effect once the page scrolls.
• Expandable search overlay — click the search icon and a full-width search bar slides down in place, no page navigation needed to start typing.
• Dark / light mode with automatic system-preference detection, plus a manual toggle always available in the header.
• Live "Trending Topics" pill strip under the main navigation, pulling from your most-used tags.
• On mobile, the menu collapses into a smooth slide-down drawer (with animated hamburger-to-close icon) containing navigation, search, subscribe button, social links, and utility pages — keeping the persistent header itself short and out of the way.

Homepage

• Auto-rotating hero carousel for top/featured stories, with dot navigation and arrow controls, sliding smoothly rather than jump-cutting between slides.
• "Top Stories" two-column layout: a lead story alongside a stacked list of secondary headlines.
• "Explore by Category" icon grid — each category can have its own custom SVG icon (upload a file or paste SVG code directly), with a "View All" link through to a full category directory page.
• "Editor's Picks" and "From Our Writers" sections, plus a numbered "Trending Now" strip based on real view counts.
• Inline newsletter signup card, and configurable ad slots (header banner, footer banner, sidebar top/bottom, in-article) that simply don't render when left empty.

Article Pages

• Thin reading-progress bar pinned to the top of the viewport, filling in as the reader scrolls.
• Two-column layout on desktop: article content alongside a sticky sidebar showing "More in [Category]", a trending list, and ad slots — collapses cleanly to a single column on mobile.
• Author byline with avatar, publish date, estimated reading time, and view count.
• One-click social sharing (X/Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp) plus a "Copy Link" button with inline confirmation.
• Editorial drop-cap styling on the opening paragraph, related-articles grid, tag pills, an author bio box, and a full threaded comment system with reply support.

Category, Tag, Search & Author Pages

• Dedicated archive pages for every category and tag, with pagination and consistent sidebar widgets.
• A full "All Categories" directory page (with icons and per-category article counts) reachable from the homepage's "View All" link.
• Built-in search results page and per-author profile pages listing everything they've published.

Editorial Workflow & Roles

• Super Admin — full control over every module, staff, and settings.
• Editor — manages all articles, categories, tags, comments, and pages; can approve, reject, or publish.
• Reporter — creates and edits their own articles, submits for review, and can mark their own stories as breaking news.
• Moderator — focused purely on comment moderation.
• Full article lifecycle: Draft → Pending Review → Published / Rejected, plus scheduled publishing for a future date and time.
• Breaking-news and sponsored-article flags, both reflected instantly on the live site.
• Custom roles and permissions editor — adjust what each role can and can't do beyond the four defaults.

Media Library

• One Modern-style picker modal used everywhere an image is needed: article covers, the rich-text editor, staff avatars, and your site logo/favicon.
• Search your library by filename, multi-select files, and bulk-delete in a couple of clicks.
• Click any image to open it full-size with a one-click "Copy URL" button — handy for anything outside the CMS itself.
• Drag-and-drop style upload directly from the picker, so you never have to leave what you're doing to add a new image.

Content Management

• Rich-text article editor (self-hosted Quill.js) with inline image insertion straight from the media picker.
• Categories with parent/child hierarchy support and custom SVG icons (upload or paste code — automatically sanitized for safety).
• Tags, static pages (About, Contact, Privacy Policy, etc. — pre-seeded and fully editable), and a threaded comment moderation queue.
• Newsletter subscriber list with CSV export, and configurable ad slots for five different placements site-wide.

Updates, Backups & Settings

• Check for and apply updates right from the admin panel — your license is verified automatically before anything downloads.
• A full backup (database + site files) runs automatically before any update is applied, and restores with a single click if anything looks wrong.
• Trigger a manual backup at any time; your database, uploads folder, and configuration file are never touched or overwritten by an update.
• General settings (site name, tagline, logo, favicon, articles-per-page, footer text), dedicated SEO settings, and a full staff activity log for accountability.
• Built-in "Forgot Password" flow with a branded HTML email, and rate-limiting on login attempts to slow down brute-force guessing.