Welcome to our website, book and course on how to build a secure news website! Our goal is to help you create your own news website using free and secure web building tools.
Why Start Your Own Local News Website?
Never in our nation's history has there been a greater need for independent news sources than there is today. All of the traditional news sources from newspapers to radio to television have been taken over by wealthy multinational corporations. Our freedom of thought, our ability to communicate and our right to free and equal elections are all at risk due to the lack of honest, independent news sources. This ever increasing control over public communications has led to an ever increasing concentration of wealth and power by a handful of billionaires and drug corporations. We explain how you can help change the course of history by starting your own independent news website. Create a Secure News Website offers us a chance to change this billionaire domination of our news. We show you how to combine a Joomla website with a series of free tools to create a secure News website. These revolutionary tools put the power of the Internet back in the hands of we, the people!
Voters are forced to swim through an ocean of lies
Today, we face the tyranny of a billionaire financed corporate empire that threatens to enslave all of us. Nearly everything they see on TV News and nearly everything they read in corporate newspapers are carefully crafted lies. We are like fish swimming in increasingly polluted waters.
Huge drug companies – which make hundreds of billions of dollars by convincing us we need their drugs - are not just the major funders of corrupt politicians, they are also major funders of the corrupt corporate media. These same drug companies are funded by some of the world’s richest people including Bill Gates. The ocean of lies spun by the corporate media affects not only our health but our very ability to think clearly, to make good decisions and to act for a better future for our children.
A Ray of Hope… The American People are Starting to Wake Up!
Thankfully, the American people are starting to catch on to this scam. Gallup Polls used to show that two out of three people trusted the corporate media to tell the truth. Now, after decades of lying to the public, the majority of the American people no longer trust the corporate media.
This means two out of three Americans are seeking alternative sources of information. These sources of information and new media are increasingly from independent online news websites.
Online News Websites are already the most trusted news source
In the past 10 years, Internet news websites have passed TV, radio and newspapers as the Number One source of news. According to Pew Research, in 2024, 86% of U.S. adults say they at least sometimes get news online from a News website (from a smartphone, computer or tablet). Over half, 55% say they often get their news online from a news website. Only 30% say they often get their news from a TV network. Just 10% say they often get their news from a radio station. And only 5% say they often get their news from a traditional print newspaper.
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/news-platform-fact-sheet/
Every year, the shift to online news grows more apparent. Of those who get news online, 29% use a trusted news website, 23% use a Search Engine, 25% use social media like Facebook or X and 9% listen to podcasts. It is time for a new kind of independent media – one run not for pursuit of profit but for the pursuit of truth and the sharing of wisdom.
History of a Free and Independent Press
Throughout history, a free and independent press has been the key to overthrowing corrupt rulers. Our first revolution began with the courage of newspaper writers such as Ben Franklin who understood the power of the press to persuade people to rise up against an unjust King.
The printing press had just come into existence – much like the ability to create our own news website has just come into existence today.
Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the First Amendment to the US Constitution, maintained that a free and independent press is the cornerstone of our Democracy.
The Rise of Lies
The billionaire plan to take over our government and our economy began with the consolidation of the media and the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980s. The Fairness Doctrine required major media sources to provide both sides of the debate on important public issues as a condition of getting their license to use the public airwaves.
With the loss of the Fairness Doctrine, the American people were no longer allowed to hear or read debate from both sides on major issues. Instead, we are only allowed to hear one side, the billionaire side of the debate, filled with lies exactly as predicted by George Orwell in the book 1984.
Today, we are witnessing the results of decades of media domination by the billionaires. Our elections have turned into a corrupt bribery and kickback scheme with fake billionaire sponsored politicians who claim to be on the side of the people but then write new laws to allow billionaires to take over our public airwaves and get billions in illegal tax breaks.
We are forced to pay for an out of control war machine that costs ten times more than the military spending by all the other nations of the world combined. This is trillions of dollars that could have and should have been invested in our young adults to provide them with the education they need to compete in the global marketplace of ideas.
At the bottom of this entire corrupt rigged system is the billionaire controlled media – which has managed to keep the people of the world in the dark by diverting their attention away from this robbery and onto fake meaningless topics like the million dollar divorces of Hollywood movie stars. Never in our history has their been such a concentration of the media in the hands of a few corporations controlled by a few billionaires.
Today, the majority of the public media is controlled by just 3 corporations: Comcast (NBC & CNN), Disney (ABC & ESPN) and News Corp (FOX NEWS). Together these three mega corporations account for $150 billion in annual revenue.
Here is a graph of America's most popular news sources:
It looks like there are a lot of choices. But what they all have in common is that they are owned by, funded by and or controlled by a few billionaires. Media researcher Ben Bagdikian, has written several editions of a book called The Media Monopoly about the danger of the media monopoly for the past three decades. Below is a graph of his analysis of the consolidation of the number of corporations controlling the majority of the media in the US.
Instead of having lots of choices, what people really wind up watching and reading are the same phony marketing slogans repeated over and over again. Consolidation of the media in the hands of a few billionaires makes it impossible for the public to learn the truth about the corruption that destroys our economy and our political system.
Not only has the quantity of sources plunged, but the accuracy of reporting also dropped as experienced reporters were fired and replaced by “talking heads” that do little more than repeat the press releases issued by their corporate masters.
The same powerful people who sit in the boards of the corporations of the military/industrial complex, the large banks, drug companies and oil companies also sit in the boards of the large media corporations. They have the power to hire editors and reporters who mislead the public and fire editors and reporters who tell the truth. Over time, this has led to the current culture of lies in the corporate news media.
This concentration of of the news media is so complete than people who get their information from the billionaire controlled media become brainwashed into believing that the unemployment rate is only 5% and economic recovery is just around the corner – when in fact, the debt level in the world is at the highest level in history. It is not possible to have an economy in which so many are unemployed and the wealth is so concentrated in the hands of the few. When the fake economy crashes, what will really be around the corner is the Second Great Depression.
How We the People Can Reclaim the Media
It used to be that to create a fully functioning online news website (as opposed to posting a simple blog) required a team of computer programmers to hand code the website on a daily basis. This is actually how nearly all corporate news websites are still maintained.
However, thanks to recent improvements in a web building content management system called Joomla, it is now possible for each of us to create and maintain our own online news website without any knowledge of computer programming – at a cost of only a few dollars per month! Each of us can offer the public an alternative to corporate controlled news.
There are already hundreds of news websites run by individuals and small groups of people. However, many of these websites are using outdated tools that eventually turn the website into a mess. If you are going to take the time and effort to build your own news website, you should first take the time and effort to learn how to do it right.
Why does online news website security matter?
Unfortunately, the Internet currently is a Hacker Heaven – where hackers make millions of dollars by hacking websites, stealing and selling data and/or turning your news website into a Bitcoin mining machine!
The most common way hackers take over websites is by gaining access to your Windows computer and downloading your website administrator passwords. Every year, Windows computers suffer from hundreds of “remote access” (online) backdoors:
To prevent these Windows hacker attacks, we show you how to create and use a secure Linux computer for posting articles to your news website.
The second most common way hackers gain access to your news website is by exploiting vulnerabilities in whatever tools you are using to build your news website. The most common of these “Content Management Systems” is called Wordpress. Unfortunately, Wordpress, like Windows suffers from hundreds of vulnerabilities every year:
To prevent Wordpress hacker attacks, we show you how to use a more secure and powerful Content Management System called Joomla. We teach you how to build a secure news website where you have full control over the appearance, content and function of your website without computer programming – simply by clicking on a series of buttons!
A secure news website requires a secure foundation:
Use a Linux computer to create secure LibreOffice documents. Then use a Debian VPS and the Hestia Control Panel to create a Joomla website with a Helix template. Then use the LibreOffice Image compression tool to create secure web images. Then use Joomla to transfer your Libre Writer article to your news website:
In this course, we will show you how to create your own regional, national or international alternative news website the right way – using the Joomla content management system.
Here is a summary of steps needed to create a secure website:
This course is part of our series of courses on using free open source tools to share knowledge and information. Open source means the source code, or software, is free and can be shared by anyone with anyone for any purpose. Open source is like a library...free and open knowledge shared with the community for the common good. No patents, no hassles, no barriers, no limits! For information on our other courses, visit: http://collegeintheclouds.org/
While it is not necessary that you have read our previous books, courses and websites in order to build your own alternative website, if you have the time, it would be useful to start at the beginning and complete our previous courses before creating your own news website. With our books and courses, we show you how to have full control over the appearance, content and function of your news website – without computer programming – simply by clicking on a series of buttons!
In our next article, we will review how to create a secure Linux computer and use it to install the Hestia Control Panel on a Linux Virtual Private Server. We will then describe the process for setting up a Joomla news website and finally describe how to add free tools to Joomla to expand the display options of images and articles and thereby create a news website that looks as official as any corporate news website ever made.
Creating your own news website requires a commitment of time and effort – not only to research the content for your news website but also to learn how to transfer that content to the Internet and display it in an organized manner. If you are willing to put in this time and effort, we will show you how it is done. Let's get started!