Development of News Portal on 1C-Bitrix
Editorial releases 20–30 stories per day, and the process looks like: author writes in Google Docs, sends link to editor in messenger, editor reviews and writes "ok" in chat, author copies text to site, manually picks image, adds tags. Publishing one story takes 40 minutes instead of five. A news portal on 1C-Bitrix structures this pipeline: from draft to publication through managed workflow with quality control and auto-distribution.
Content Model for News Portal
A news story is not just headline and text. For a full-fledged portal, info block element contains expanded property set:
- Headline and subheadline (lead)
- Summary — short text for feed and preview
- Full Text — visual editor supporting embedded video, galleries, infographics
- Cover — main image with crop for different formats (feed, social, AMP)
- Author — binding to authors info block with photo and biography
- Rubric — hierarchical sections of info block
- Tags — "string" property with multiple values
- Source — for reprints and aggregated content
- Publication Status — draft, editing, approval, published, removed
Separate info block for special projects and long-form, where display template differs from standard news: custom layout, parallax, interactive elements.
Editorial Workflow
Workflow distinguishes portal from blog. In 1C-Bitrix implemented through bizproc module business processes, bound to news info block.
Publication Route:
| Stage | Role | Action | Automation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Draft | Author | Write text, attach media | — |
| Editing | Managing Editor | Edit text, verify facts | Editor notification, 2-hour deadline |
| Approval | Editor-in-Chief | Approve or return | Only for "Politics", "Economics" |
| Publication | System | Material appears on site | Update RSS, ping search engines, social post |
| Removal | Moderator | Hide material | Log reason |
For urgent news, express route is provided: author with "urgent publish" right bypasses approval stage. Material publishes instantly, but editor gets notification for post-hoc review.
Comments and Moderation
Comments are mandatory for news portal. In 1C-Bitrix there are two approaches:
Standard "Forum" Module — attached to info block through component bitrix:forum.topic.reviews. Supports answer trees, pre-moderation, user bans, profanity filter. Minus — moderation interface is outdated.
Custom Comments Module — info block where element = comment bound to news. More flexible, easier to integrate with modern frontend. Moderation through business process or REST handler.
Anti-spam. Mandatory measures:
- Captcha for unauthorized (module
captchaor reCAPTCHA) - Rate-limiting: no more than N comments per minute from one user
- Link and stop-word filter
- User reports with auto-hiding above threshold
RSS and Content Distribution
RSS feed is generated by component bitrix:rss.out — global and by rubrics. Format Atom 1.0 or RSS 2.0 with full text or summary — depends on strategy (full text increases audience, summary increases site traffic).
Integration with Yandex.News and Google News requires compliance with technical requirements:
- Separate RSS with full text, images, and correct date
-
<enclosure>element for main image -
<author>and<category>filled - Time from publication to RSS appearance — no more than 10 minutes
Social Networks. On story publication, a post is automatically formed: headline + summary + image + link. For VK, Telegram, Facebook use REST API through business process webhook or OnAfterIBlockElementAdd handler.
Open Graph markup on story page ensures correct preview on manual share: og:title, og:description, og:image at least 1200×630px.
SEO for News Portal
News content competes for fast indexing. Technical requirements:
-
Clean URLs per template
/news/rubrika/slug-novosti/ -
Sitemap with priority
1.0for fresh news and0.5for archive - AMP versions of pages (Google prefers AMP in mobile results)
-
Structured Data
NewsArticleper Schema.org: headline, datePublished, dateModified, author, publisher, image -
Archive Pagination with
rel="next"/rel="prev" - Canonical URLs — especially important with filters and sorting
Page Speed — ranking factor and retention. Bitrix composite cache, lazy-load images, critical CSS inline, defer for JS — standard set for green Core Web Vitals.
Archive and Navigation
News portal accumulates thousands of stories. Archive navigation:
- Rubric with publication counters
- Tag cloud or faceted filter
- Chronological archive (by month/year) through custom component
- "Related" block — related stories by tags or rubric through
CIBlockElement::GetListwith tag match filter
For high-load portals, archive stories move to separate info block or flagged for exclusion from heavy queries. Caching lists — 1 hour for archive, 5–10 minutes for homepage.