Plenty of news sites run on a theme designed for somebody else’s paper. We build around the way your editors work and keep the look your readers know. For SA Telegraph we also wrote staff guides to the newsroom tools. You see the whole site on a private link before any reader does.
SA Telegraph
A newsroom platform built for one paper.
We rebuilt SA Telegraph as a custom news website: fast on a phone, findable again and run by its own editors, with the look readers know.
- Website design
- Website rebuild
- Search set-up
- Word templates
The client and the brief
What did SA Telegraph need?
Readers loved the look of the paper. The newsroom was fighting the software behind it. We kept the look and rebuilt everything underneath, around the way its editors work.
SA Telegraph publishes in-depth South African journalism online: news, opinion, arts and culture, features and sport. Its editors had no real say over the front page, and the site was hard for search engines to find.
The brief was to make the paper fast, easy to find and easy to run, without changing a word of its journalism. Every story, headline, standfirst and byline stayed exactly as written, and every web address stayed the same, so old links still work.
- Masthead, burgundy and double rules kept
- Same look
- From writer to administrator
- 4 logins
- About how long a live update takes to appear
- 30 seconds
- Reading tools run on the reader’s own device
- No trackers
What we made
A news website design that still reads like a newspaper
We rebuilt the front page, story pages and menus by hand, for phones first. The burgundy, the double rules and the three-column front page are all still there, set more carefully.
The front page on a computer: masthead, section menu and a lead story placed from the front-page desk. 
Every story can be read aloud by the reader’s own phone, saved for later or shared from one line of buttons. 
Today’s news gathers each day’s stories on one page, with a calendar that opens any earlier day. 
On a phone the section menu folds into one list, with search at the top and live coverage a tap away.
Details worth seeing
What sits behind the front page?
Four tools the newsroom uses every day, each built for this paper alone.
Desk
A front-page desk
Editors pin the lead, top stories and Editor’s picks. Pins expire by themselves, a breaking-news banner switches itself off, and moving a story to the top never changes its publish date.
Live
Live coverage
Running stories, match scoreboards, election results with the share of the count, and countdowns to events. A live strip runs across every page while coverage is on.
Listen
Reading tools
Readers can listen to a story, save it, share a single sentence, change the text size and read offline. A data saver holds photos back until they are tapped.
Roles
Four kinds of login
Writers submit, editors review and publish, and the site records who approved each story. Senior editors sign in with a password and a six-digit code from a phone app.
Search
How did we make the paper findable again?
First, we switched search engines back on. Then we gave them everything they need to understand a news site.
- Sitemaps that keep themselves currentEvery story, section and writer, updated the moment a story is published, changed or removed.
- A Google News sitemapThe last 48 hours of stories in the format Google News reads, with sponsored stories left out.
- Structured data on every pageEach page says what it is: a news story, an opinion piece, a writer’s page or live coverage.
- A share image for every storyA clean picture with the masthead, so links look right on WhatsApp, Facebook and X.
- Writer pagesEach writer has a page of their stories, so readers and search engines can see who wrote what.
Results
How fast is it on a phone?
We measured the live site with Lighthouse, the test Google uses, set to a mid-range phone on a slower mobile connection.
99
Performance, front page
Median of six runs on the live site, 31 October 2026
99
Performance, a story page
Median of three runs on the live site, 31 October 2026
100
Accessibility, best practices and SEO
Front page and story page, every run, 31 October 2026
0
Layout shift as pages load
Lighthouse on the live site, 31 October 2026
Services used
The services behind this project
Is your website slowing the newsroom down?
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Tell us about your publication, how your newsroom works and what slows it down. We reply with a fixed quote in pounds, dollars or rand, and nothing starts until you agree to it. Email hello@redfoxbranding.com or use the project form to talk about news website design.