Radio Televizija Budva — News Portal

Radio Televizija Budva is the town’s public broadcaster, and a public broadcaster’s portal carries obligations commercial media do not have. It has to be available to everyone, it has to cover subjects that bring no traffic, and it has to preserve whatever it has once published. All of that at the same time, on a site that is read quickly and mostly on a phone.

A news reader arrives with one question: what matters most today. If the front page does not answer that in the first screen, they have already opened another portal. And when they open a story and come back, they expect to continue where they left off — because in a news list, being thrown back to the top means hunting for your place again, and that is where reading usually stops.

On top of that came a task that is easy to underestimate: moving off the previous site without losing the archive. A newsroom that has published for years has links scattered across other sites, social networks and search results. If those links stop working, what is lost is not only traffic but part of the public record of what was published and when.

The portal is built around the fastest route to the content. The front page leads with the main event of the day, and right below it sit Latest and Most Read — two lists covering two different readers: the one following the day as it unfolds, and the one returning after a few days to see what they missed. Neither has to look for where things are.

Content is organised into sections: Society, Politics, Economy, Sport, Entertainment, Tourism and Columns. The split follows how the newsroom actually works, which keeps publishing simple, while a reader who only follows one subject has a single address to remember.

When a reader opens a story and comes back, the list is waiting exactly where they left it. It is the kind of detail nobody notices while it works and everybody notices when it does not — and it decides whether a reader opens a second and third story or leaves after the first.

The portal also carries what ties it to the rest of the house: Radio Budva streaming live and video reports. A listener who came for a headline can stay for the radio, and a viewer can watch a report in the same place, without moving to a third platform.

A dedicated section covers the broadcaster itself — its history, its council, its documents and free access to information — and it is open to everyone. For a public service that is not an extra but part of the job: documents and records of its work have to be available to citizens, in a clear place and without asking for them.

Old links from the previous site still work, so the whole archive stayed alive. A story published years ago opens from the same address it always did, no matter where that link was written down.

At the core of the portal is an editorial publishing system built for the pace of a daily newsroom. A story is written, given an image or a video report, filed under a section and published — with no step that requires technical knowledge. In media that is decisive, because a system that slows publishing down is abandoned by the newsroom right after the first big story.

The portal was built to hold up on a day with a big story. The front page, the sections and the Latest and Most Read lists are all generated from the same source, so a published piece appears everywhere it belongs at once, with no manual moving around and no extra work for the editor on duty. For the newsroom that means thinking about the story rather than the website at the moments that matter, and for the reader it means the list they are looking at reflects the actual latest state.

Alongside the editorial side there is room for marketing and promotional content, so commercial material has its own place in the layout instead of being wedged into an article afterwards. The broadcaster’s own content and the advertisers’ content stay clearly separated, which for a public service is a question of trust as much as of technique.

SEO and social sharing are handled at the level of each story: the headline, the description and the image that appears when a link is shared. Cookies with visitor consent were added in line with GDPR obligations. Support and maintenance are part of the arrangement, because a portal publishing every day cannot afford downtime.

A reader now sees the main event of the day immediately on the front page, with two lists below it covering everything else. They move through the portal without losing their place, listen to live radio and watch video reports in the same place — so a visit rarely ends after a single story.

The newsroom has a system that matches its rhythm: publishing is quick, the sections are clear, and promotional content has a place of its own. What used to require technical help is now simply part of an ordinary day in the newsroom.

For the institution itself, the most important outcome is continuity. The entire archive stayed available, old links still open their stories, and the section with documents and free access to information is open to every citizen. Online, the public broadcaster does what it does off it — informing people and staying available, both for today and for everything it published before.

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