I collected data on several technical aspects of Armenian and Armenia-based online news media and organized it in a few tables: what computers are used, where does hosting take place, and on what domains are they registered?

My sample included 80 websites from Armenian web resources rating site Circle.am’s News and Media section, as well as 9 news websites that are not included there: Panarmenian.net, MediaMax, RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun), Times.am, Arminfo, Analitika.at.ua, Voskanapat, Review magazine, and Media.am։

What content management systems do these news media sites use? One to two years ago, very fashionable in the industry was the free and open source blogging tool WordPress, which after alterations allows one to build quite a modern and multifunctional site.

From the 89 websites I observed, 20 continue to use WordPress, though, for example, Hetq and Asekose.am, which two years ago were using WordPress, today have moved on to closed content management systems. 

uCoz, which is widespread in Armenia, has been squeezed out of the news industry. Using this CMS now is only the Armenian community of Ukraine’s website Analitika.at.ua.

WIth respect to web hosting, news websites trust businesses located in Armenia less than those abroad: from the 89 sites surveyed, only 17 are hosted on Armenia-based servers.

However, the distribution of domains attests to the great confidence in Armenia’s national domain “.am”.

Samvel Martirosyan