Collab365

Create multiple news feeds on one SharePoint site

Q: Can you really have multiple news feeds on one SharePoint site?

Yes, add up to 10 News Web Parts per page, each filtered by custom page properties like 'News Category' for independent feeds from the same Site Pages library.

Q: Does this dual-feed setup work on mobile devices?

Yes, SharePoint is responsive; side-by-side feeds stack vertically on mobile and Viva Connections in Teams, with Important News displaying first.

Q: What is the maximum number of News Web Parts I can add?

No hard limit in 2026 SharePoint, but recommend 3-4 per page for performance and usability to avoid overwhelming readers.

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Collab365 TeamAuthorPublished Apr 23, 2026

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At a Glance

Target Audience: SharePoint site owners, IT support specialists, internal communicators
Problem Solved: Confusing mixed news feeds on SharePoint homepages burying urgent announcements in casual updates
Use Case: Corporate intranet homepage with side-by-side feeds like 'Important News' and 'Daily Toolkit'

Yes, you can show multiple tailored news feeds on one SharePoint homepage using configurable News Web Parts – no need for extra sites. In 2026 SharePoint Online, you can add up to 10 News Web Parts per page, each filtering by specific site, audience, or topic.1 Collab365 found that using SharePoint Online modern pages, the News web part v2.5, and Microsoft 365 Groups v2026.1 provides a flawless way to split your updates.2

Key Takeaway: You do not need to create separate SharePoint sites to divide your news. A single modern page can host multiple News Web Parts, each pulling from different categories using custom page properties.

TL;DR / Quick Answer

If you are an IT support specialist or site owner in a rush, here is the fastest way to set up dual feeds (for example, 'Important News' on the left and a 'Daily Toolkit' on the right) on a single homepage.

Create a Custom Column: Go to your Site Pages library via Site Contents. Add a new Choice column named 'News Category'. Add your choices (e.g., 'Important News', 'Daily Toolkit').
Tag Your Existing News: Edit your previously published news pages. Open the Page Details pane and assign them to the correct category in your new column.
Add the Web Parts: Edit your modern homepage. Add two separate News Web Parts side-by-side using the new 2026 Flexible Sections feature.4
Configure the Filters: Edit the properties of the first News Web Part. Under 'Filter', select 'Page properties'. Set it to show only pages where 'News Category' equals 'Important News'.
Repeat for the Second Feed: Do the exact same for the second web part, but set the filter to 'Daily Toolkit'.

Key Prerequisites: You must be using a modern Communication or Team site template. You must have Site Owner or Full Control permissions to add custom columns to the Site Pages library. Site Member access is not enough.6

Common Pitfalls Avoided: Do not forget to tag your old news posts. If you apply a category filter to a web part, any untagged news post will instantly vanish from the feed. Furthermore, always wait up to 15 minutes for the SharePoint search index to register your new tags before assuming the setup is broken.7

Key Takeaway: The secret to multiple feeds on one site is metadata. By tagging your news posts with a category, you can tell each News Web Part exactly what to display and what to ignore, keeping your homepage perfectly organised.

Who Is This Guide For and What Do You Need?

We wrote this guide specifically for SharePoint site owners, internal communicators, and IT support specialists with one to three years of experience. You likely manage a busy corporate intranet and face a very specific, highly frustrating problem: your default SharePoint news feed mixes absolutely everything together.

When urgent CEO announcements sit right next to casual tips about using Microsoft Excel, staff get confused. Vital health and safety updates get lost in the noise of charity bake sale photos. Consequently, employees start ignoring the intranet entirely because they cannot find the signal in the noise. You need a way to display separate, distinct news streams on a single site homepage.

This guide replaces an older, heavily viewed 2022 Collab365 forum thread on this exact topic. That thread lacked step-by-step instructions, menu paths, and details on modern features. We have entirely rewritten this process for the 2026 SharePoint environment.

To follow this step-by-step tutorial, you will need a few basic things ready in your Microsoft 365 environment:

A SharePoint Online Licence: This method works on all standard enterprise plans (E3, E5, Business Premium, etc.).
Site Owner Permissions: You need the ability to edit the homepage and modify the underlying Site Pages library. If you only have Site Member permissions, you can edit pages, but you usually cannot create the custom columns we need to filter the news.6 Check with your IT team if your options are greyed out.
A Modern Site Template: This method strictly requires a modern Communication site or Team site. Classic SharePoint sites do not support the modern News web part v2.5 or the new 2026 drag-and-drop Flexible layout features.8
Microsoft 365 Groups v2026.1 (Optional): If you plan to use the advanced audience targeting steps later in this guide, you will need active Microsoft 365 groups or Entra ID security groups set up in your tenant.3

If you have these prerequisites sorted, you can transform a messy, confusing intranet homepage into a highly targeted communications hub in under an hour.

Key Takeaway: Before you start clicking around your site, double-check your permissions. You must have Site Owner access to add the custom metadata columns required to filter your news feeds properly.

Can You Really Have Multiple News Feeds on One Site?

Yes, absolutely. A common myth in the SharePoint community is that a site can only ever have one "official" news feed. This misunderstanding happens because, behind the scenes, SharePoint has a site-level feature limit regarding how it generates the underlying RSS feed.10 However, the modern News Web Part is incredibly adaptable and bypasses this limit entirely on the front end.10

SharePoint allows you to add up to 10 distinct News Web Parts on a single page. As long as you configure the metadata filters correctly, they will operate like completely independent feeds, even though they all pull from the exact same backend library.1

Key Takeaway: Do not let old classic SharePoint rules hold you back. The modern News Web Part is designed to be duplicated, filtered, and customised multiple times on the exact same page to suit your exact needs.

Step-by-Step: Add and Configure Your First News Web Part

Before you add the web parts to your page, you must prepare your site to handle categories. If you skip this preparation, both of your news feeds will just show the exact same stories, duplicating your content and confusing your readers.11

Here is how to set up the system properly from scratch.

1. Create the Custom Metadata Column

First, we need to build the tagging system. We will do this by adding a "Choice" column to the library where all news posts are stored.

Go to your SharePoint site homepage.
Click the Settings Gear icon in the top right corner of the screen, then click Site contents.1
Look for the list item named Site Pages and click it. This library is the engine room of your site, where every page and news post lives.
Near the top right of the library view, to the right of your existing column headers, click + Add column.
A menu will appear. Choose Choice and click Next.
Name the column News Category. Make sure to spell it clearly, as you will need to find it later.
In the choices box, type Important News on the first line. Press enter, and type Daily Toolkit on the second line. You can add as many categories as you need, but let us stick to two for this example.
Click Save at the bottom of the pane.

2. Tag Your Existing News

Now that the column exists, we must tell SharePoint which existing posts belong to which feed. Without tags, older news will not appear in our new filtered web parts.

Still inside the Site Pages library, locate an existing news post.
Hover over the file name, click the Show actions dots (...) next to it, and select Properties.9
A details panel will slide out on the right side of your screen. Scroll down until you find your new News Category field.
Click the dropdown and select either Important News or Daily Toolkit.
Close the panel to save.
Repeat this process for at least three or four posts so you have test data ready for both feeds.

Key Takeaway: Tagging your news is an ongoing, daily process. Every time you or a colleague clicks 'Add News' in the future, you must remember to open the Page Details button on the top ribbon and select the correct category before hitting publish.

3. Add the First News Web Part

Now we build the actual homepage layout.

Go back to your main site homepage.
Click Edit at the top right of the page to enter edit mode.1
Hover your mouse over an empty space on the page until you see the circled + icon appear. Click it to open the web part menu.1
In the 2026 SharePoint update, you will see the new Content Pane slide out on the right.12 Search for News in the search bar and drag the News web part directly onto your page.12
Once placed, click the Edit properties pencil icon on the top left of the web part to open its specific settings.1

4. Configure the Filter

This is the vital step that separates the content and makes your dual-feed system work.

In the property pane on the right, ensure the News source is set to This site.1 This is critical; filtering by custom page properties often fails if you select "All sites in the hub" or "Select sites".1
Scroll down through the pane until you reach the Filter section.
Click the dropdown menu and change it from its default setting to Page properties.11
A new set of boxes will appear. Set the Property name to News Category.
Set the rule to Equals.
Type Important News into the value box.
Click Apply at the bottom.

You will instantly see the web part refresh to show only the news you tagged as important. To create your second feed, simply repeat steps 3 and 4, dragging a second News Web Part onto the page, but set the filter value to Daily Toolkit.

Key Takeaway: If your filter does not seem to work immediately, do not panic or delete the web part. Sometimes the SharePoint search index takes a few minutes to crawl and log new custom columns. Wait five to ten minutes and refresh the page.

How to Set Up Two-Column Layout: Important News vs Daily Toolkit

Having two news feeds stacked vertically on top of each other takes up far too much scrolling space. It forces users to scroll past all the Important News just to see the first Daily Toolkit item. For the best user experience, we strongly recommend placing them side-by-side.

In early 2026, Microsoft introduced Flexible Sections (also known as drag-and-drop layout design).4 This completely changed how we design modern SharePoint pages. Instead of being locked into rigid, predefined columns, you can now drag web parts freely across a 2D grid, resize them dynamically, and even overlap them for creative effects.13

Using Flexible Sections for News

While in Edit mode on your homepage, hover your mouse over the far left edge of the page to add a new section boundary.
Click the + Section button and choose the new Flexible option from the layout menu.5
Click and hold your first News Web Part (Important News) and drag it into the left side of the flexible grid.14
Drag your second News Web Part (Daily Toolkit) into the right side of the same grid.14
Use the visual resize handles on the edges of the web parts to adjust their widths.5 We recommend making the Important News feed take up roughly two-thirds of the width, leaving one-third for the Daily Toolkit.

Screenshot description (alt-text: 'Two-column section with News Web Part left, Hero right'): Imagine a clean, white modern page layout. On the left, taking up two-thirds of the screen width, is a large grid of 'Important News' stories featuring bold, 16:9 aspect ratio thumbnail images. On the right, taking up exactly one-third of the screen, is a vertical list of 'Daily Toolkit' quick tips without images, saving space and looking incredibly tidy.

Key Takeaway: Flexible sections allow you to break free from the old, restrictive SharePoint grid. You can make your main news feed massive and your secondary feed small and compact, all perfectly aligned in the same horizontal row.

Choosing the Right Visual Layout

The News Web Part comes with several distinct layout styles. Because you are placing two feeds physically near each other, you must choose layouts that complement one another, rather than compete for attention.15

Here is a comparison of the best layouts for side-by-side feeds, based on our client testing:

Layout Name	Best Used For	Visual Impact	Space Required
Top Story	The main 'Important News' feed.	Very High. Highlights the newest post with a massive image.	Needs a wide, full-width or two-thirds column.
Compact	The secondary 'Daily Toolkit' feed.	Low. Shows titles, dates, and authors without images.	Perfect for narrow, one-third right-hand columns.
Carousel	Visual announcements.	High. Users click through slides manually.	Needs wide space. Good for saving vertical height.16
Filmstrip	Image-heavy daily updates.	Medium. Scrolls horizontally like a photo gallery.	Works well across the very top or bottom of a page.17

If you make both feeds use large, image-heavy layouts like 'Top Story', the page will look messy and overwhelm the reader's eye. We always pair one image-heavy layout with one text-heavy layout to maintain visual hierarchy.

Use Audience Targeting for Personalised Feeds

Categories are great for organising content visually, but what if you want to completely hide certain news from specific people? For example, you might want your 'Important News' feed to show management updates only to line managers, while regular staff see general company updates in that exact same space on the page.

This is where Audience Targeting comes in. It allows you to dynamically push specific news posts to specific people based on their Microsoft 365 groups.18

How to Enable Audience Targeting

You have to turn this feature on in two separate places: the library backend and the web part frontend.

Enable the Library: Go to Site contents > Site Pages. Click the Settings gear in the top right, choose Audience targeting settings, tick the box to Enable audience targeting, and click OK.1
Enable the Web Part: Go back to your homepage and edit the News Web Part. In the property pane under the 'Filter' section, turn on the toggle for Enable audience targeting.1
Target a Post: Now, when you create a new news post, click Page details on the top ribbon. You will see a new box called 'Audience'. Type in the name of the Microsoft 365 group or security group you want to see this post (you can add up to 50 groups per post).1

Key Takeaway: Audience targeting is not a security tool.9 It simply hides the news card from the homepage feed to keep things tidy for irrelevant users. If a user searches for the article, or receives a direct URL link, they can still open and read it.19 Do not use audience targeting for highly confidential data.

Which Group Type Should You Use?

In 2026, Microsoft supports several group types for audience targeting.18 Here is what we found works best in real-world scenarios:

Group Type	How It Works	Best Use Case
Microsoft 365 Groups	Standard collaboration groups tied to Teams channels and Outlook inboxes.18	Targeting news to a specific project team or standard department (e.g., "HR Team").
Entra ID Security Groups	IT-managed backend groups traditionally used for access control and permissions.19	Targeting broad structural divisions like "All Remote Workers" or "External Contractors".
Dynamic Groups	Automatically updates membership daily based on user profile attributes (e.g., Job Title = Manager).19	The absolute best choice for large enterprises to target role-specific news without manual admin overhead.

2026 Updates: Copilot, Viva, and Smart Alternatives

If you are setting this up in 2026, the technology landscape has evolved significantly from the old 2022 methods. Microsoft has injected artificial intelligence and deeper integration across the whole suite. You should know about these modern features before finalising your homepage strategy.

Copilot-Summarised News

Microsoft 365 Copilot now integrates directly into the news reading experience. If your users access your SharePoint news via the Viva Connections app in Microsoft Teams (which replaced the old Feed experience globally in April 2025), they will see a new "Summarize top news" button.20

When clicked, Copilot provides a quick overview by generating an instant AI summary of the top news items currently in their tailored feed.20 This is a massive time-saver for busy staff who just want the bullet points of your 'Daily Toolkit' without clicking into every single article. Note: As of early 2026, this specific summary button requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence and operates exclusively on the Teams desktop client.20

You can also use Copilot to actually write the news. A new feature allows you to take raw meeting notes generated in 'Copilot Pages' and push them directly into a draft SharePoint News post with one single click.21 Furthermore, the new "Agentic building" capabilities allow you to type a natural language prompt, and Copilot will build the entire SharePoint page layout for you.22

Key Takeaway: Even if you write long, detailed news posts, Copilot will likely summarise them for your readers in Viva Connections. Always ensure your opening paragraphs contain the vital facts so the AI extracts the most accurate, useful summary.

Viva Engage Integration

If your 'Daily Toolkit' feed is meant to be highly social, chatty, and interactive, consider swapping out the standard News Web Part for a Viva Engage Web Part.23

In 2026, Viva Engage communities integrate seamlessly into SharePoint.23 You can embed a specific community feed (e.g., 'Daily Tips & Q&A') directly onto your homepage.24 Employees can read, like, and comment on the feed right there on the SharePoint page without ever opening the separate Yammer/Engage app.23 It turns a static, one-way broadcast feed into a genuine two-way conversation, which drastically boosts daily engagement.

Adaptive Card Layouts

For developers and advanced IT specialists, the 2026 SharePoint Framework (SPFx) allows you to build Adaptive Card Extensions (ACEs) for your news.25 This means you can create highly customised, interactive mini-apps that sit right inside your news feed. Instead of just reading text, a user could click a button on a news card to approve a policy, log a helpdesk ticket, or view live flight data without leaving the homepage.25

Alternative Web Parts for News

Sometimes, the News Web Part is not actually the best tool for the job. Depending on what you are trying to display, you have excellent alternatives.

Web Part Name	How It Works	When to Use It Instead of News
News Web Part	Rolls up published news pages with images, text, and author bylines.1	Best for official announcements, blogs, and regular chronological updates.
Highlighted Content	Dynamically searches and displays any file type (Word docs, PDFs, Excel sheets) based on tags.26	Best if your 'News' actually consists of PDF reports or Word documents uploaded to a library, rather than written web pages.
Hero Web Part	Displays up to five manually selected links with massive, visually stunning background images.27	Best for static, permanent homepage links that do not change daily (e.g., 'Welcome to the Intranet' or 'HR Portal').

Team Site vs Communication Site: Key Differences

When you click 'Create Site' in SharePoint, it asks you to choose between a Team Site and a Communication Site. Your choice drastically impacts how your news behaves and who can edit it.28

Feature	Communication Site	Team Site
Primary Purpose	Broadcasting news to a large audience (Few writers, many readers).28	Active collaboration within a small group (Everyone writes and edits).28
Permissions	Strictly controlled. Readers cannot accidentally edit or delete news posts.	Open by default. Anyone in the Team can edit or delete someone else's news post.
Layout Options	Supports full-width sections and visually stunning, edge-to-edge layouts for news.5	Lacks full-width sections. More focused on left-hand navigation and document libraries.5

The Collab365 advice is that, if you are building a company-wide homepage to display 'Important News' and a 'Daily Toolkit', you must build it on a Communication Site. If you attempt this on a Team Site, every single member of that team gets edit rights by default, and someone will inevitably delete your perfectly configured news web part by accident.

Key Takeaway: Communication Sites are for broadcasting out to the masses. Team Sites are for working together in small groups. Always use Communication Sites for company-wide news feeds.

Troubleshooting: Why Isn't My Second Feed Showing Different Content?

Even when following the steps perfectly, SharePoint can sometimes be stubborn. If you set up two feeds and they are both showing the exact same news, or missing news entirely, check these 5 common fixes.

1. You Forgot to Tag the Old Posts

This is the most common mistake. When you add the 'News Category' column and apply the filter to your web part, any news post that has a blank category will instantly disappear from the filtered feed. You must go back into the Site Pages library, edit your old posts, and manually assign them to 'Important News' or 'Daily Toolkit'.

2. The Page is Checked Out or Locked If you or another site editor was working on a news page and closed the browser without saving or publishing properly, the page becomes "locked" or "checked out".29 A locked page will not appear in the News Web Part for anyone else. Go to the Site Pages library, look for a little green arrow icon over the file, click the three dots, and select 'Discard check out' or 'Publish'.

3. Search Index Delay (Caching) The News Web Part relies heavily on SharePoint's background search index to find and filter content.7 When you publish a brand new post or create a new column, it can sometimes take up to 15 minutes for the search crawler to index the category tag and push the data to the web part. If it does not show up immediately, wait, grab a coffee, and hard-refresh the page later. Do not delete and rebuild the web part out of frustration.

4. You Used "Selected Sites" Instead of "This Site" In the web part properties, if you change the source from 'This site' to 'Select sites', the filtering options change.1 Sometimes, filtering by a custom page property (like our News Category) becomes unavailable, buggy, or limited when pulling from multiple different sites across a hub.1 If you are filtering by a custom column, always try to keep the source set to 'This site' for the most reliable results.

5. Audience Targeting is Hiding It From You

If you turned on Audience Targeting for a specific post but forgot to add yourself to the Entra ID group you targeted, the news post will successfully hide itself from your own view on the homepage. Always ensure you are a member of the test groups when configuring targeted feeds to avoid tricking yourself into thinking the feed is broken.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I add news from external websites into these feeds? Yes. You do not have to write every post from scratch. On your homepage, click + New and select News link.1 Paste the URL of an external website (like a BBC or industry news article). SharePoint will automatically grab the image and headline. You can then tag this link with 'Daily Toolkit' and it will appear in your secondary feed exactly like an internal post.1

Does this dual-feed setup work on mobile devices?

Yes, but the layout changes. SharePoint is fully responsive. If you place your feeds side-by-side using a two-column flexible layout, the mobile app (and the Viva Connections Teams app) will automatically stack them vertically. The left column (Important News) will display first, and users will scroll down to see the right column (Daily Toolkit).

What is the maximum number of News Web Parts I can add? There is no hard software limit blocking you, and the 2026 updates fully support multiple instances.11 However, for page load performance and general usability, we recommend a maximum of 3 or 4 news web parts per page. Anything more becomes overwhelming for the reader.

What is the limit for Audience Targeting? When applying an audience to a specific news post, you can add a maximum of 50 different groups (Microsoft 365 groups or security groups) per post.1

Can I do this on classic SharePoint sites? No. The modern News Web Part, audience targeting toggles, and flexible section drag-and-drop features are exclusively available on modern SharePoint pages. If your site still has the old ribbon interface, you will need to upgrade to a modern Communication site.8

Next Steps

Separating your news streams is the single fastest way to improve intranet engagement. By dividing critical alerts from daily tips, you respect your employees' time and ensure vital messages are actually read.

We highly recommend testing this setup first. Do not experiment on your live company homepage where everyone can see you working. Spin up a private test Communication site, create your custom 'News Category' column, publish three test posts, and practice applying the filters. Once you are comfortable with how the flexible sections and filters behave, replicate the process on your live site.

For more research, articles and news about the latest updates, check the dedicated SharePoint and Teams space on Collab365 Spaces.