Sudanile News
Sudanile is a Sudanese electronic non-profit press organization. Sudanile upholds the highest standards of press freedom, editorial independence, and journalistic integrity. Sudanile's diverse team of writers weaves a rich tapestry of perspectives, reflecting the vibrant spectrum of Sudanese society.
Visit website
The problem
In 2001, Sudanile‘s founder began a project to build an entirely new platform from the ground up to serve as the most accurate reporting hub for the Sudanese public. The old platform was built in Joomla, and was beset by severe hacking and doxxing attacks that resulted in a corrupted joomla CMS build with no viable backups - save a single MySQL database dump. Further, there were a number of user experience problems to solve in the process of moving the platform to a new UX paradigm. SEO was another challenge as the platform was set to transition to an ad revenue model. The primary goals for the project were to secure the site‘s legacy content, port it over to a modern platform, overhaul the design and ensure that the site is search based, mobile first and tuned for SEO.
Achievements
- Recovered the old website’s corrupted joomla database, containing more than 200,000 records over a period of 20 years. Immense undertaking requiring thorough knowledge of MySQL and PL/SQL
- Led the re-launch of the website after successful recovery of the website’s database content.
- Implemented powerful site wide search via the Typesense search API
- Successfully developed and implemented custom WordPress theme, including bespoke frontend plugins and web hooks. The website now has a modern responsive UI with social media integration.