Telegrafi’s Website Optimization, Modernization, and User Experience Enhancement

Brief

Telegrafi is one of the largest and most influential Albanian-speaking online news portal that delivers real-time news, advice, and analysis across various domains. They requested our assistance in enhancing their website’s technology, server, and overall performance by developing a new theme and integrating cutting-edge features.

Challenge

Telegrafi’s website was facing several challenges, such as slow page load times, outdated technology, and an unattractive interface. These issues were affecting the user experience and their search engine rankings. The challenge was to optimize the website, improve its performance, and add new features while maintaining its existing brand identity. 

Solution

We developed a new theme that improved the website’s appearance and functionality and optimized the website’s queries, which helped to increase its performance by up to 98%. We also added a Dark mode feature that allowed users to switch the background color of the portal or application from light to dark. This feature helps to reduce eye strain and is a popular trend in modern website design. 

We added two new features, Games and Weather, to provide users with more engaging content. The Weather feature informs users about real-time weather conditions based on their browsing location, while the Games feature provides access to over 300 games, with more to come. 

We implemented several optimization techniques to improve the website’s search engine rankings, including SEO best practices. Additionally, we optimized the website’s meta tags, headings, and content to include relevant keywords and phrases. Further more, we improved the website’s structure to make it clear and concise. This resulted in fast page load times for a better user experience. 

We implemented AD Lazy Load; a technique that loads ads only when they become visible in the user’s browser window. This resulted in faster page rendering and a smoother browsing experience. We also added Native Ads and Promo Ads to provide advertisers with a seamless and non-intrusive advertising experience, which also blends in with the website’s content. 

Brief

We have built web solutions for 80% of the regional media portals and newspapers with the highest traffic of users on a daily basis. 

Solution

Set up a convenient system for integrating advertising and sponsored content as one of the ways of monetization of news portals. 

• Performed website optimization for search engines. 
• Improved the page load speed time. 
• Enhanced performance of the existing high-load news aggregator. 
• Optimized the development time of the new websites with the ability to constantly scale the portal. 

While in its beginnings, sending small and large attachments via emails was good enough, it soon became clear that the amount of data that had been accumulated over the years was in dire need of an effective filing and sorting system. In order for its staff to be able to navigate through the amount of different types of files, including PDF, Word, scanned documents, photos and many others and make it useful in its daily work, BIRN approached us for a solution that would put all of the gathered material in one place and make it easy and quick to search, find and access.

Our Solution

Having identified our client’s need, we sat down and determined the amount of time that will be needed to come up with the solution, as well as mapped key technologies that would be most useful for the task at hand. Throughout the process, we held regular meetings with our client, either in our offices or via video calls, which helped us inform our client about the progress made. This way we made sure that we are on the same page from the very start of the project.

As in any other project, initially we took our time to go through the details with our client and determine the exact solution needed in this case. As a result, we came to the conclusion that what is needed is a Document Management System web application for journalists, media and other users to use as an online archive of digital documents and scanned text, which also allow sharing of source documents.

Keeping an organization spread over seven countries on the same page is not an easy feat. Together with BIRN, we developed a web application that contained all the data gathered throughout the years and made it accessible for all network country members. To achieve this, we focused on making search modules responsive to special characters of different languages spoken in all seven country offices.

The application allows BIRN staff to upload files in a safe and private manner, as well as share those documents, make them public, or embed them. They can view documents that other people have uploaded such as reports, legislation, declassified documents, and correspondence.

As part of the project, the available information was first gathered in one place and then sorted out based on file type. This allowed us to come up with the sitemap of the application that would serve as and efficient and easy-to-use platform for managing the documents. The application also contains a feature, which allowed the BIRN staff to search for scanned documents as well as highlight and add notes into the scanned files. This was a crucial part of the application since a significant amount of data that BIRN possessed was scanned documents shared between offices through the years.

A major feature the web application is how well it works with printed files. When a PDF scanned as an image is uploaded, the platform will read it with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to recognize the words in the file. This enables investigative journalists to upload documents from original sources and make them publicly accessible, as well as process documents much more easily.

By this point, the application was ready to be used, pending one last step. The collected data, which had been stored in personal HDDs and other cloud storage platforms had to be transferred to the newly created application. To do this effectively and without losing any information on the way, our team developed data migration modules that enabled quick and effective transferal of files from the old platforms to the new one.

For an organization that thrives on data to cover breaking news or to conduct investigative journalism, having the information easily reachable and accessible is critical. Today BIRN has a well functioning and responsive tool that makes that streamlines the work of its staff and makes it efficient, effective and less time-consuming.

Solution

We decided to establish a platform where Google AdSense, Google analytics, WordPress and influencers themselves could have a common ground of functioning.

The platform offers real-time real data insights for both the publisher and the influencers.

There is a special space within the platform where influencers (important people on the showbiz, business world, influencers of all kinds who are followed by millions of people on different social media) can share the articles and then by bringing clicks to the platform can generate money. Financial benefit will be allocated separately, and both the influencers and the publisher will benefit.

KUTIA Team engaged so that each influencer has a unique ID to affiliate with, and there is valuable revenue for each post and each influencers that logs in. The influencer has an access on all data, which was out intention. The influencer can control the posts, the number of visitors, which posts reach more people, which posts are more shared on social media and also in which ones, and after careful consideration they can decide what to share, how to boost and how to generate more money.

We as a team also engaged so that this platform would present to the influencer the most recent posts, the most shared one, activity check, profile managing, FAQs and so on.

We used WordPress API for getting all posts ranked by the performance gathered by Google Analytics API. The revenue performance is shown graphically on a real time basis in the platform using the Google AdSense API.

Main technology stack: PHP Laravel, MySQL VueJs,
Third party technologies: WordPress API, Google AdSense and Google Analytics API, Google Chart

What solutions we come up with ultimately depends on our clients’ needs. In any project, we work closely with our client to figure out what tools and technologies are most needed to provide a long-standing solution for their needs. While our team is experienced in developing dedicated custom applications, we are also proficient in coming up with practical solutions that are developed on open-source platforms.

Having worked with many customers from the world media, corporations and different type of businesses, we have come to understand that the best solution is always the most practical one. Our team’s deep knowledge of and extensive experience working with open-source platforms such as WordPress have made it possible for many businesses and organizations to streamline their productivity and increase their visibility in the digital arena, while having maximum control over their content.

For organizations and businesses that depend on the ability to quickly and seamlessly update and modify their content, such as news agencies, we often suggest open-source solutions that allow a higher level of control and flexibility.

We do this by integrating into one place different modules, including e-commerce, shipment, quickbooks online, as well as specific modules for training management and quizzes.

Open-source platforms enable our clients to manage their content easily and efficiently. Even better, such solutions are highly practical as adding additional modules later is both hassle-free and low cost.