Multi-channel distribution portal for a Swedish news agency
A reputed Swedish news agency required an online portal for multi-channel news distribution. The website features searchable news material and documents from various outlets and provides a heavily customizable notification feature.
Publishers can keep track of every significant news article. The distribution feature uses cutting edge backend technology that delivers accurate and on-time information to the stakeholders.
LiteBreeze’s extensive experience in Laravel was put to use for authentication and APIs that serve the highly interactive user interface built with VueJs. The system is built to harbor future scalability demands backed up by robust features of AWS.
Key features
Robust search: Search component was designed from the ground-up to deliver the capability for articles with options to recollect and reproduce as per several search criteria. Saved searches are loaded in multiple tabs and filters could be modified if necessary.
Search criteria include filters like date ranges, regions, authorities and categories along with keyword search. Search results are available as RSS/JSON feeds.
Real-time notification: Heavily customizable notifications enable customers to receive strictly personalized notifications when articles of their interest are published.
The system enables users to fine-tune email article notifications based on a variety of search combinations using region, category, authority filters, and different notification frequency options.
In addition to this, the user interface has a real-time notification system to alert the users of new articles without the need for page refreshes.
Passwordless login: Email-based highly secure login feature is user-friendly and removes the need for the customers to remember the password.
Technical information
Technology stack: Laravel framework 5.4 is used for all backend operations. VueJS version 2.0 along with Bootstrap 4.0 is used for frontend UI/UX. MySQL is the primary data store. Elasticsearch is used for blazing fast search results.
Redis is employed as cache/queue driver for faster response and management. AWS S3 is used for file storage and Amazon SES for mail delivery.
Security: Authentication utilizes Laravel Passport, a powerful package for token-based login. This ensures that no compromise has been made on security aspects of the system.
Scalability: This system has been designed keeping in mind high-performance computing workloads it may need in the foreseeable future. Queues are employed for time-consuming tasks such as email sending.
Responsive Design: Bootstrap library has been used for a responsive, lightweight and easily customizable UI.
Future challenges
UI/UX Improvement: User interfaces are continuously reviewed and continual research is done to improve their experience.
Article distribution: The ever increasing demand for content delivery needs special focus, so minimizing delay in sending articles is a top priority.
Elasticsearch: Since the data grows at a rapid pace, optimization to the index is required. Also, an upgrade to the latest version of the elastic stack has been planned for even better search performance. This will need careful analysis to avoid any regression issues.
