Syde partnered with Swissinfo for their migration to an adaptable, WordPress-powered framework capable of addressing the challenges of audience engagement and linguistic diversity in publishing.
The challenge: An adaptable CMS to manage linguistic diversity in audience engagement
Swissinfo is an international ten-language online-media outlet from Switzerland. It brings news and information about Switzerland to a diverse, global audience. The website and accompanying mobile app empower Swissinfo’s journalists to leverage rich multimedia storytelling and audience discussions to engage readers in their reporting — in no fewer than ten languages.
Swissinfo’s ambitions were constrained by its CMS, which limited the speed of innovation due to a lack of customizability. WordPress presented itself as an open-source alternative. However, transitioning swissinfo.ch from its previous CMS to WordPress would not just involve a large-scale migration of 300,000 articles and 1 million images to the WordPress VIP platform; it also meant that the various integrations between their CMS and other parts of Swissinfo’s media infrastructure needed to be replaced without any downtime.
For a seamless transition to the new WordPress-based platform, Syde reproduced the existing designs in the new block-based layouts with minimal changes to optimize the user experience.
The solution: An API infrastructure primed for content creation and recirculation
For the swissinfo.ch relaunch, Syde constructed a WordPress network with MultilingualPress to power 11 individual sites in ten languages. In close collaboration with Swissinfo’s team of engineers, WordPress APIs were extended to connect to microservices for media embedding, IPTC tagging, AI-powered translations, and a recommendations engine for article recirculation. Various customizations were built to meet Swissinfo’s complex media requirements, including a custom digital asset management solution (DAM), which offers centralized control over image data and metadata.
Throughout the development phase, Syde’s embedded QA specialists ensured the reliability and usability of key features through automated and manual testing, saving the Swissinfo team valuable time during their own preparations for the relaunch. Syde also provided instructional materials and training to the editorial team so that after the switchover, journalists could confidently use the WordPress block editor for their storytelling.
The swissinfo.ch website offers a broad range of content, from information for newcomers in Switzerland to podcasts and videos from the Swiss public broadcasting service.
The outcome: Seamless translations and improved tools for audience engagement
After an intensive period of close collaboration and carefully planning the content migration, we relaunched swissinfo.ch in early 2024. Syde delivered a website capable of meeting Swissinfo’s challenges of linguistic diversity, article recirculation, and flexible page composition.
Thanks to their new and flexible framework, the Swissinfo’s team can confidently look to the future. Rolling out new features and providing its global audience with engaging journalism and important information will now be easier.
It’s very easy for our journalists to automatically create article translations right in the blog editor…I really like that. For example, when someone posts a comment on the English site, we translate it into all languages. In-CMS translation options make our workflows easier.
Veronica Devore Head of Audience at SWI swissinfo.ch
Syde’s QA processes are outstanding. Their team ensures top-tier standards through meticulous testing and proactive issue resolution. Their commitment to continuous improvement and adherence to our best practices, as well as market ones, give us great confidence in their deliverables. We highly recommend Syde for their exceptional QA services.
Enrique Calahorra Head IT Engineering & CISO, Swissinfo
Key results
Empowered by WordPress’ extensible APIs and its powerful, customizable editing experience, swissinfo.ch can now more effectively inform and interact with a global audience.
Transition to open source Successful migration of content and an API-driven architecture to a license-free, open-source solution that offers greater adaptability.
Seamless translation management Easier creation of manual and AI-powered translations for editors and readers, even facilitating cross-language discussions.
Better tools for article recirculation Data-driven recommendations and query-based page composition ensure that Swissinfo’s audience can easily find the latest and most engaging stories and discussions.
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