Designing and Building an Automated Media Publishing Platform
Product Developer
UX/UI Designer
Systems Architect
Automation Designer
12 Months
WordPress
PHP, MySQL
Python
A fragile Architecture + Complex Content Migration
This client’s existing platform had become increasingly difficult to maintain. Years of content, media files, legacy infrastructure and publishing workflows had created a system that was fragile, resource-heavy and risky to update. The challenge wasn’t simply to modernise the website, but to create a sustainable platform capable of supporting ongoing publishing, automation and future growth.
An out-of-the box solution
Rather than approaching the project as a website redesign, it was treated as a systems problem. The solution focused on separating responsibilities across dedicated environments, introducing an automated publishing workflow, modernising the user experience and creating a more scalable architecture that could support both editorial teams and long-term maintenance.
Design Thinking & Architecture Strategy
Before any design or development work began, the first priority was identifying where the real risk existed. The website was handling content management, media storage, publishing, processing and presentation within the same environment.
To reduce complexity and improve reliability, the platform was redesigned around a separated architecture: a dedicated media server for large assets, a processing layer responsible for automation and validation, and a lightweight public-facing website focused solely on delivering content. This decision became the foundation for every stage that followed.
Interface Design & Platform Foundation
With the architecture defined, the next step was selecting a WordPress foundation capable of supporting a content-heavy publishing environment without introducing unnecessary complexity.
A lightweight Gutenberg-based theme was chosen to minimise overhead, improve performance and provide long-term flexibility. The interface was then customised extensively, particularly across mobile experiences, navigation patterns and content consumption workflows, creating a modern looking interfaz in a plataform that remained easy to use and familiar for the publishing team.
Automation Development & Publishing Infrastructure
Once the front-end foundation was in place, development shifted to the publishing pipeline. This stage focused on building and testing the automation layer responsible for receiving content from Burli, validating incoming files, processing media assets and distributing them across the platform. Custom Python applications, databases and integration workflows were developed to connect the newsroom system, media server and website.
By separating content processing from content delivery, the public website remained lightweight while handling thousands of articles, images and audio files efficiently behind the scenes.
Historical Content Migration
Migrating more than 60,000 existing articles and media assets required a process that prioritised control and validation over speed alone. Rather than attempting a single large migration, the project was broken into a series of staged Python-based migration tools supported by temporary databases and tracking tables. Each step could be executed, reviewed and validated independently before moving forward. This approach significantly reduced risk while maintaining efficiency, allowing batches of over 20,000 articles and their associated media to be migrated in under ten minutes. The migration itself became a controlled process rather than a high-risk event.
Delta Migration & Go-Live
The final stage focused on migrating the content created since the initial migration and preparing the platform for launch. Because every previous step had been carefully tested, documented and validated, the final migration was completed with minimal disruption to the live environment. Approximately 1,200 recently published articles were transferred in under three minutes while the existing platform remained operational. The launch itself was uneventful, which was precisely the objective. Months of planning, testing and process design resulted in a smooth transition that was largely invisible to end users.
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