Primary Services
Identity Design
UX + Interface Design
CMS Development
Custom Development
Google
About the customer
The Street News Service is an innovative online news agency that
brings together the best of street paper journalism from around the
world. As the independent news agency of the International Network
of Street Papers, it provides an online portal for the world's
street papers to share editorial content and images, enabling their
development and capacity building. The SNS is particularly crucial
for street papers in the developing world, which often operate in
isolation and with scant resources.
Organisational
drivers
The SNS required a new website to underpin its activities and
support content exchange with street papers internationally. The
organisation needed a multi-site, multi-lingual news portal which
was capable of being content managed by staff and which needed to
include a secure members area.
One of the key challenges for the SNS was in the sheer amount of
content being created and exchanged. Content needed to be
structured and categorised in such a way as to make searching for,
and retrieving information easy and relevant. In addition the
organisation wanted to put in place a reporting capability which
would allow it to get better insight of member activities and
downloads.
What Brightwire delivered
SNS selected Brightwire as its chosen partner following a
competitive pitch. First, we created the branding, design and user
interface. Next, we designed the page templates. The build phase
included
-
developing the content management system, to allow
staff to easily manage all content;
-
designing the custom content search engine to help
users get to articles they need, quickly;
- building
a multi-site structure to handle the international language
sites;
- creating
a secure member area which only SNS member papers
can access;
-
integrating the site into Google's free text search
engine; and
-
customising Google Analytics to provide advanced
reports & tracking of member activities.
The content management system now allows staff to upload, edit
and manage content (articles and hi-res images) easily and ensures
the site is always up to date for member papers. The content search
engine provides a comprehensive and usable way of allowing members
to search for relevant information in multiple languages.
Members can login securely and download an article, and
associated images, for use in their own street papers. For the
Street News Service, staff can use the custom reports to get an
insight on advanced usage and tracking information on member
activities and downloads. The site is fully search engine optimised
and is in use by over 114 members in 40 countries.
