Bandhiga Media
Bandhiga Media is a 21st century multimedia news brand based in Mogadishu. An essential destination for reporting on the people, places and issues that matter globally. Bandhiga captures the events that shape our lives through exceptional reporting, writing and photography. Bandhiga Media stands apart for its commitment to truth and accuracy, for the quality of its press, and for its insistence on exciting and moving every reader. Our Web site, bandhigamedia.com features up-to-the-minute reporting and commentary by your favorite Bandhiga writers. You can also watch our videos, listen to our podcasts and explore our interactive features.
Task
- Develop a news portal app on android
- Sync data with the previous WordPress site
- Redesign the old website bandhiga.net
Requested Features for Mobile App:
- Sync data: page, post, author, categories
- Podcast/Radio live streaming
- Chat Room
- Weather Report based on location
- YouTube Streaming
- Live TV embed
- Pagination & Lazy Loading
Requested Features for the website:
- Dual collapsible navigation bar
- Image optimization
- Recent posts based on categories and time
Reference: cnn.co.uk
Challenge
- Bandhiga Media has over 6000 pages on their website.
- Chat Room requires real-time database on top of the previous app which was using cloud database. It also requires OAuth for each user.
- WordPress sites usually use PHP framework and passes data in the form of .xml API. Meanwhile, React Native usually pulls data in the form of .json.
- We had language barrier with the journalists. Most of them communicate and write the contents in Somali language.
- We could not optimize the SEO of the content, since it is written in Somali Language.
Solution
We partner with dhowow.com for every project from Africa and Arabic countries. They're specialized in WordPress and Java development, while we're more to React-JAMstack and React Native. Dhowow became our medium to talk to Somalia journalists. They optimize the SEO, while we develop the mobile app.
Functions
- In the near future, Bandiga.net will possibly migrate from Wordpress to NextJs, so we chose react native for this project.
- There is a WordPress plugin to convert from .xml to .json for rss feed. To learn more about converting .xml API to .json at checkWP JSON feed Plugin.
- We add real-time database from Firebase on top of the app for the chat room function. Check the documentation at Firebase Real-Time Database, and Firebase-Wordpress Integration Plugin at wordpress.org
- Integrated Shoutcast streaming with WordPress
- added Live TV with iframe
- Integrated with YouTube API by following this guide
- Install Dynamic React Native Weather with command line:
npm i --save react-native-weather
Design
- We created two navbar: one based on type of content (article, radio, podcast, video), another based on categories (business, sport, energy, health)
- Categorized recent posts based on categories.
- Changed the layout and colors by request
Result
Download from Google Play Store
Overall
- Service: Mobile App Development
- Category: News Portal, Live Streaming
- Difficulty: Medium
- Stack: React Native
- Integration: WordPress, Firebase, Shoutcast, YouTube
- Development process: 2 months
- HR required: 1 Mobile App Developer, 1 Front-End Developer, 1 UI/UX Designer
React native app for Wordpress site is a little bit overkill. We could actually use PWA instead of a new app for WP site, unless in the future we will upgrade the website. Since they already have a good infrastructure for mobile app, we expect the migration of bandhiga.net to react environtment soon. We wish Bandhiga Media all the best.