Alghad TV: Building a Scalable Drupal Multi-Site Digital Platform

Challenges 

The initiative aimed to address key user and editorial pain points, enabling Alghad TV to achieve its digital expansion vision. The objectives were:

1. Content Organization and Personalization
Rather than consolidating all content into a single feed, Alghad TV aimed to provide personalized experiences based on category-oriented subsites for general news, sports, programs, podcasts, and feature stories.

2. Streamline Editorial Workflows
The editorial team required simple, easy-to-use tools and role-based permissions to manage large volumes of content in groups and individually.

3.  Editorial Sovereignty
With growing concerns over external censorship, policy pressures, and algorithmic influence, news websites struggle to maintain editorial sovereignty while their platforms support live publishing.

4. Facilitate Future Scalability
The platform had to support emerging content types and future growth while minimizing redevelopment and ensuring scalability.

Solution

Alghad TV's vision was clear: they wanted a stronger and more meaningful online presence to effectively achieve their goals.

Because Alghad TV has such a diverse audience, we knew a phased approach was necessary. Our project management team decided the best solution was to create dedicated subsites. This way, we could effectively serve all audience segments without putting all content types onto a single platform and causing the audience frustration.

This is where the multi-site architecture was so effective. By subdividing the platform, we ensured each audience could easily find their content and engage with it. 

We designed five dedicated subsites, each dedicated to a specific content type or user interest:

• Main News: The hub for general updates and breaking stories.

• Sports: Covering leagues, match highlights, and sports-related news.

• Programs: A home for TV shows, interviews, and documentaries.

• Podcasts: Dedicated to audio talk shows and thematic discussions.

• Stories: A visual-rich experience built for long-form and multimedia storytelling.

Currently, only the Main News site has launched as part of our staged approach; the remaining subsites are under development. This phased delivery ensures quality, scalability, and smooth transitions for both Alghad TV and its audience

Results and outcomes

• Robust Publishing Platform
  Flexible support for various content formats such as articles, videos, podcasts, galleries, and live streaming.
   
• Live Streaming Integration
   Effortless broadcasting through YouTube and Buzzsprout without third-party constraints.
   
• Decentralized Editorial Access
  Roles content management involves team collaboration across subsites.
   
• SEO Enhancements
  Structured metadata and schema to increase discoverability on search engines.
   
• Higher User Engagement
  Thanks to clean navigation and personalized subsites, users now explore more content and stay longer on the platform.
   
• Editorial Agility
  Editors can publish multimedia content, including sensitive live updates, without depending on third-party platforms.
   
• Streamlined Workflows
  With role-based access and a simplified interface, content teams now publish and manage updates more efficiently.