Digital Media Specialists

The end client is the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology of a major Gulf state.

Requirement

To develop a public facing website in Arabic and English to deliver content to the telecommunications sector in the end client’s role as industry regulator and to showcase best practice in the use of the web for both the public and government within the country.

Key functional elements included:

• A fully localised Arabic/English site with the entire site, copy and assets reversed to work right to left as well as left to right
• Creating modules for site administrators to be able to add content simultaneously in Arabic and English and for it to be displayed dynamically accordingly
• Developing a bespoke, dual language document management tool for public consultation and all legal documents produced by them as a ministry
• Building custom modules to enable site administrators manage video, images and sound files and display them dynamically upon the site

Technical Solution

The foundation for the application was the agency’s proprietary .net CMS integrated with a MS SQL 2005 database. The frontend was built using HTML, JavaScript and Flash.

As the CMS used as the core of the application was originally developed to work in European languages only it required a significant amount of customisation to allow it to work with Arabic content.

Project Mechanics

The initial phase of the project ran for three months from initial planning to launch. Some key stages of the project included:

• Developing custom functionality for the site’s CMS to enable it to deliver both static and dynamic content to the site
• Building HTML templates for end client approval in Arabic and English
• Planning and delivering against a tight launch plan requiring the Arabic and English sites to be launched simultaneously
• Providing ongoing support of the site

Conclusion

Our expertise in developing web solutions in Arabic ensured that we were not only able to develop a completely dual language website both more importantly to be able to work with the client’s existing CMS to enable it to work with Arabic content.

Detailed planning combined with a flexible approach to how the project as phased ensured that we delivered on time and within budget despite the challenges such projects typically present.