Paperboy intends to bring all digital newspapers and magazines under one roof and provide exposure to larger reader community. Also intends to help small publications in digitalising of their newspapers/magazines and provide exposure to larger user base. Currently Paperboy as
tie-up with 350+ newspapers and 150+ magazines. As a revenue modal, Paperboy as its own
ads publishing system, which intelligently shows ads without affecting user reading experience.
Project Details
Project was executed in T&M mode. Started with collecting high level requirements and breaking down of the requirements and converting them into wireframe followed by visual designs. Paperboy mainly involved below actors
- End users - This category users are Interested reading newspapers and magazines.
- Publishers - This category users are the one who feeds newspapers and magazines into paperboy platform.
- Advertisers - This category users are Interested in publishing ads on paperboy platform.
- Paperboy support team - This team is responsible for maintaining all newspapers, magazines and advertisements.
Project involves providing platform for all these actors and have transparent analytics system where publishers can audit the readers and revenue reports.
Client's Expectations
- Provide friendly interface for users to choose, search newspaper and magazines of user’s choice.
- Best reading experience.
- Display ads without affecting the users reading experience.
- Provide easy to use system for publishers to share their daily newspapers and magazines with paperboy.
- Deep analytics to track user behaviours.
- Easy ads booking tool, so that any one can book ads slots on paperboy portal.
Backend
- Node.js
- CCAvenue Payment gateway integration.
- Push,Mail and SMS notifications.
Web
We picked AngularJS for the to develop the frontend. It was the cutting edge technology at the time we started developing PaperBoy and it benefited the project in various ways, Firstly, it’s a web application containing all services like payments, online PDF reading, filtering and sorting products etc. AngularJS framework was full package to develop and manage all sort for services. Secondly, we were also trying to handle complex routing in the application. Angular has great predefined setup to handle and specify routes which was quick and easy.
Most important and core features that we needed to develop is to make reading experience efficient. Reading experience suppose to be the easy and buttery smooth. For that we used PDFjs, one of the best library available out there for the job.
Major challenges faced
- Compressing, processing 1000+ editions without loosing clarity.
- Streaming the pdf contents to end users as quick as possible.
- Supporting the different modes of uploading of newspapers and magazines pdfs to paperboy portal.
- Automating the uploading of PDFs to paperboy portal.
