The Indian Express: From Code Reviews to Editorial Independence
The Indian Express known for its “Journalism of Courage” has defined Indian media since 1932, serves ~80 million monthly users across a portfolio that includes Loksatta, Jansatta, and Financial Express. Already running on WordPress VIP, their challenge wasn’t the platform. It was velocity: how do you maintain rapid development across a multilingual media network while meeting enterprise-grade coding standards?
Since 2017, rtCamp has partnered with The Indian Express as a strategic development and staff augmentation partner. What began as daily code reviews evolved into a collaboration that delivered platform modernization, team upskilling, and a complete editorial workflow transformation.
| Challenge | Solution | Outcome |
| Time zone gaps with US-based agency delayed daily code reviews | rtCamp’s globally distributed team ensured same-day reviews meeting WordPress VIP standards | Improved code quality, faster feature delivery, enterprise-grade internal review practices |
| Internal team needed upskilling on VIP standards | Targeted training on WordPress VIP coding standards and best practices | Engineers now perform code reviews independently, fully compliant with VIP standards |
| Fragmented regional site management created deployment bottlenecks | Centralized monorepo architecture with unified CI/CD pipeline | Simultaneous deployments across all sites; localized failures never halt global releases |
| Legacy editor tools lacked design flexibility | Migration to Full-Site Editing (FSE) architecture | Editors control layout directly; faster time-to-publish across all brands |
Bridging the Time Gap
The Indian Express wanted quicker code reviews, and deeper technology consulting. And they wanted an agency that could provide these in real time in their time zone.
rtCamp’s globally distributed team, available across all time zones stepped in to review custom development before deployment. Every release met WordPress VIP’s security, performance, and compliance benchmarks. The internal team kept their development velocity without risking site stability.
From Consultancy to Self-Sufficiency
The Indian Express wanted their engineers to own the process themselves, including code reviews.
rtCamp shifted from reviewer to trainer, running targeted sessions on WordPress VIP coding standards and best practices. The result: a team that now manages its own code reviews to enterprise standards, and a transition from external dependency to internal capability.
Monorepo: One Pipeline, Many Sites
Managing indianexpress.com alongside regional titles like Loksatta and Jansatta meant juggling separate deployment workflows. Updates to one site could bottleneck another.
The fix was architectural: a monorepo setup that stores code for all sites in a single repository, feeding a unified CI/CD pipeline. Developers now ship features and security patches across the entire portfolio simultaneously. One workflow, dozens of site instances, zero cross-site delays.
Full-Site Editing for the Newsroom
Legacy editing tools were holding back editorial teams. Rigid workflows meant layouts required developer intervention. This was not ideal when you’re covering IPL matches or election results in real time. rtCamp led the FSE migration across three fronts:
Custom Gutenberg Blocks
Custom Gutenberg blocks for high-velocity events. IPL 2024 live scores, election result dashboards, etc. could be deployed by editors instantly without touching code.
Performance-first Rebuilds
Performance-first rebuilds using semantic HTML and Core Web Vitals optimization, improving both page speed and search visibility.
Infrastructure Cleanup
Infrastructure cleanup via WP-CLI database sanitization and a full plugin audit for FSE compatibility.
The Outcome
Editors control their layouts completely. Speed-to-market for major news events dropped dramatically.
Key Results & an Ongoing Partnership
Faster Deployments
Monorepo architecture and unified CI/CD enable simultaneous releases across all regional sites.
Self-sufficient Engineering
100% of code reviews now happen internally, meeting WordPress VIP’s global enterprise standards.
Editorial Control
FSE and custom Gutenberg blocks let newsrooms launch complex layouts for high stakes events such as elections & sports without developer assistance.
rtCamp and The Indian Express continue to partner on initiatives powering one of India’s most essential voices in journalism.
