WP ENGINE NEWSROOM
How Lana Used Newsroom to Launch a High-Velocity Media Brand Built for Speed and Scalability
Leveraging the power of WP Engine Newsroom, Lana launched a brand-new media company in the UAE capable of delivering 150+ original articles daily across English and Arabic platforms.
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Industry:
Media & Publishing
"The functionality has allowed us to, out of the box, come up with a whole bunch of solutions which we might not otherwise have been able to access. It’s democratizing the toolset, allowing a new regional publisher like ours to punch above our weight."
—Matthew Amlot, General Manager, Lana
150+
original articles published daily
7
editorial team members per shift
40%
improvement in Core Web Vitals
Our Customer
Lana is an independent media platform headquartered in Dubai, UAE, dedicated to redefining news delivery through clarity and speed. Serving a global audience with coverage in both English and Arabic, Lana combines traditional journalistic standards with modern multimedia storytelling. Lana was built from the ground up on the Newsroom platform, enabling the organization to bypass the workflow friction that typically plagues burgeoning digital-first publishers.
The Challenge
Deploy a technology stack that can handle high-frequency reporting without the "bloat" associated with multiple plugins and tools. Matthew Amlot, General Manager of Lana, noted that in previous roles, the CMS often felt like it was "built on the graveyard of its previous functionality," creating friction between editorial speed and operational toil. Lana required a system that could manage a high-paced operation without bogging down its lean staff with a complex, over-engineered stack of plugins.
The Solution
Lana launched on WP Engine’s Newsroom platform, utilizing a unified suite of publisher-specific tools designed to improve editorial workflows and publishing operations. This "built-for-use" product allows reporters to manage stories from ideation to social media optimization in a streamlined environment, replacing the need for an expensive, dedicated technical team.
By implementing Newsroom’s Publication Checklists feature, Lana can "nudge better behaviors" from staff, ensuring SEO, tags, and other essentials are always in place. The Live News Block feature helps them provide real-time updates for breaking news, adding credibility and increasing reader stickiness by allowing pages to update actively for readers without a refresh. WP Engine’s Smart Search AI has also transformed discoverability, allowing both staff and readers to find content more effectively.
The Results
The implementation of Newsroom has moved Lana beyond mere technical stability into a state of operational agility that is rare for a new media brand. By removing technical issues that Amlot describes as a "constant friction between editorial and tech" found in traditional newsrooms, Lana has been able to dedicate its resources entirely to its core mission: high-quality journalism.
Giving reporters back their time
The most significant impact of building on Newsroom is the restoration of journalists as the center of the operation. In previous environments, Amlot observed that some tech stacks forced editorial teams to spend valuable hours struggling with the CMS.
Launching with Newsroom has inverted this dynamic. Reporters at Lana now manage the A-to-Z of a content piece—from initial ideation and interviews to the final SEO optimization and social media distribution—within a single, streamlined workflow.
“It’s given reporters time to be reporters,” says Amlot. “I spend less time worrying about the tech stack and we have access to more support than we would if we were doing everything by ourselves.”
Democratizing high-end functionality
Newsroom has provided Lana with a toolset that was traditionally the exclusive domain of major news publications. Features like the Live News Block have transformed how Lana handles breaking news. Instead of readers needing to refresh a page to see updates, the content actively updates in front of them, providing the credibility required to compete in a 24/7 global news cycle and increasing reader engagement.
This democratization of technology has allowed Lana to operate with the speed of a publishing giant while maintaining the lean overhead of a startup.
Measurable operational excellence
Building on a purpose-built platform rather than, as Amlot puts it, “a graveyard of previous functionality," has yielded immediate, quantifiable results. The lack of plugin bloat has resulted in a site that is rock solid even during massive traffic spikes. By utilizing Publication Checklists that encourage better editorial behaviors across both English and Arabic sites, Lana has standardized excellence without sacrificing the speed that breaking news demands.
Impact Highlights
- 150+ original articles are published daily by a core team of just 7 staff members per shift.
- 40% improvement in Core Web Vitals has bolstered SEO health and overall site performance.
- Minutes vs. hours: Editorial layout changes and new feature deployments that previously took days are now executed in minutes via drag-and-drop tools.
Newsroom for Publishers
The new publishing standard
Empower your editorial team to focus on the storytelling, not the tech stack. Switch to a platform built specifically for the speed and scale of modern news.