During COVID-19, millions of rural Nepali students lost access to their classrooms. But, they still did not lose their need of education. As an Android developer and educator, I built “The SR Zone” platform with WordPress. It started as a simple idea: give students free access to good learning resources at the time of crisis.
Today, the platform gets 1M+ visitors each month. It has more than 300 STEM articles, and 80% rank on Google’s first page. Together with our offline Android apps and youtube channel, the project has reached 2.5+ million students, many of whom had little or no reliable internet access.
In this talk, I’ll share what we learned.
- SEO and ASO that works.
How keyword research, clear content structure, and technical SEO and ASO (App Store Optimization) helped us reach 40+ million page views. - Funding free education.
How I used YouTube, the website, and Android apps to support the work without putting lessons behind paywalls. - Building for weak internet.
What offline-first design taught us about caching, PWAs, lightweight WordPress themes, and headless CMS approaches. - Growing with a community.
How open-source tools and student contributors helped turn a small bedroom project into a movement reaching students across Nepal.
If you are a developer, creator, entrepreneur, or NGO worker, this talk will give you practical ways to grow your reach, improve performance, and make knowledge easier to access.
This experience taught me that we do not need a big team to make a big difference.
I used WordPress to build more than a website. I used it to remove a barrier to learning.
You can too.