{"id":4795,"date":"2026-08-17T18:42:37","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T12:57:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kathmandu.wordcamp.org\/2026\/?post_type=wcb_session&#038;p=4795"},"modified":"2026-08-28T09:10:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T03:25:48","slug":"how-a-16-year-old-built-a-free-classroom-for-millions-with-wordpress","status":"publish","type":"wcb_session","link":"https:\/\/kathmandu.wordcamp.org\/2026\/session\/how-a-16-year-old-built-a-free-classroom-for-millions-with-wordpress\/","title":{"rendered":"How a 16-Year-Old Built a Free Classroom for Millions &#8211; With WordPress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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 &#8220;The SR Zone&#8221; platform with WordPress. It started as a simple idea: give students free access to good learning resources at the time of crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today, the platform gets 1M+ visitors each month. It has more than 300 STEM articles, and 80% rank on Google&#8217;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this talk, I\u2019ll share what we learned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>SEO and ASO that works.<br>How keyword research, clear content structure, and technical SEO and ASO (App Store Optimization) helped us reach 40+ million page views.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Funding free education.<br>How I used YouTube, the website, and Android apps to support the work without putting lessons behind paywalls.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Building for weak internet.<br>What offline-first design taught us about caching, PWAs, lightweight WordPress themes, and headless CMS approaches.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Growing with a community.<br>How open-source tools and student contributors helped turn a small bedroom project into a movement reaching students across Nepal.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This experience taught me that we do not need a big team to make a big difference.<br>I used WordPress to build more than a website. I used it to remove a barrier to learning.<br>You can too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &#8220;The SR Zone&#8221; platform with WordPress. It started as a simple idea: give students free access to good learning resources at the time of crisis. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21170116,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_wcpt_session_time":1789812300,"_wcpt_session_duration":1800,"_wcpt_session_type":"session","_wcpt_session_slides":"","_wcpt_session_video":"","_wcpt_speaker_id":[4792],"footnotes":""},"session_track":[78],"session_category":[55,53],"class_list":["post-4795","wcb_session","type-wcb_session","status-publish","hentry","wcb_track-main-hall","wcb_session_category-community-people","wcb_session_category-engineering"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phbVi5-1fl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"session_date_time":{"date":"September 19, 2026","time":"3:50 pm"},"session_speakers":[{"id":"4792","slug":"shriram-lamichhane","name":"Shriram Lamichhane","link":"https:\/\/kathmandu.wordcamp.org\/2026\/speaker\/shriram-lamichhane\/"}],"session_cats_rendered":"Community &amp; People, Engineering","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathmandu.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sessions\/4795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathmandu.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sessions"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathmandu.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/wcb_session"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kathmandu.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sessions\/4795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5520,"href":"https:\/\/kathmandu.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sessions\/4795\/revisions\/5520"}],"speakers":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathmandu.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speakers\/4792"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathmandu.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wporg\/v1\/users\/shrified"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathmandu.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"wcb_track","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathmandu.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/session_track?post=4795"},{"taxonomy":"wcb_session_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathmandu.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/session_category?post=4795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}