Content Automation Platform

The editorial workflow needed to handle multiple stakeholders with different permissions:

• Writers: Create and edit drafts, see performance metrics
• Editors: Review, approve, and schedule content
• SEO Team: Add metadata, internal links, and optimization suggestions
• Compliance: Review financial claims and disclosures

Implementation approach:

1. State machine — Wagtail’s moderation system extended with custom states
2. Role-based views — Each role sees relevant information and actions
3. Audit trail — Every change tracked for compliance and rollback
4. Notification system — Slack and email alerts for workflow transitions

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class ArticleWorkflow(WorkflowState):
    DRAFT = 'draft'
    SEO_REVIEW = 'seo_review'
    EDITORIAL_REVIEW = 'editorial_review'
    COMPLIANCE_REVIEW = 'compliance_review'
    SCHEDULED = 'scheduled'
    PUBLISHED = 'published'
    
    transitions = {
        DRAFT: [SEO_REVIEW],
        SEO_REVIEW: [EDITORIAL_REVIEW, DRAFT],
        EDITORIAL_REVIEW: [COMPLIANCE_REVIEW, SEO_REVIEW],
        COMPLIANCE_REVIEW: [SCHEDULED, EDITORIAL_REVIEW],
        SCHEDULED: [PUBLISHED],
    }

Financial news can drive 10x normal traffic within minutes. Our architecture was designed for this:

Caching Strategy:

• CloudFront edge caching for static assets (24hr TTL)
• Varnish page caching with ESI for personalized elements
• Redis fragment caching for expensive database queries
• Pre-warming top 1000 articles on deploy

Auto-Scaling:

• ECS service auto-scaling based on request count
• RDS read replicas for database load distribution
• Queue-based processing to absorb write spikes

Graceful Degradation:

• Circuit breaker pattern for external service calls
• Static fallback pages for worst-case scenarios
• CDN-level DDoS protection