Free Malaysia Today
Malaysia's most-read English news platform - 50M+ monthly pageviews rebuilt for performance.
Project Overview
Free Malaysia Today (FMT) is one of Malaysia's leading independent digital news publishers, serving millions of readers monthly across English and Malay-language coverage. With 50 million pageviews per month on the web, their mobile audience deserved an experience built to match that scale.
This wasn't a greenfield build in isolation - Infynno also handles ongoing upgrades, optimization, deployment, performance tuning, and security for the platform, making us FMT's dedicated mobile technology partner across both the web and app ecosystem.
The challenge they faced
FMT needed a native mobile app that could deliver millions of monthly readers the same editorial breadth as the web - bilingual coverage, rich WordPress articles, video, and push alerts - without sacrificing performance on mid-range devices or reliability on patchy Malaysian networks.
Content at Scale
Thousands of articles across 10+ categories and subcategories, with mixed content types - text, images, embeds, videos, and inline advertisements - all needing to load fast and render correctly on every screen size.
Performance on Real Devices
Long news feeds must scroll smoothly not just on flagship phones but on mid-range devices used by the majority of readers. A laggy feed is a reader lost.
Rich Article Rendering
FMT publishes WordPress-style HTML articles containing images, ordered and unordered lists, embeds, inline ads, and video. This content doesn't map cleanly to React Native's component model - a custom rendering engine was required.
Bilingual Publishing
English and Malay (Berita) content coexist in one app with separate navigation structures, distinct push notification topics, and different editorial workflows - all needing to feel native to each language's readership.
Unreliable Connectivity
Malaysian readers frequently encounter weak or patchy mobile networks. The app needed to remain usable and trustworthy even in degraded connectivity conditions - not just throw an error screen.
Push Notification Complexity
Topic-based push alerts (Breaking News, Berita Utama, Sports, and more), deep-linking directly to the correct article, and correct handling of iOS APNs and Android notification channels all needed precise implementation.
Monetization Without Harming UX
AdMob banners in feeds and article bodies generate revenue critical to the publisher - but poorly placed or poorly loaded ads destroy the reading experience. Getting the balance right required placement-specific ad unit configuration and performance-conscious rendering.
Tablet Support
iPad and large Android tablet readers expect dedicated layouts - not stretched phone UI. Both platforms needed purpose-built responsive components.
Operational Control at Scale
A live news product needs remote force-update configuration, analytics visibility, and cache management tooling - not just a static app release.
How we solved it
Dual Data Layer for Speed
We designed a two-tier data architecture: priority-based S3 JSON feeds (high/medium/low priority) power list and landing page performance with near-instant load times, while a GraphQL API handles deep content queries - individual articles, search, tags, related content. This separation means feed browsing is never blocked by heavy content fetches.
FlashList for High-Performance Feeds
We replaced standard FlatList with Shopify's FlashList for all news feed views, delivering virtualized rendering that keeps long category feeds smooth even on mid-range Android devices - the critical user segment for a Malaysian publisher.
Custom HTML Article Renderer
We built a purpose-built HTML renderer using htmlparser2 with theme-aware typography, YouTube embed support, and inline ad slot injection. This gives FMT full fidelity between their WordPress CMS output and what readers see in the app - including correct handling of images, lists, embeds, and advertising placements.
Cloudflare Image CDN with Smart Loading
All article images are served through Cloudflare's Image CDN with preset responsive widths. We implemented retry/backoff logic, a prefetch queue for adjacent articles, and LQIP (Low Quality Image Placeholder) so images always feel progressive and intentional - never blank or broken.
Firebase + Notifee Notification Architecture
Firebase Cloud Messaging handles topic subscriptions and message delivery. Notifee manages foreground notification display, iOS APNs configuration, and Android notification channel setup. Deep links use slug/date parameters to navigate directly to the correct article - ensuring breaking news alerts land readers exactly where they should.
MMKV Offline Caching
React Native MMKV provides high-performance key-value storage for bookmarks, visited article tracking, and settings persistence. Expo FileSystem handles landing page data caching so the app always has content to show even on re-launch with no connectivity.
Personalization & Reading UX
Readers can set light, dark, or system theme, adjust text size, toggle article standfirsts, track visited articles, and bookmark stories for later - all persisted locally without requiring an account.
Tablet-Responsive Layouts
We built dedicated card components and responsive layout logic for iPad and large Android tablets, ensuring the app genuinely scales up rather than just stretching phone layouts.
Remote Force-Update & Analytics
A remote configuration served from S3 controls force-update behavior - blocking outdated app versions with a store redirect before they cause compatibility issues. Firebase Analytics tracks engagement across categories, and in-app review prompts are triggered at appropriate moments in the reading journey.
Core Features
What we built for them
Stats at a Glance
Monthly Web Pageviews
Market
Platform
Publisher
Content Categories
Push Notification Topics
Ad Integration
Data Architecture
Website
See it in action
Real screens from the live product - 3 web · 1 mobile
Results & Impact
A fast, bilingual, native news experience that works on real devices and real networks.
Fast, smooth feed browsing even on mid-range devices and weak networks
Full editorial experience - all categories, bilingual coverage, and video - in one app
Reliable push alerts that deep-link directly to the right breaking story
Offline resilience so the app is never a dead end on a poor connection
Personalized reading experience with theme, text size, and bookmarks
Built with the right tools
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