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Bolkas

Case study

Centre for Liberal Strategies

Think tank · Legacy recovery

Engagement result

2,000+

Articles recovered

100% live

Study with bookshelves, a desk, and armchairs beside tall windows overlooking a domed city skyline

Rebuilding trust, authority, and a global research archive.

The Centre for Liberal Strategies lost access to their digital archive, home to two decades of political analysis by leading European thinkers. The task was not just technical recovery. It was ensuring those decades of scholarship stayed findable, citable, and protected on a modern, high-speed platform.

Focus
Recovery, technical SEO, CMS
Published

By Apostolos Bolkas

The results

Safeguarding twenty years of research.

The platform now safeguards decades of research while giving the organisation a publishing system built to last, supporting policy briefs, interviews, and long-form commentary without the fragility that caused the original loss.

  • Optimised

    Search & delivery

    Structured metadata and sitemaps; fast, globally-served pages with image optimisation

  • Client-led

    Editorial autonomy

    In-house metadata & keyword management via CMS

Project context

My role and the results.

My contribution
I recovered archive content, planned the information architecture, managed migration and on-page SEO, and trained the editorial team. I worked with Studio Enthusiasm on the site’s design.
What the figures describe
The 2,000+ figure describes articles recovered and migrated. The outcome combines content restoration, a rebuilt publishing platform, and editorial handover. It is a delivery measure rather than a measured increase in search traffic.
Project references
Explore the Centre for Liberal Strategies website

The live site shows the publication, topic, and author structure. Its current content may include later additions and changes; it is not a record of the original migration count.

The challenge

Losing a domain meant risking decades of institutional memory, global citations, and media credibility. The task was not just technical recovery.

Losing this archive permanently would have meant erasing two decades of citable scholarship from search, media, and policy record: material that journalists and academics across Europe reference regularly.

Archive constraints

  1. Two decades of research, 2,000+ articles, survived only in the Wayback Machine and had to be recovered intact before any rebuild could begin
  2. Every recovered paper and author attribution had to be rebuilt on a clean, fast platform without a single loss
  3. The in-house editorial team wanted full autonomy to manage ongoing meta descriptions and keywords in their CMS

Key architectural decisions

  • Decision 01

    Forensic content recovery first

    Before rebuilding, I validated the entire archive via the Wayback Machine to ensure no research papers or articles were lost in transition.

  • Decision 02

    Research information architecture

    Structured publication taxonomies, topic hubs, and author archives specifically designed for policy research and long-form commentary.

  • Decision 03

    On-page SEO and a fast, durable platform

    Set up the on-page SEO foundation (schema markup, internal linking, and clean metadata) on a modern hosted platform whose built-in global CDN and automatic image optimisation keep the archive fast worldwide, then handed ongoing keyword and metadata management to their editorial team.

Implementation

Recovery and rebuild happened in sprints: first validating the archive, then architecting a new platform designed for longevity.

  1. Recovery

    Forensic content recovery

    Conducted full archive recovery via the Wayback Machine, validating content integrity and author attributions before structured database migration.

  2. Architecture

    Clean URL architecture and content migration

    Built a new, logical URL structure from scratch and migrated the 2,000+ recovered articles into it, organised by publication type, topic, and author.

  3. Front-end

    Search-first UX design

    Designed a clean, responsive layout in cooperation with Studio Enthusiasm, featuring topic hubs and author pages to surface high-value policy research.

  4. SEO & performance

    On-page SEO and fast global delivery

    Structured the on-page SEO (schema markup, internal linking, and clean metadata) and rebuilt on a modern hosted platform whose built-in global CDN, automatic WebP image optimisation, and caching keep 2,000+ articles loading fast worldwide.

  5. Handover

    Editorial handover for self-managed on-page SEO

    Trained the CLS editorial team to manage publishing workflows and independently update their own on-page meta descriptions, titles, and focus keywords inside the CMS.

Client endorsement

“Apostolos recovered over 2,000 articles and rebuilt our platform. Our team now spends time publishing research rather than fighting technical fires.”

Anna Ganeva

Executive Director, Centre for Liberal Strategies

The outcome

The Centre’s archive is now more findable than it was before the domain was lost. Twenty years of scholarship, recovered and protected.

The next twenty have a foundation to build on.

Selected proof

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Content recovery

Don’t let a platform change erase your archive.

Domain loss and platform migrations can wipe out years of work. Let’s recover your content and rebuild it on a foundation made to last.

What happens next

  1. You share your website, work email, and any context.
  2. I review your website, messaging, and enquiry journey myself.
  3. Within five business days, I email you three prioritised improvements. No sales call is required.
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