medilearn.africa rebuild plan
medilearn.africa rebuild plan
Contents
Background
Hasmukh runs three organisations: mobilearn (the commercial parent that owns the studio), s2l.online (a non-profit digital literacy platform) and medilearn (a registered South African non-profit company). All three share infrastructure on the same VPS.
medilearn produces live Zoom broadcasts in which medical specialists teach other doctors. The lectures are recorded and either licensed to a partner university (delivered on a white-labelled TalentLMS) or made available directly to attendees. All current medilearn work is delivered in close collaboration with the UCT Department of Medicine.
The strategic positioning, in Hasmukh’s words, is "a hotel currently issuing free-stay vouchers." Build credibility and consistency first, then approach pharmaceutical and medical-equipment companies for donor funding. The medilearn.africa website is central to that fundraising case.
Why a rebuild
The current medilearn.africa runs on WordPress at domains.co.za. It has decent structure (Upcoming Events, Recent Events, What we offer, Advisory Board) but three critical gaps:
- The UCT Department of Medicine partnership, the single strongest credibility asset, is nowhere on the site.
- There is no donor section.
- There is no protected video library, no doctor accounts, no way to gate Zoom recordings to attendees.
The new site moves to PageMotor on our server, alongside s2l.online, so we can carry forward what we have already built and extend it where medilearn needs more.
Three video streams, three security postures
1. University-sold packaged courses
Pre-recorded lectures sold by the partner university and delivered on white-labelled TalentLMS. These do not live on medilearn.africa. The site links out, nothing more.
2. On-site lectures
Selected lectures hosted directly on medilearn.africa, using a course system modelled on what was built for s2l.online, but locked down: login required, no public video pages, no downloads, viewer’s name watermarked on playback.
3. Zoom recordings of live sessions
Released only to the verified attendee list of that session. Not browseable by URL. Search engines blocked.
Security and privacy on medilearn are explicitly tighter than on s2l. Medical content, medical professionals, occasional patient case material. A leak damages credibility with the medical community and with prospective donors. Login-required, time-limited and watermarked is the default, public is the exception.
The brand
medilearn has a distinctive playful identity. The wordmark "medi" is set in a soft rounded coral typeface, and "LEARN" is built from coloured shapes (green circles, orange bars, magenta triangle, blue R, tan diagonal). The brand is deliberately education-first, not hospital-cold.
Coral is the primary action and headline colour. The five accents are best used one per section or one per category, never crammed together (the logo already does that job). Rounded corners on buttons and cards. Generous white space. No dark navy backgrounds, no stock stethoscopes.
Build stages
Stage 1: Empty site
Point staging.medilearn.africa at the VPS, install fresh PageMotor, copy the s2l theme as a starting skin, apply the medilearn brand, lock search-engine indexing on protected content.
Stage 2: Public pages
Home, About, What we do, Partners (UCT Department of Medicine front and centre), Upcoming sessions, Contact, Donor information.
Stage 3: Doctor accounts
Sign-up and login. Captures professional details (name, qualification, institution). Manual approval before video access.
Stage 4: Live session registration
Doctors register through the site for upcoming Zoom sessions. The system records who registered and who attended, which determines who later sees the recording.
Stage 5: Protected video library
Recorded sessions and on-site lectures, login-gated, viewer-name watermark on playback, downloads blocked. Zoom recordings restricted to that session’s attendee list.
Stage 6: Donor section
Dedicated section for pharmaceutical and medical-equipment donors, with the UCT partnership story, impact figures, and a private contact channel.
Suggested order: Stages 1, 2 and 3 first, giving Hasmukh a real, presentable site with proper accounts. Stages 4 to 6 are a second push once the foundation is approved.
Staging approach
The current WordPress placeholder at medilearn.africa stays untouched while we build. The new site lives at staging.medilearn.africa, served from our VPS at 154.66.198.194. Hasmukh adds a single A record at domains.co.za pointing staging at the VPS. When the new site is approved, we change the main A record at domains.co.za, the WordPress site goes away, and medilearn.africa serves the new build. No risk to the live site during construction.
Status and next steps
- Brand identity captured (both logo lockups reviewed, six-colour palette extracted).
- Staging subdomain agreed:
staging.medilearn.africa. - VPS has capacity, sites currently in residence: s2l, tibaai, cpd, docs, reviewer.s2l.online, testmultipageatelmsparkdotcom.
- Hasmukh to add the A record at domains.co.za pointing
stagingto154.66.198.194. - Once DNS resolves, the Stage 1 server-side build begins: nginx vhost, Let’s Encrypt cert, fresh PageMotor install, database, theme port from s2l.
Open questions for Kenn
- Any preferences on PageMotor install layout for medilearn that differ from how s2l is configured (PHP-FPM pool naming, log rotation, backup schedule)?
- Preferred approach for doctor-account approval workflow: manual admin approval, or a verifier role you would assign to a medical colleague?
- Any UCT brand-use guidelines we should be aware of before placing a co-branded badge on the homepage?
- Any thoughts on the watermark approach for protected playback? Burned-in via a transcoder, or overlaid by the player?