Taar

Overview

Taar is an independent Urdu-language digital news platform based in Pakistan. Founded on the principle of unbiased, accountable journalism, Taar covers politics, sports, culture, and civic affairs — entirely in Urdu, right-to-left, for a Pakistani audience that’s underserved by trustworthy digital media. When they came to us, the site was held together by cracked software and had gone without meaningful updates for an extended period.

What We Inherited

The site had several compounding problems, each making the others worse:

Cracked theme — The active theme was a nulled copy, meaning no updates, no support, and an open door for malware injections
Cracked WPBakery — The page builder was also pirated, leaving it frozen at an outdated version incompatible with newer WordPress core updates
Plugin bloat — Dozens of plugins installed over time with no audit, many conflicting or long-abandoned
No updates — Because cracked software breaks when updated, nothing on the site had been kept current — core, theme, or plugins

For a news site that publishes continuously, this wasn’t just a technical problem. It was a security and credibility risk.

What We Did

Licensing and security remediation — The cracked theme was replaced with a legitimate licensed copy, resolving the security exposure and restoring access to updates. This was the foundation everything else depended on.

Builder migration: WPBakery → Elementor — We migrated the site’s page builder from WPBakery to Elementor. For a news site with a large volume of existing content, this required careful handling to ensure existing posts and pages carried over without layout breakage. A licensed Elementor installation also meant the build was now fully update-safe going forward.

Plugin cleanup — Redundant and outdated plugins were audited and removed, reducing overhead and eliminating potential conflict points between components.

RTL and Urdu typography — Taar publishes entirely in Urdu, which requires right-to-left layout throughout — navigation, headlines, article body, category listings, everything. Typography choices matter significantly for readability in Nastaliq and Naskh scripts, and the layout had to be built with RTL as the default, not an afterthought.

Design Approach

The site follows a standard news publication layout — horizontal category navigation across the top, a featured stories grid at the hero, then category-specific article listings below. The post page is clean and image-forward, with social sharing and next/previous navigation keeping readers moving through content.

The teal and red brand colors are used sparingly — primarily for the logo, category labels, and accent elements — keeping the reading experience neutral and the content itself the focus.

An English toggle is included for accessibility, acknowledging that some visitors may navigate in English even when reading Urdu content.

Outcome

The site moved from a security liability running on pirated software to a fully licensed, maintainable WordPress installation. With legitimate theme and builder licenses in place, Taar can now receive updates normally — something that wasn’t possible before without breaking the site. The builder migration modernized the editorial workflow, and the RTL implementation ensures the reading experience is correct and consistent across the entire publication.