I built a multilingual news aggregator for European tech in 6 languages
(EN, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL), filterable by audience (consumers, businesses, government) to help users discover relevant European alternatives.
A few interesting technical challenges:
PATTERN-BASED IMAGE GENERATION
Generic AI images all look the same ("holographic businessman with laptop").
I solved this with a JSON database of 60+ concrete visual patterns—context-aware selection prevents repetition. Funding news → coins/contracts, security → locks/shields. Much more visual diversity. Still needs tweaking though.
GRADUAL SITEMAP GROWTH FOR NEW SITES
Daily news pipeline generates lots of content. Challenge: Google indexes new sites slowly—exposing all 2K+ URLs at once resulted in 1-3% indexing rate. Solution: Dynamic rolling window in sitemap—only expose top 50 most recent articles (300 URLs), gradually increasing to 100 → 150 → 200 over 6 months as site builds authority. Result: Indexing rate improved to 10%.
AUTOMATED TRANSLATION PIPELINE
RSS aggregation → AI summaries and translation with context-aware prompts → human review queue.
Still tweaking quality per language pair.
STACK: Next.js 15 with Turbopack, PostgreSQL, deployed via Sliplane@Hetzner which works pretty ok.
STATUS: 1+ month post launch, 80 pages indexed, 100+ European apps featured (Mollie, Wire, Ecosia, LanguageTool, etc.)
FEEDBACK WELCOME ON:
• European news sources I'm missing?
• Better approaches to multilingual SEO?
• Translation quality red flags?
• How to optimize for LLM discovery (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.)?
larrywinch•1h ago
let's go!!!
Merinov•1h ago
Thanks! Yeah, trying to bring more attention to European tech innovation. Lots happening here that doesn't get enough coverage. Any suggestions for news sources or features you'd find useful?
shlip•1h ago
Nice idea, but it does not work without JS. It's baffling to me that more and more sites use this (dark?) pattern of requiring JS just to display links.
EDIT: Well I was too quick, it partially works, you can click the grey "source" link on white bg for each article. Why not make the whole div a link instead ?
The sorting menus on top of the page are not working without JS though.
Merinov•26m ago
Thanks for testing! The whole card IS clickable actually, it has two click targets:
Click anywhere on the card and it goes to the summary article page on europedigital.cloud (with translations, context, etc.)
Click the "source" link and it goes directly to the original article
This way users can choose: read our summary/translations, or jump straight
to the source. Tried to make it intuitive without cluttering the UI.
You're right about the sorting/filtering requiring JS though - it's client-side state. Could move that to URL params for better progressive enhancement.
Appreciate the detailed feedback, this kind of testing helps! :)
beardyw•1h ago
The pointless illustrations was what stood out most for me.
Merinov•21m ago
Interesting perspective. Can you elaborate? Like:
You'd prefer no images at all (text-only)?
Or the AI-generated style doesn't work for you?
Or something else?
I added them because plain text feels bare, but I'm curious what would work better. Real screenshots? Article-pulled images? Or just skip visuals entirely?
Honest feedback helps, thanks!
larrywinch•1h ago
european artificial intelligence ftw!!!
andyjohnson0•1h ago
I'm getting Secure Connection Failed error in Firefox. HN hug of death?
I suggest posting this in Show HN [1] if your server can handle it.
Merinov•1h ago
A few interesting technical challenges:
PATTERN-BASED IMAGE GENERATION Generic AI images all look the same ("holographic businessman with laptop"). I solved this with a JSON database of 60+ concrete visual patterns—context-aware selection prevents repetition. Funding news → coins/contracts, security → locks/shields. Much more visual diversity. Still needs tweaking though.
GRADUAL SITEMAP GROWTH FOR NEW SITES Daily news pipeline generates lots of content. Challenge: Google indexes new sites slowly—exposing all 2K+ URLs at once resulted in 1-3% indexing rate. Solution: Dynamic rolling window in sitemap—only expose top 50 most recent articles (300 URLs), gradually increasing to 100 → 150 → 200 over 6 months as site builds authority. Result: Indexing rate improved to 10%.
AUTOMATED TRANSLATION PIPELINE RSS aggregation → AI summaries and translation with context-aware prompts → human review queue. Still tweaking quality per language pair.
STACK: Next.js 15 with Turbopack, PostgreSQL, deployed via Sliplane@Hetzner which works pretty ok.
STATUS: 1+ month post launch, 80 pages indexed, 100+ European apps featured (Mollie, Wire, Ecosia, LanguageTool, etc.)
FEEDBACK WELCOME ON: • European news sources I'm missing? • Better approaches to multilingual SEO? • Translation quality red flags? • How to optimize for LLM discovery (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.)?
larrywinch•1h ago
Merinov•1h ago
shlip•1h ago
EDIT: Well I was too quick, it partially works, you can click the grey "source" link on white bg for each article. Why not make the whole div a link instead ?
The sorting menus on top of the page are not working without JS though.
Merinov•26m ago
This way users can choose: read our summary/translations, or jump straight to the source. Tried to make it intuitive without cluttering the UI.
You're right about the sorting/filtering requiring JS though - it's client-side state. Could move that to URL params for better progressive enhancement.
Appreciate the detailed feedback, this kind of testing helps! :)
beardyw•1h ago
Merinov•21m ago
I added them because plain text feels bare, but I'm curious what would work better. Real screenshots? Article-pulled images? Or just skip visuals entirely?
Honest feedback helps, thanks!