IMF Monitor
Services
Website design and development, Database migration, WordPress development, Custom plugin development
As an independent research platform presenting accessible data on International Monetary Fund activity, IMF Monitor needed a digital system capable of supporting a complex research database while remaining easy for its team to manage.
Working alongside institutions including the University of Cambridge, the Economic & Social Research Council and the Institute for New Economic Thinking, IMF Monitor provides researchers and civil society with tools to explore and interpret detailed economic information.
As IMF Monitor’s digital partner, Geek migrated the existing website to WordPress while consolidating its website and database infrastructure into a more secure, maintainable environment. Our work included website development, server configuration, database migration and the creation of a bespoke WordPress plugin.
A central part of the project was protecting the functionality of the Article IV Scanner, a research tool that allows users to search more than 2,000 IMF Article IV reports dating back to 2000. The scanner relied on a PostgreSQL database, while the new WordPress website operated through MySQL, making a conventional database conversion unsuitable.
Rather than compromising the accuracy or functionality of the research tool, we developed a hybrid solution that allowed the PostgreSQL database and WordPress website to remain separate but fully connected. The existing database was securely migrated to the new server infrastructure, while its interaction scripts were rebuilt as a custom WordPress plugin.
This approach combined the content management flexibility of WordPress with the advanced data-handling capabilities of PostgreSQL. Extensive validation and performance testing also ensured the scanner could continue processing high volumes of searches reliably.
The result is a faster, more secure and future-ready digital platform that gives the IMF Monitor team greater control over its website without sacrificing the sophistication of its research database. The system is easier to maintain, capable of scaling and provides a stable foundation for researchers accessing IMF data worldwide.
