Later, she had to ask them to do a Google search to better understand the Kingdom of Lesotho.

She admits that information is very powerful, and the lack of information is a form of ignorance. That is why Kokome agreed to build a website for the office of the High Commission of the Kingdom of Lesotho in Malaysia to stem that ignorance.

“Now, I proudly say, you can visit my website if the question ‘Where is Lesotho’ is asked,” she said recently in Kuala Lumpur.

She adds that the establishment of the website has really impacted her country in the information seeking sense whether it is by students or investors.

The Kingdom of Lesotho is a landlocked country on the African continent, surrounded by its only neighbour, the Republic of South Africa.

Since the www.lesothokualalumpur.org website was launched in April 2011, it has won four international awards—three Davey Awards and one from the Web Marketing Association in the United States.

Some of the categories that the website competed in include tourism, best practices and home page. The website won the silver award for all three categories.

Developed by students

Since it was launched in the middle of last year until now, the website has been visited by 3,398 visitors from 106 countries.

Interestingly, the website was designed by a group of young men from Limkokwing University made up of three Malaysians, one Mauritian and a Mosotho student studying at the University.

They are skilled members of their respective fields, in areas that include information technology, management, web design and web content writing.

Associate Director, Centre for Content Creation, Limkokwing University, Michael Pan Sin, said that his team took two months to finish the website once it was approved.

The first challenge to design the website was the lack of information, as well as the fact that most of them had no knowledge of the country known as Lesotho. That fact was acknowledged by Michael himself.

“The result of our research showed that most embassy or high commission websites were presented in a very boring way,” said the Mauritian.

That is why Michael’s team decided to use amateur photos uploaded by Internet users of scenery or vacation experiences in Lesotho.

Among the sources of photos include social networking sites Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and blogs. Most of the photos belonged to students and residents of Lesotho, as well as tourists who’ve been to the country.

According to Michael, the decision to use these pictures meant there was more transparency compared to other websites that would only use pictures based on the image they wanted to present.

“These pictures of the landscape will always be updated to give the website a fresh look,” explained the man who’s in his early 30s’.

The mission of Michael and his team at the time was to create an interactive website. Aside from updating it with the latest photos, the latest information in Lesotho such as the weather and time are also displayed.

Microblogging service, Twitter is also integrated to let visitors share ideas and information much faster on the website.

Information on history, business investment, mission and vision are also displayed with a simple interface. It works via just one click of the button.

Programming

For web surfers who are not Lesotho nationals, the experience of visiting will www.lesothokualalumpur.org feel like you’re exploring the country itself.

The Lesotho High Commission website uses HTML, CSS3 and JQuery programming languages. CSS3 is an acronym for Cascading Style Sheets version three and is the latest technology in website development.

It allows a website to be designed using a short and simple programming language. CSS3 can also create decorations on a website such as border images, multiple background images and box images.

It is also compatible Internet Explorer (versions six to eight) web browser, which is capable of rendering many of the decoration features inherent in CSS3.

CSS3 also lets a website to be accessible for all Internet users, even users with various disabilities.

The performance when downloading photos from a website also increases.

JQuery is another programming language used in the development of www.lesothokualalumpur.org.

It makes it easier for Internet users to search for a particular website from a search engine.

This programming language will execute the command of Internet users by giving specifications on various levels according to the word typed in the search box.

Most websites use a local web server where the website is developed. Thus, when the Internet user is somewhere else, the loading time increases.

To overcome this problem, the www.lesothokualalumpur.org website uses cloud computing technology.

The technology allows Internet users who wish to visit the Lesotho High Commission website to do so from all over the world with an optimal load time.

“We made a few replicas of the Lesotho website and placed them on servers all over the world. So it can be accessed quickly from anywhere,” explained Michael who has been in Malaysia for almost 10 years.

More importantly, all the information delivered through the website is accurate and authentic. This is evident when the writer for the Lesotho website content also happens to be from that country, Motloang Jacob Matabane, 24.

According to Michael, Motloang’s involvement in the development of the Lesotho website was coincidental as he has been with the team for quite some time.

The man from Maseru, Lesotho is also the first Mosotho to receive an undergraduate degree in E-Commerce from Limkokwing University and has been in Malaysia since four years ago.