Lessons Learned Building BassMaster.com with OpenPublish and Acquia Cloud  

Bryan House!VP, Marketing"Acquia"

August 18th, 2011"

Ned Desmond!President & Founder"Go Sportn Inc."

Joel Sackett!Senior Technical Project & Creative Manager"Phase2 Technology"

Introductions"

•  Ned Desmond "−  Founder of GoFISHn and GoHUNTn"

•  Joel Sackett"−  Phase2 Technology"

The Background"•  Last fall, new owners

acquired Bassmaster from ESPN. "

−  #1 fishing site on web"−  70M page views in 2010"−  Growing 30% per year "•  Six months to move the

website off ESPNʼs infrastructure"

•  ESPN technical staff were assigned to help"

The Assignment"•  Launch new Bassmaster.com by May 1, 2011"•  Replicate the ESPN site; improve if possible"•  Minimize traffic loss; Preserve ad revenue"•  Facts of Life:"−  ESPNʼs proprietary templating and CMS not usable"−  ESPNʼs url naming convention not usable"−  20,000+ articles/photo galleries, plus 1000s videos"−  Critical to preserve siteʼs Google PageRank of 7"−  Complex, real time tournament results databases"−  Launching at height of tournament season"−  Tight budget!!"

Opportunities & Issues"•  Opportunities"−  Admin interface for editors"−  Site search"−  SEO attributes friendly urls, tagging"−  Performance"−  Site navigation"−  Tournament presentation"−  Tournament angler stats"

•  Issues"−  Bassmaster staff limited experience; no pm "−  Distracted by transitions"−  Distributed team – Orlando, Birmingham, Little Rock"

Pulling the Solution Together"

•  The easy part"−  Brightcove for video"−  DoubleClick for Ad serving"−  Omniture for analytics"

•  The tougher bit"−  CMS, engineering/design partner, hosting"−  Content migration"

•  Process"−  NYC CMS consensus: Open Source (Drupal or WP)"−  RFPs to six engineering firms"

The Outcome"

•  Engineering and CMS"−  Chose Drupal and Phase2 Technology in Alexandria, VA"•  Migration"−  Persuaded ESPNʼs content management engineers to provide a

mass content export and iterated with Phase2 engineers to tweak data outputs"

−  Phase2 imported content"−  Temp team + Bassmaster editors published content "

BassMaster.com Demonstration"

Joel Sackett, Phase2 Techology"

Why Drupal? Why Phase2? "

•  Drupal"−  Content organization (nodes +

taxonomy, views)"−  Publishing admin"−  Proven scaling"•  Acquia and Phase2"−  Full range of services to support a

small publisher"−  Good answers to the hard questions"

Phase2 and OpenPublish"

•  Phase2 understands publisher limitations"−  OpenPublish anticipates what publishers need"−  Provide project management, design, full-scope

engineering services"−  The team at Phase2 understands scaling, performance,

SEO, and training"−  Most realistic response to RFP"

•  Flat rate portion + time & materials portion"

−  Agile development"

Acquia Managed Cloud"

•  Acquia and Phase2: Mutual recommendation"•  Why Acquia Managed Cloud?"−  Affordable cloud hosting"−  Drupal ”awareness” – security updates etc."−  24/7 ops at reasonable cost"−  Drupal “optimized” infrastructure and staffing"

•  Vanish, MySQL"

−  Apache SOLR faceted search"−  Variable infrastructure scaling, short notice"

The Results""•  May 1 launch"•  Under budget"•  Much improved"−  SEO"−  Edit admin"−  Navigation / No dead ends"−  Tournaments"−  Angler stats"−  Migration under budget"

•  PageRank maintained"•  Traffic accelerated!"

The Hiccups""

•  Original environment sizing was not adequate"•  Client management -- bias for manage by ticket"•  P2/Acquia overlaps – who looks after what?"•  Small crises – quickly resolved"−  Cache setting error knocked out publishing"−  Drush upgrade caused partial site outage"

Lessons Learned"

•  Keep transition goals specific and realistic – remind client that traffic usually goes down!"

•  Frequent, written updates to extended team"•  Build clientʼs “reality” into choices for vendors and

technology"•  Make sure hosting firm understands all details of high-

use scenarios – authenticated users, publishing, and unauthenticated traffic"

•  Intensive, face-to-face training for client producers and editors is a must"

Acquia & Phase2 Are Hiring"

•  Do you love working with Drupal?"•  If so, we are hiring in North America & Europe:"−  Engineering & design"−  Client advisors and consulting"−  Inside sales"

•  Check out openings at "−  http://acquia.com/careers"−  http://www.phase2technology.com/careers"

Questions"•  For more information, visit:"−  http://acquia.com"−  http://phase2technology.com"−  http://openpublishapp.com"−  http://twitter.com/phase2tech"−  http://twitter.com/acquia"

•  Contact us:"−  sales@acquia.com"−  888.9.ACQUIA"−  sales@phase2technology.com"−  703.548.6050"−  ned@gosportn.com"

•  Download OpenPublish today:"−  http://acquia.com/downloads"

Todayʼs webinar recording "will be posted at:"

http://acquia.com/resources/recorded_webinars"