Skip to main content

Case Study: IGN doubles community with flexible CMS WordPress

Case Study: IGN doubles community with flexible CMS WordPress  阅读原文»

Summary

When IGN outgrew its homegrown content management system, they needed a CMS that would support the entire scope of the site and all its content. More importantly the CMS had to make it easy for their users to contribute content and for their editors to publish it. They found that solution in WordPress, and their blog community has doubled because of it.

Choosing a CMS with Core Features and Extensibility

“The reason we chose WordPress was based on the fact that it really is a robust and flexible content management system, and also the fact that it has a large community of developers who are continually updating it” – Jim McQuillan, Senior Software Developer, IGN.

“IGN chose WordPress because it was a CMS that could go beyond a blog. They chose their extensive Blogs and Cheats sections as the first pieces to migrate off their legacy CMS, but the eventual goal will be to have the entire site running on WordPress.

“For blogs, WordPress is a pretty obvious choice. But we weren’t looking for something for only blogs, we were looking for a content management system in general because the entire company was on a legacy blog system. The bread and butter of IGN is articles, whether they are a game review or news. It’s all this content. So we’re looking to slowly over time get each of those into our new content management system, which is run by WordPress,” Jim McQuillan, Senior Software Engineer at IGN, said.

The fact that WordPress is open source was another draw, so they could easily expand on it with any custom code as needed.

“The reason we chose WordPress was based on the fact that it really is a robust and flexible content management system, and also the fact that it has a large community of developers who are continually updating it," McQuillan said.

Getting up to speed with WordPress development

McQuillan was the only backend developer on the IGN migration project, and it was his first project of this magnitude with WordPress. He relied on the WordPress Codex and many articles written by other WordPress community members and developers for best practices, tips, and tricks.

“Before this project, I had only done some very basic development with WordPress. I spent some time studying the code base, and what WordPress could do, and what we found is that it’s flexible enough to do pretty much anything you want to do and anything else can be done through a plugin,” McQuillan said.

WordPress is an integral part of IGN's publishing workflow. Whenever a post is published it’s posted out to IGN’s content repository, which is running on MongoDB, as well as being saved into the MySQL database. They have developed a custom frontend which renders and presents the content.

“We’ve made a bunch of customizations to WordPress, but the one great thing about WordPress is that we really didn’t have to touch the core of WordPress at all. We were able to do everything through the plugin system,” McQuillan said.

Engaging with and Empowering the IGN Community

“Oh. This is WordPress! I know WordPress, I love it!” – IGN Community members

Since IGN is a site that is powered largely by its community, they informed them in the early stages of the plans to migrate to a new blog and cheats system for their submissions. The reactions were negative, at first, but the community quickly warmed up to WordPress as the new site's platform.

“Originally, our end users weren’t overjoyed when they heard we were changing our blog system. Everyone is resistant to change. But as soon as they saw what we were launching they said, ‘Oh. This is WordPress! I know WordPress, I love it,’ so all of the sudden everyone loved what we did," said Jim.

WordPress powers IGN’s one-click-to-publish submission system for community members. Submissions are sent in by users, which are then reviewed by IGN editors and with a single click, they can publish them and they’ll now be live on the site. Prior to this method, an email form was used that would then have to be reformatted, edited, and entered into IGN's CMS system manually.

"Managing our vast legacy database of video game cheat codes, hints, passwords was a daunting task. All of that is gone now. In its place is a WordPress-based system with a new submission system that streamlines this. These submissions can then be approved and published instantly, edited or deleted right from the queue," IGN editor Samuel Claiborn said. "WordPress gives our readers tools to create better content, and it gives me the tools to edit that content and publish it all from a single place. And I'm happy to report that the obscene submissions are at an all time low (and still funny)."

IGN editors are also looking forward to the day when they can create content on WordPress, which will change once the rest of their site is migrated as well.

"For editors, it has made us bitter because we don’t use it for entering articles. For bloggers, it’s revitalized the community. The legacy system was so complicated and unintuitive, posts would get eaten for no reason, the whole thing was clunky, and only the hardcore folks used it," said Greg Miller, Executive Editor, IGN PlayStation.

Submissions aren't the only thing that has changed for IGN, their Blogs section is also booming.

"Part of it is IGN’s push to make a stronger community with My IGN, but the streamlined blogs have given a voice to our most casual readers. I see more blogs now than I ever did in the old system. The photos, the novels, and the quick hits. We had a blogger reporting on the tsunami from Japan, kids host their podcasts on the site — it’s a place where everyone feels like they can have a voice and have it without being hassled," said Miller.

Growing Traffic and Ease-of-Use

Since IGN has launched the new sites, they’ve had a huge improvement in traffic. For the first five years IGN had blogs on their site, about 25,000 blogs were created. In the year since they launched with WordPress, they’ve already doubled that number, and more, and believe this is also due to the ease-of-use of WordPress.

The rest of the IGN website will be following behind, and Jim has set aside a few minutes to get WordPress ready for this new content. “To bring over the rest of the projects, it’s going to take around 10 minutes to create a new post type. The rest will be front end work and the presentation side of things. But as far as WordPress goes, it’s ready,” said McQuillan.

Want more information about WordPress for large-scale / enterprise installs? Contact WordPress.com VIP Services.


阅读更多内容

该邮件由 QQ邮件列表 推送。
如果您不想继续收到该邮件,可点此 退订

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to find ideas to post new article in your blog

How to find ideas to post new article in your blog    阅读原文»   It is true that sometimes being a blogger may face situations where I would personally like to call it your brain juices got dried up as you have pretty much ran out of topic to blog and you are in crisis as your readers are anxiously waiting for your new posts but you are unable to give in. That’s when you will probably come with excuses like I just posted last week although that post was more directly towards the newbies who stop themselves from making money but it’s still pretty much the same even though you consider yourself not a newbie. The fact is that ideas are everywhere and I mean everywhere if you know where to find it and know how to leverage it. You may be surprised that sometimes these ideas are just right in front of you but you are not observant enough to convert these ideas and turn it into your blog post. Today I will share some tips on where to get these ideas and most of it is part of your dai

Over A Year After Android Launch, ShopSavvy Finally Comes To The iPhone

ShopSavvy was one of the best early Android applications. It launched in October of last year after winning one of the initial Android Developer Challenge top prizes (when it was still known as GoCart). But despite the success it has seen on Android, one question remained: When would it be available for the iPhone. Today, it finally is. Developed by the guys at Big In Japan , ShopSavvy is an app that allows you to use your device as a portable barcode scanner. You point your phone's camera at any barcode and it will read it, do a product look up, and give you information about the product, as well as where you can find it online or at nearby stores and for how much. Obviously, something like this is a window shopper's dream. ShopSavvy was one of the best early Android applications. It launched in October of last year after winning one of the initial Android Developer Challenge top prizes (when it was still known as GoCart). But despite the success it has seen on Android, o

部门心脏?

i.am.weihua.1234您好!!              生产计划与物料控制PMC高级研修班 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 课程背景: 生产计划和物料控制(PMC)部门是一个企业"心脏", 掌握着企业生产及物料运作的总调度 和命脉,统筹营运资金、物流、信息等动脉,直接涉及影响生产部、生产工程部、采购、货仓、品 控部、开发与设计部、设备工程、人力资源及财务成本预算控制等,其制度和流程决定公司盈利成 败.因此PMC部门和相关管理层必须充分了解:物料计划、请购、物料调度、物料控制(收、发、退、 借、备料等)、生产计划与生产进度控制,并谙熟运用这门管理技术来解决问题,学习拉动计划价 值流(VSM)图,从拉动计划价值流切入剖析工厂制造成本和缩短制造周期 ,提高物流过程循环效 率(库存、资金的周转率)及客户满意率;为降低或消除物流过程中的非增值活动. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 课程目标: 1、建立制定完善的生产与物控运作体系?提升准时交货和降低库存成本 2、预测及制定合理的短、中、长期销售计划?达成公司策略管理目标 3、对自身的生产能力负荷预先进行详细分析并建立完善产品数据机制协助公司建立产品工程数据 4、生产前期做好完整的生产排程和周生产计划?提高备料准确率,保持生产顺畅 5、配合生产计划做到良好物料损耗控制和备料?完善降低物料损耗机制和停工待料工时 6、对生产进度及物料进度及时跟进和沟通协调?缩短生产周期,提高企业竞争力 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 报名详情: 培训时间:2012年11月 3- 4深圳 11月15-16上海 11月22-23北京 12月 1- 2广州 承办单位:新 活 力 顾 问 培训对象:生产计划部门、物料计划部门、采购部门、 生产部门、销售部门、物流、研发部门、 PIE、IT 培训费用:3200元/人(包括资料费、午餐及上下午茶点等) 报名热线:400-623-8399 (免长途话费) 电邮: maomao@xhlpx.com QQ:120915