taking joomla to millions

Taking Joomla to MillionsThere’s a reason why it’s the road less travelled…

Dante St James1. Shire boy – with THAT name.2. Failed psychologist, church minister and radio announcer.3. In charge of digital & new media operations at our 2nd biggest radio network.4. Take way too many selfies.5. Recently single.

We dideverythingwrong.

But we gotthere in theend…

August 20081 website (J1.5)1 staffer (me)

February 200917 websites (J1.5)1 staffer (me)

May 2010 – Day 135 websites (J1.5)5 staff acrossfour states

January 201267 J1.5 websites4 Wordpress sites6 staff, 5 states

October 2014291 J3.x sites2 J2.5 sites28 Wordpress sites 15 staff, 5 states1 Developer

Per Month3.7 million uniques14 million pageviews300+ websites99% of this is served by Joomla 3.x

Per Month3.7 million uniques14 million pageviews300+ websites99% of this is served by Joomla 3.x

Per Month3.7 million uniques14 million pageviews300+ websites99% of this is served by Joomla 3.x

Per Month3.7 million uniques14 million pageviews300+ websites99% of this is served by Joomla 3.x

About 30 JED-available Extensions4 Custom Built Extensions

TemplatesJoomlart T3_blank TemplateGavickPro Music State template

Display ModulesRAXO All Mode ProJA Facebook Like BoxJUX Weather ForecastEasy Custom Code (for embeds)YouTube Gallery Module

ComponentsGB Slider (custom)Simple Image Gallery ProiJoomla AdAgency ProRS Form! ProYouTube GalleryMijo PollsJCE EditorFoobla obGrabber/obRSSSourceCoast JFBConnect

Pluginsnonumber Advanced Module Managernonumber Cache CleanerAdvanced Google AnalyticsJA Google Map

External SystemsWatchful.li – monitoring uptime and for managing deployments & updates

Campaign Monitor – newsletters

YouTube/Soundcloud

Project Management/Development

Agile Development Methods using Trello to manage tasks

Atlassian Bitbucket and a DevelopmentEnvironment for all dev & testing

Infrastructure

Linux/Apache server in Brisbanedata centre hosting 70% of sites representing 20% of traffic

Rackspace Cloud Service (Sydney) with autoscaling hosting 30% of sites representing 80% of traffic.

Autoscaling

Using lsyncd to sync files across between 2 and 5 servers

Time-based scaling, rather than resources based.

Cost between $410-$620 per month

What I did wrong.

1. Tried doing it all on my own.

What I did wrong.

2. Choosing extensions based onWhat’s Free, rather than What Works.

What I did wrong.

3. Not having a single baseline for all code, including templates.

What I did wrong.

4. Backups. You’d think I’d know better… but nooooooooooooo!

What I did wrong.

5. I didn’t hire a developer until July 2014. Yep. You read that right.

Dante St Jamesdstjames@grantbroadcasters.com.auSkype: dante.st.james

… and on several apps where single guys can be found trawling for a date…