practical technology ray anderson cto, online idg communications
TRANSCRIPT
Practical Technology
•Ray Anderson•CTO, Online •IDG Communications
You will never be happy but you can be successful
Key Success Factors
• Hosting v. Co-location
• How can we create a stream of new ideas
• Which companies should we partner with for
technology services
• How to we build to scale
• When should we use open source solutions
• What should we outsource or offshore?
• Attributes:
–Acquisition;
–Very old, but decent technology (Vignette v5, Oracle DB),
–Small to Moderate traffic
• Goals:
–Keep current membership/traffic while face-lifting the site
–Create more reader engagement and increase traffic
Case Study: ITWorld.com
• Used open source: 12 Week Design/Build
–Open source CMS, DB and web application layer
–Whitebox hardware; Linux operating systems
–No additional bandwidth charges
–Application of RIA to content management workflow simplified editorial efforts
–Converted to our standard Ad serving & CDN
• Outsourced:
–Local development partner complimented our resources
(Optaros)
• Built to scale:
–Will handle 5x traffic before add’l monies required
Case Study: ITWorld.com
Case Study: ITWorld.com
Results
•Traffic: UP! 36% in 2 months (no drop)Revenue: UP! (as a
function of PVs)Editorial satisfaction: UP! Reader satisfaction:
UP!Engagement: UP!Build expense less then half plan by
blending resources
accelerateresults
Attributes:
•Custom pub; High levels of functionalityDistributed editorial & sales
Goals:
•Launch full featured site Launch it fast!!Lightweight CMSMultinational accessibility
Results
•Outsourced design and build:Local shop (Alternative Productions) - controlled expenseVery fast build: 10 weeks‣Included a fully functional embedded CMS supporting
market verticals, taxonomy, workflow, WYSIWYG editing, slotting, backfilling, targeted ad serving, lead gen etc.
•Leveraged open source
•Ruby on Rails; MySQL, nginx (as opposed to Apache)Hosted not co-located: EngineYard ‣RoR hosting specialistsExpense control; insulation from
other co-located branded activity; speed to market
accelerateresults
Practical Technology
Ray AndersonCTO, Online Publishing Group IDG Communications