Practical Technology
Discover essential strategies that can transform your online presence and boost engagement. Ray Anderson, CTO of IDG Communications, shares invaluable insights on key success factors, including the advantages of open source solutions, co-location versus hosting, and effective partnerships for technological services. Explore how to maintain and grow traffic while enhancing user engagement, reflecting lessons learned from case studies like ITWorld.com. Achieve scalability and efficiency in your digital endeavors with a focus on practical yet innovative technology choices.
Practical Technology
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Presentation Transcript
Ray Anderson CTO, Online IDG Communications Practical Technology
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 • 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 • 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
accelerateresults • 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
Practical Technology Ray AndersonCTO, Online Publishing Group IDG Communicationsranderson@idgcommunications.com
