Lessons Learned - Building Bassmaster.com with OpenPublish and Acquia Cloud
1. Lessons Learned
Building BassMaster.com
with OpenPublish and Acquia Cloud
Ned Desmond!
President & Founder"
Go Sportn Inc."
Joel Sackett!
Senior Technical Project & Creative Manager"
Phase2 Technology"
Bryan House!
VP, Marketing"
Acquia"
August 18th, 2011"
2. Introductions"
• Ned Desmond "
− Founder of GoFISHn and GoHUNTn"
• Joel Sackett"
− Phase2 Technology"
3. 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"
4. 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!!"
5. 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"
6. 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"
7. 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 "
9. 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"
10. 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"
12. 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!"
13. 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"
14. 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"
15. 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"
