TheSkiChannel.com is the top Ski Media channel in the world. They have been a TV channel and producer of on-demand and pay-per-view content forever. The website was a value add to that content. It featured loads of written and imagery content about the sport and it’s various athletes, as well as content schedules, events, films, and much more.
Chris and his team worked with The Ski Channel design team to create a user friendly design. They also wanted to migrate from Joomla to WordPress, so Chris built a data migration framework. He used this framework to perform a 100% migration of all data from their old site to WordPress. The process required Chris to use the latest new feature of WordPress (at the time) call Custom Post Types, of which most people had not yet adopted in the WordPress community.
The site also required several new tools, like: a TV content schedule published on the web, algorithmic athlete search with accompanying dossiers, event and film tour management tools, and other key features of ski media. Chris built all of these features from scratch, and they were in use for the better part of a decade. He also invented a bulk management process for editing, viewing, and promoting the various resorts listed on the site. All of this was elevated by the speed increases implemented through special server configuration and a custom WordPress plugin built by Chris.
Highlights from Services Provided for Ski Media Source
Migration
- Performed complete data migration from Joomla to WordPress
- 100% accuracy of all content, custom post types (CPTs), and pages
- Aggregated data from secondary sources as well
- CRM data migrated to popular WordPress plugin
- Daily data syncs, without duplication
Development & Implementation
- Collaborated on a design with TheSkiChannel’s design team
- Built customized migration & migration-validation framework
- Theme creation, setup, and admin tools
- Engineered 5 Custom Post Types for each type of ski media they hosted
- Implemented uncommon, but effective, SEO markup to improve search rankings
- Integrated many third-party APIs
- Created custom search algorithm for surfacing certain content
- Invented a custom feed algorithm for user-specific content suggestion
- Designed and coded custom caching scheme for popular stories
- many, many more features
Maintenance
- Daily updates and improvements
- Iterative improvements on site speed
- 1-minute granularity backups and recoveries
- Hosting setup and management
- Third-party service replacements and improvements
Security
- Comprehensive WordPress security analysis & report
- Server & Services setup and routine auditing
- Password policy creation & enforcement
- Firewall level client blocking
- Round the clock security monitoring
- HTTPS setup and maintenance
Custom Themes & Plugins
- Completely custom, high-availability tuned theme
- Admin improvements for staff efficiency
- Caching & security plugins
- Multiple Custom Post Types (CPTs) for each type of Ski Media
- Proprietary plugin for top stories and member feeds
- Athlete search algorithm, including custom weighting
- Frontend display animations for headlines and sponsored pages
- Site organization and optimization plugins
Hosting Setup
- Initial setup of hosting & ongoing account management
- Evaluation of hosting costs
- Server setup, configuration and management
- Integration of CDN and related tech