Case Study

Wired.com's HowTo Wiki

MediaWiki Implementation, Front-End Template Programming

The Client

Wired.com, the online companion to Wired Magazine, is one of CondéNet’s lifestyle web sites bringing the editorial excellence of CondéNast magazines to digital media. Wired Magazine, founded in 1993 and published in San Francisco, California, reports on the impact of technologies on culture, the economy and politics.

The Challenge

Wired.com had a mission-critical deadline for migrating their "Wired How-To Wiki" to MediaWiki, the same open-source system used by the Wikipedia. To meet Wired’s deadline, they needed to outsource the front-end programming portion of the project because their internal resources were overloaded. The work required a pixel-perfect implementation of Wired’s designs into a set of MediaWiki templates or “skin.” In addition, advertising, analytics, and several MediaWiki extensions needed to be integrated into the standard MediaWiki software.

The Solution

Quinn Interactive integrated the custom visual design and layout into out-of-the-box MediaWiki functionality, along with a select number of extensions that met essential editorial and business requirements. These extensions included: Add article to category, Create box, Top ten pages, and Website in iframe. Custom designs were applied to the wiki navigation, user navigation, wiki page navigation and page content. Several existing functionalities were retained and integrated into the new MediaWiki. Advertising tags were added to all pages for wiki-wide visibility. Google Analytics and HBX Analytics were integrated to create wiki-wide, use-related marketing statistics.

Results

Because of QI’s fast, efficient technical implementation, Wired.com’s team was freed to focus on other aspects of the MediaWiki implementation, including hosting and member authentication integration. Even with the complexity of the project and aggressive timeline, they were able to beat their launch expectations with a substantial savings of critical time and resources.