We were initially approached by Into The Elements Ltd in the Autumn of 2009 to build an advertising portal - which we succesfully delivered in November 2009 - www.elementstogether.com. We had also set up an open source CMS Database for them based on vTiger as well as providing all of their hosting. Having launched their first site, they planning a much larger site aimed at Anglers. Through a series of meetings in late 2009, we discussed the concept with them, before arriving at a plan in December 2009 for their new site.
The new site was to be a first of its kind globally - incorporating a fully featured and interactive log book for anglers, which could be ported to other sports with ease. As well as coping with an audience measured in the millions, the site had to also be developed to a tight time scale, and deliver revenue through advertising, sponsorship and subscriptions.
The key component was clearly the log book - which had to be built to cope potentially with the details of every fish caught within the rivers and lakes of the UK! As an undertaking, few things came bigger than this!
The site also introduced social networking features, including a 'wall', chat, video and photo galleries, a forum and multiple discussion areas. All content was to be commentable on, with users also able to rate content through voting systems. The site was to be introduced in phases, with phase one due in May 2010.
Upon agreeing the site structure and business case for each feature, we started the development process. We considered initially utilising Joomla with either the Jom Social or Community Builder coupled with a CCK package like Sobi 2 or K2 for the log book functionality. Having installed an set up test systems, we quickly realised that these solutions offered to little flexibility for what was a highly unusual site.
We then set up a test site utilising Joomla with Mighty Extensions. This is a highly regarded and powerful series of Joomla components. We rapidly came to the conclusion that although the social networking features could be easily set up, the logbook functionality would be beyond the ability of Mighty Extensions, requiring us to carry out too many compromises.
We then set up a Drupal system. Although much harder to configure than Joomla, Drupal out of the box is more flexible and configurable than Joomla. We started with the hardedst and most challenging part – the log book. We utilised a system still under development called multi-group (part of CCK3) to enable the full log book functionality – we are probably one of the first commercial users of this system in the UK.
We utilised Artisteer to assist us with the theme development working to the colour and logo constraints of our clients, who had very clear ideas about the look and feel of the site.
The finished site is to be hosted on a cloud server, allowing easy scalability as the number of users grow.
We have received very favourable feedback from our clients, who are now in the process of raising advertising revenue prior to ‘go-live’.
