CUSTOMER CASE STUDY - DNN · days had 300,000 unique visitors. Each month it averages about 1...
Transcript of CUSTOMER CASE STUDY - DNN · days had 300,000 unique visitors. Each month it averages about 1...
C u s t o m e r C a s e s t u d y
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C U S T O M E R C A S E S T U D Y / G 2 P O
Several leading directors of video content for the
gaming world were frustrated by the limitations of
YouTube and asked solution provider IES Group
to build a better platform—one that could handle
large volumes of uploaded video content while
providing rich social interactions for gamers. IES
Group responded by creating G2PO.com, a new
video platform for the gaming world. The platform
runs on DNN Evoq Content1 which provides out-of-
the-box web farm support, a module for rich social
interaction, and the Microsoft .NET programming
environment for creating custom website features.
Business Needs
Gaming enthusiasts are heavy users of YouTube, yet the
online medium can be frustrating to hardcore gamers. For
example, they may not want to subscribe to channels just
to find content on one game, or they may have trouble
finding high-quality video reviews and other content that
matches their interests.
Gaming Site Aims to Take Video Content to a Higher Level Using DNN
G2PO is a new platform that supplies
high-quality video content to the
gaming industry. It is a business unit
of London, Ontario-based IES Group.
S U M M A R Y
C U S T O M E R P R O F I L E
P R O D U C T I M P L E M E N T E D
C U S T O M E R G2PO
W E B S I T E g2po.com
C O U N T R Y United States
I N D U S T R Y Entertainment
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C U S T O M E R C A S E S T U D Y / G 2 P O
That was the message delivered to IES Group by
multiple content directors responsible for some of
the largest volumes of gaming content on YouTube.
“The directors were seeking a new type of
architecture to help them store and manage
massive amounts of video, and to schedule
uploads of video content while using rich social
networking tools to communicate with gamers,”
says Gary Manning, Director of IT Business for IES
Group. “The problem with YouTube is that it often
falls short in providing what serious gamers want,
such as a dedicated focus on specific games, good
reviews or commentary on new games, and a rich
social community.”
The request spurred IES Group to design a new
platform to deliver high-quality video content not
just to end users, but to the entire gaming industry—
including developers, publishers, gaming news
publications, and independent video producers.
“We wanted to provide deep categorization
capabilities and broad social media integration,”
says Manning. “To do that, we knew we would have
to build the platform from the ground up using a
highly scalable web content management system.”
Solution
Manning and his colleagues rolled out a
new video platform for the gaming community
called G2PO.com.
After evaluating several potential solutions to host
G2PO, they decided to build it on Evoq Content
management system. DNN was ideal for G2PO
because of key features that could support a
successful launch of the new video platform.
“We knew that we would need web farm support
right out of the box to support our scalability needs,”
Manning says, “and we also needed the support
for the Microsoft .NET environment that would
allow us to do the custom work for features we
envisioned for G2PO.”
Manning and his team used the DNN Forum
module for the social community features of
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C U S T O M E R C A S E S T U D Y / G 2 P O
G2PO. For the remainder of the site, they used a
variety of Windows development tools to create
custom components.
For example, G2PO.com uses a custom uploading
feature that interacts with Dailymotion, a French
company that provides uploading and other
services for high-quality videos. In another example,
they created a graphic component on the site that
displays a red bar indicating a user’s “G2PO score”
for information like the number of forum posts and
“likes” and “dislikes.” The team also created banners
that are branded for particular companies or games
that appear at the top of individual channels.
The G2PO site launched, and in the first three
days had 300,000 unique visitors. Each month it
averages about 1 million page views and 450,000
video views by more than 25,000 registered users.
The gaming enthusiasts that G2PO attracts spend
more than two hours a month on the site, with per-
person visit time on a par with sites such as AOL
Media Network and Yahoo.
Benefits
By choosing Evoq Content, the creators of G2PO
had access to a powerful system for supporting a
new video platform for the gaming industry. The
scalability of DNN supports large numbers of users
as well as spikes in traffic. The social capabilities
native to DNN help provide rich community
interactions. And because it’s based on the .NET
platform, DNN supports custom development work
performed by G2PO to deliver a compelling new
outlet for gaming enthusiasts.
Scalability to Support High Traffic
Manning says the web farm support in DNN Evoq
Content was critical in helping his team choose
the web content management system for G2PO.
“Evoq Content was the only web content
management system that gave us what we needed
for a successful launch of G2PO—web farm support—
right out of the box,” he says, adding that G2PO
currently runs two servers to support its users.
“Once you have the web farm programmed, if a
request is made to one node and it’s too busy,
the request is simply sent to the next available
node. The web farm support in DNN gave us great
scalability on the first day of operation to manage
traffic and high volumes of video content.”
Rich Social Networking for Gamers
Another out-of-the-box feature in DNN that’s
invaluable for G2PO is the Forums module, which
helped the company provide the environment for
rich social interactions.
“Gamers are very active on social forums, and we
wanted a web content management system that
would help us build a social community without
needing to do extra development work,” says
Manning. “The social capabilities in other video
networks are not that great. With the DNN social
features, we can deliver a social community
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C U S T O M E R C A S E S T U D Y / G 2 P O
Gary manning Project manager and Creative director G2Po / director of It Business, Ies Group
the web farm support in evoq gave us great scalability on the first day of operation to manage traffic and high volumes of video content.”
structure that lets gamers easily add comments,
follow other users’ comments, provide feedback
on new releases, and more.”
Microsoft .NET Tools for Extensive Custom Features
Equipped with expertise in the .NET environment,
the creators of G2PO were able to take advantage
of industry-standard Windows development
software to build custom elements on top of the
DNN system, as well as integrate with other systems
like Dailymotion and YouTube.
“
“This was another element in our decision to go
with DNN,” says Manning. “A question that needs
to be asked about any CMS is how much flexibility
it will provide for custom products, and how well
it will integrate with other systems. Evoq Content
provided the flexibility and integration capabilities
we needed to make this project work.”
1 evoq Content was previously known as dNN Professional and enterprise editions.
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