What can you tell us a little about the team that built omusicawards.com?

The team at Happy Cog worked with the digital team at MTV Networks to re-architect and design the experience for the second-ever MTV Online Music Awards. MTV Networks was responsible for the overall concept and content for the site, as well as the video player itself. We also worked with Den of Thieves, the company who produces many awards shows for MTV, on the creative concepts for the show. Happy Cog performed all of the information architecture, design, development and CMS work on the project.

What can you tell us about the site in general? What are the goals of the site and the main audience?

MTV Networks came to Happy Cog with a challenging vision and an aggressive timeline for the second O Music Awards. We needed to help plan and deliver an interactive experience to be deployed in four stages. The O Music Awards takes place twice a year, so in addition to a full redesign and front and back-end overhaul, a primary goal was to replicate the core functionality of the inaugural awards show and online experience - all within a few months.

First, we needed to publish a blog to maintain discussion and interest between shows. Then, for stage two as the show approaches, fans influence award outcomes in a number of unorthodox categories through online voting. During voting, participants are rewarded by not only how often they vote, but how often they share their votes on Facebook and Twitter. For stage three, the show is broadcast live on the site and provides a unique online experience - including user-controlled camera angles and back-channel conversations. Then, the post-show site experience kicks in, recapping highlights, furthering dialogue, and gearing up for the next show.

On the first day, the site saw 85,776 votes come through the system; in the first week, nearly two million. At the close, the site generated over 22 million votes, with over 16 million votes shared on Facebook and Twitter, an increase of over 500% from the initial award celebration. More than 250,000 super fan accounts have been created, earning more than 60 million points towards increased voting rights and a chance to win a trip to the show itself.

What was your major consideration in using ExpressionEngine for this?

We knew we needed a flexible system that allowed us to work daily as requirements were defined and iterated on. Being just one piece of the puzzle, the website needed to work within the social strategy, the production goals, all the while providing the one and only home to this interactive experience.

ExpressionEngine, coupled with it’s CodeIgniter roots, fit this bill perfectly. ExpressionEngine allowed us to get up and running on a stable platform in very short order. Utilizing the out-of-the-box experience, MTVN staffers could log in and begin entering content from day one. Even during the show itself, editors were in ExpressionEngine updating winners, posting videos, and managing content with little difficulty.

The front-end, built entirely in CodeIgniter allowed the Happy Cog team fine grained control over database load, caching rules, and page markup. Happy Cog wrote custom SQL to reduce the homepage to an optimal 4, indexed, queries. In addition, Happy Cog was able to configure each page individually to respond with Akamai’s Edge-Control header. That allowed a variety of server saving techniques such as reduced caching on active pages and heavy caching on older pages.

 

Were there any Commercial Add-ons that proved useful? If so, which ones? How did they help?

Nope. The site was built as an “out-of-the-box” ExpressionEngine install. The only customization came in the way of a CodeIgniter front-end.

Did you do any custom add-on development?

Having the MTV team in ExpressionEngine every day, managing content it made sense to build reporting right into the system. Using native ExpressionEngine APIs, Happy Cog was able to build a reporting interface that MTV used daily to monitor voting activity. In fact, during the live event, the winning super fan was reported by and confirmed inside the ExpressionEngine back-end.

What is next on the plate for omusicawards.com? Any additional functionality you can tell us about?

Evolution, for sure. Being a new project, Happy Cog took the safe approach in a lot of ways. In the future, Happy Cog is looking to drop the custom front-end and utilize native ExpressionEngine template code. Oh, and live vote data would be pretty cool too .

 

Do you have any other information you’d like to share with the community? Tips from this project you’d like to share? Lessons you’ve learned?

ExpressionEngine is more than capable of running in a high load environment. With some tuning and a smart infrastructure, Happy Cog was able to serve over one million visitors on the event day alone. Even during the busiest moments, ExpressionEngine was running less than 15% of the available resources.

 

More information about Happy Cog

Happy Cog was founded by Jeffrey Zeldman and is staffed by creative superstars, Happy Cog delivers beautiful websites that never lose sight of the human being using them. From site structure to interface design, from branding to content development, Happy Cog’s people are the authorities.