RipeTV.com

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The CitrusByte team engineered a new platform for RipeTV.com using Ruby on Rails, developed, and launched the site in only 8 weeks to millions of unique viewers per month.

Ripetv_1

During the strategy and analysis phase we realized that Rails is a perfect candidate to power the next generation of this already high traffic website. In the process of moving an already high traffic website to a completely new platform many challenges arose such as:

  • Migration of legacy user data
  • Distribution of user accounts over existing and future related sites
  • Launching to high existing traffic -- 3m uniques/month and 200(!) terabytes of video transfer data
  • Extremely short development time to launch (8 weeks including testing, QA, load testing)
  • Complete re-architecture of the user interface, design components, and heaps of additional functionality
Ripeshow_1

The goal was originally to move RipeTV.com's existing all-flash site into something more SEO friendly and provide 'a bit' of new functionality. The final result not only achieved that goal, but also provided several new large sections to the website. These are a sample of new features:

Customized CMS to better support Ripe's production workflow
The existing CMS was full of un-used options and did not accurately reflect the way Ripe worked. By interviewing the people who were using it we were able to provide Ripe with simpler, more concise, and more applicable tools for managing their application. At the same they maintain control of the code base allowing their internal team to adapt the CMS further.
Rethinking of the original organizational structure
It quickly became apparent that the way Ripe was originally organizing its content would not translate well to the new site. We architected a solution that allows users one-click access to Ripe's expansive library.
Interest portal
We supplemented Ripe's content by creating interactive profiles for the girls featured in Ripe programming. This enhances user experience and keeps more people on the site longer. It also creates new avenues for content discovery and SEO.
Blog
We setup and customized a blogging platform to provide a voice for the site
Custom interactive tie-ins
Ripe wanted to draw users into its content by allowing them to control it. One such example is a voting feature that appears on the show Picking Miss Ripe allowing visitors to vote for the new Miss Ripe.
Ripegirls_1

The end result was an overwhelming success.

We launched the site as scheduled. It handled the traffic. The client was happy. We were happy. We all partied.

Our toolbox for RipeTV.com

Ruby on Rails
With a fully RESTful architecture
Merb
ActiveResource login service
Mephisto
Heavily customized with new functionality for the RipeNow blog
RSpec
Behavior driven developement to ensure stability, maintainability, and documentation
HAML/SASS
To ease front-end development and keep things more maintainable and organized
JQuery
Fast, powerful, and gracefully degradable JavaScript/AJAX
Flash
Custom video player and various widgets built by the CitrusByte team
AttachmentPow!
Our very own asset handling/manipulation plugin -- soon to be open sourced!
EngineYard
To ensure our time was spent developing features, not worrying about hosting and deployment