An editorial website stands and falls with the Content Management System (CMS) used. This is why Hubert Burda Publishing founded the Thunder Coalition in 2016, which as a joint project promotes the “Thunder” version of the open source CMS Drupal and thus creates a counterweight to the technological superiority from overseas. This coalition can now be happy about a new member: ISPO.com.
In only twelve weeks of development time, THE DIGITALE and its partner, the Drupal specialist undpaul GmbH, realized the project for ISPO. It included the digital implementation of the current brand relaunch of the world’s largest sports trade fair as well as the relocation of the editorial part and the B2B trade fair pages from several different content management systems and sub-pages to the new portal ISPO.com.
This makes ISPO.com the first content marketing project worldwide running on Thunder – and it is in the best company of more than 200 websites. Some examples: 15 German Burda sites such as bunte.de, elle.de, mein-schoener-garten.de, instyle.de already rely on Thunder. In addition, the special publishing version of Drupal is already being used by Österreichischer Wirtschaftsverlag, as well as by the US partners Farm Journal Media (e.g. drovers.com) and ST Media Group International (e.g. boutiquedesign.com).
Decision after intensive evaluation
“In an intensive evaluation and strategy process with the customer, Thunder prevailed against many large enterprise CMSs and set many benchmarks,” says Peter Bilz-Wohlgemuth, CTO of THE DIGITALE and responsible for the CMS project. “With Thunder, our customer ISPO and we as a digital agency benefit from a growing international network that is constantly developing the publishing CMS”. At the same time, the total cost of ownership is very efficient because Thunder is Open Source and no license fees are payable. Johannes Haseitl, managing director of undpaul GmbH, explains: “Thunder is a platform made for modern publishing and content marketing, which can be duplicated several times due to the Open Source principle and is therefore very cost efficient”.
The challenge of the highly complex project: In the context of the brand relaunch of ISPO, content from several different legacy CMS had to be migrated to Thunder. At the same time, a website was to be created that could compete with any large publisher site in terms of usability, technical finesse and, last but not least, optimization for SEO and social media. As initial measurements show, many of the goals were achieved right from the start – including the extremely fast loading time of content on desktops as well as tablets and smartphones.
“Implementing a project of this magnitude with thousands of pages to be migrated, different target groups, use cases and business models in a short period of time can only succeed with extremely efficient and agile project management. Without the clear will and absolute commitment of the customer ISPO and our partners, it would not have been possible”, adds Bilz-Wohlgemuth.
Burda-CTO: Thunder has reached content marketing
Ingo Rübe, CTO of Burda Magazine Holding GmbH, comments: “We are delighted that Thunder has now reached the world of content marketing after the classic publishing houses,” says the initiator of Thunder. “No publisher can keep pace with the rapid technological development on its own. By overcoming boundaries and working in a networked way, we can jointly develop the best open source content management system while saving time and money”.
Anyone who would like to learn more about the ISPO.com project, the CMS Thunder and its possibilities for modern content marketing will have the opportunity to do so at the Thunder Day organized by Hubert Burda Media on November 20 in Hamburg. Peter Bilz-Wohlgemuth from The Digitale and Johannes Haseitl from undpaul will present the project, the challenges and solutions.
More information: https://thunder.org/thunderday