Published on by Devin Reams
MoneyMorning.com was looking for a complete facelift and new functionality for their website that provides free financial news and serves as an advertising platform for their products. The main goals were to implement a new design, gain greater control over page layouts, and have a more sophisticated advertising system. We worked with them to create a new blog, migrate content and redirects, develop a flexible layout tool, create an advanced advertising system, and build other custom functionality.
Flexible layouts
Money Morning asked for fine-grained layout control of posts and pages that didn't involve the arduous task of creating or editing templates. To satisfy this requirement, we integrated Carrington Build, a powerful Post/Page editing architecture that provides a way to break out the content into more complex block-based layouts. With a few clicks, Money Morning can add and arrange various page elements such as content and advertisement modules within a drag and drop interface.
Simplified publishing management
Money Morning wanted to spend more time writing quality content and less time managing the publishing process. We created a system that combined the default WordPress scheduled posts functionality with new functionality that automatically populates particular places in the front page with the right types of post information, depending on date of post, category, popularity, and related content.
Article toolbar for additional post information
The client wanted an easy way to include a toolbar of additional information about the post to be included in the post display. We created a Carrington Build module that aggregates Author bio info, Syndication, ShareThis, Email This, and Related Content functionality into a single page element that configures itself based on page context.
Creating the theme
Money Morning came to us after heavily investing in a new design for their site with another firm. We took the design and carefully crafted a WordPress theme to match the design comps as closely as possible. Creating the theme and having it match in different browsers was no easy task and required a great attention to detail, and we worked closely with Money Morning to get it just right.
Advanced advertising system
Advertising the Money Morning product line is a key component of the Money Morning site, and the client gave us multiple requirements for a sophisticated system. They wanted an easily managed advertising platform controlled by site content & cookies, to target advertising at specific types of users and seamlessly blend ad content in with regular content throughout the site. To achieve this, we built upon the Open Source OpenX ad system, extending its capabilities with a custom integration with WordPress.
Finding the content with advanced archives
Money Morning wanted to provide their users with an easy way to find content, with a slick interface. Crowd Favorite created an Ajax-based archive browser that allows users to navigate content by post popularity, tag, or date. We provided an intuitive multi-tabbed solution that pre-loads the navigation options and then loads the paginated archive lists via Ajax.
Site modifications and ongoing support
It was important to Money Morning that they have the ability to easily make changes to site components on their own, so we built the site accordingly. In addition, we continue to work with Money Morning to revise existing features, develop new functionality, and conduct general site maintenance. We set up the code for the Money Morning site in a shared version control system so both of us can work on the site at the same time without stepping on each other's toes
