Groupon In The News

Groupon: In The News - Groupon's press blog.

Groupon’s press blog was probably the least troublesome site I launched yet.  My portion of the project started as the production manager.  I only had to make sure the space was there and get the site online.  But, when the person working on the site got pulled to a different project, the whole thing fell into my lap.  This sounds as if it would be a pain, but it was actually a pretty easy-going site.  A good chunk of the design work was already completed, and all that was required of me was to fine-tune the design based on what was wanted, and develop custom modules for the site.

This project also forced me to learn how to work and integrate a site with an Amazon S3 server, which was an interesting experience.  I also have to deal with hundreds and hundreds of videos and determine the best hosting solution for them, which as of now is looking to be a mixture of Amazon S3 and LimeLight.

I would share a link, but the video use-licenses on the page prohibit publicly sharing.  As soon as that changes, however, I will share.

The Tech Mumbo-Jumbo

Since I am anticipating this site to get a rather decent amount of traffic, I decided to run this off of a MediaTemple VE server, which I happen to like since it gives you full control of the box and you don’t have to worry about some proprietary piece of software fubaring the whole machine.  The site is running off of a rather out-of-the-box installation of wordpress with just a few tweaks to allow for heavy traffic and integration between S3 and LimeLight.  I also incorporated a partially-custom chromeless video player into the sidebar that can be edited to show any youtube video the editors may want to play.