
Our project plan says, “Creative Brief: June 9th, 2007.” That’s just six weeks ago when we were still “talking” about the design ideas and the creative direction for the new Blogher.org redesign. Lisa Stone is always up for an enthusiastic late night call when it comes to talking about the design for the web’s number-one destination for women’s bloggers. Had it not been for the opportunity to get to know Lisa before taking on this effort, I don’t think we would have been able to make this happen…
So, many of you know the rest of this story. The reader’s digest version goes something like this:
- Scores of late night Skype calls between designers, developers and Blogher
- A few rounds and revisions of design
- A few color tweaks and changes
- Some very random late night ideas
- Some new functionality and aesthetic things to add
- Setup Drupal environment
- Build Drupal templates
- Database this and Drupal module that…
- Build/test, build/test, build/test…
- You know the rest…
Before I knew it, the time was 3:00 am. I was on a four way Skype call with Graham, Jeremy and Michael. At this point we were past the point of no return as we were deep into the migration process. These guys had not slept in days but they were cool, calm and collected. Sure, there was the occasional four letter word when the inevitable surprise occurred, but this is when they would systematically triage and remedy each issue as it would come up. I was imagining that this was like a very complicated surgery. A procedure that would last for hours and where the body was in a strange sort of balance. I pictured the team in their surgical clothes, shoe-cover-thingies, masks, rubber gloves and special microscope glasses. Passing the tools around the table, a few stitches here, suction there and an organ transplant every now and then.
This launch has a happy ending as we went live in the early hours of the morning on July 24th, 2007. In this business we just expect launches to be challenging. There are always surprises and special circumstances. It was particularly challenging since we were also repopulating thousands and thousands of old posts and comments into a new Drupal 5.1 system and theme. While being persnickety about the code, we were faced with the challenges you might expect from a community made up mostly of user generated content.
Please note the word “beta” on the Blogher logo at Blogher.org. We have a bug list and soon will redeploy the creative team to sift through the details, comparing the approved color comps to the actual site…..while our coding team tests in every browser.
Sometimes life rewards us with rare opportunities to fade into that special blur where we just go into overdrive and turn out great work. Making new friends with people like the Blogher team is the unexpected bonus that is extra cool and great.
Blogher is an amazing community that we are sure has a business model to carry it very far. Thanks so much to Lisa, Graham, Jeremy, Brandon, Jenny, Mike, Candice and Gabe. Great work, and get some sleep for crying out loud!