Ars Technica
Streamlining their readership experience
Project overview
Quick Facts
Project Focus
Community & UX
Platform Stack
WordPress & XenForo
Key Services
Migration, UI/UX, Strategy
The challenge
Ars Technica's legacy software and disjointed article comment system (WordPress editorial side and community forum side) created inconsistent user experiences and led to stalled community discussion.
The solution
We partnered with the Ars Technica team to execute a data migration from phpBB to XenForo, redesigned the UX/UI, and implemented a custom integration treating XenForo as the single source of truth for comments.
The results
The successful launch and subsequent community strategy resulted in significant growth across key metrics, including a 28% increase in posts, 16% increase in threads, and positive user feedback.
1
Community strategy and management
Challenges of the Migration
Attentive Strategy
Being a top choice for news and discussion in the tech space and a household name meant a close partnership with the client and an extra level of attentiveness to our strategy approach. After initial onboarding, we consulted on a number of key community strategies:
Consulted on how to organize their discussion for more intuitive discovery- How we would handle the custom WordPress integration between their comment system and the new XenForo forum software for in-sync and seamless discussion
- Created a beta team of testers from their staff that would assist with testing and later become brand ambassadors and supports of the new features
- Migration to new software
2
Integrating reader comments
Challenges of the Current System
Disjointed Experience
A vital part of what makes Ars Technica is the reader discussion, but the comment system suffered from a disjointed experience between the WordPress editorial side and the community forum side. The interfaces and moderation were inconsistent, leading to a focus on editorial article discussion and stalled community engagement.
Our Approach for Consistency
Single Source of Truth
We acted as a product consultant to the Ars Technica engineers, recommending that we treat XenForo as the single source of truth for all comments. This improved the technical aspect and the user experience in the following ways:
Less cumbersome to maintain and update the comment system- Consistency in behavior and UI was easier to achieve by relying on the familiarness of XenForo
- Avoid user confusion when navigating between articles and community
- Easier for Ars Technica staff to moderate
Integration Strategy
Seamless Discussion
With a user sync and iframe approach, the new comment system was able to deliver these key features for a seamless experience:
- Automatic thread creation on the community when a WordPress article is posted
- Embedded thread discussion for a single consistent behavior
- Theme consistency between XenForo and WordPress so the familiarity of the editorial site is always held
- Support for light and dark mode
3
Migrating from legacy phpbb to xenforo
Data Migration
Updating Legacy Software
Our devops team approached the process with extensive testing and custom importers to ensure that all user and content data from the legacy phpBB software transferred correctly. Multiple test migrations were performed to accurately estimate downtime and improve the migration script.
Go-Live Process and Support
Seamless Go-Live
Our team provided a thorough QA check and was on hand throughout the overnight migration and thereafter to communicate openly about the status to community members and address feedback. Overall the launch was successful with minor downtime and a positive community reception.
4
Post-launch metrics
Statistics That Show Improvement
The Numbers
Since going live with the update, we've monitored how the community has progressed and here's a look at metrics comparing pre-launch to three months after.
Quick look at what we did
increase in posts
increase in threads
increase in user registrations
increase in active users
User Feedback
Positive Community Reception
The functionality upgrade is absolutely off the charts compared to the old software. The most important thing is that everything worked, and kept working as the load ramped up. You managed to make it better while avoiding useless features and pointless transformations for the worst.
Community Strategy and Management
A word from the client
"Audentio has been a wonderful partner for Ars Technica and helped us reimagine our entire forum and article commenting system. The engineering group is a smart, dedicated bunch; the project management team is detail-oriented and consistent. Audentio was able to interface with our in-house development and design expertise perfectly, giving us the right amount of help and guidance. I can heartily endorse Audentio - they get the job done!"
director of technology, ars technica