IGN

Helping to modernize one of the internet's largest communities

Project overview

Quick Facts

Total Posts

130M

Platform

XenForo 2

Key Services

UI/UX, Migration, Tech Consulting

The challenge

IGN’s community platform, dating back to the early 2010s, was deprecated and had been outgrown by the community. The challenge was performing the largest data migration executed to date while delivering a modern, responsive, and familiar user experience with minimal downtime.

The solution

We consulted with IGN’s team and strategically opted for XenForo 2, then designed a modern, mobile-friendly interface using UI.X Pro. We executed a successful data migration through multiple tests, minimizing downtime during the switch to the new platform.

The results

The launch resulted in a new, slick, and fully responsive community page, praised for its improved consistency and alignment with IGN's iconic brand. The migration itself went smoothly with minimal follow-up required.

Project background

Overview

A Community of 130 Million Posts

IGN has cemented itself for more than two decades as the leading site for all video game news and reviews and boasts an impressive community of nearly 130 million posts. The community had outgrown their software and needed to level up the sophistication to better match their brand and quality. We were asked to help find the best solution moving forward, with a modern experience to support it, and of course a safe, secure, and accurate way to transfer their data to the new platform.

Early challenges

Community Platform

Finding a New Home

The platform and software being used was deprecated and dated from the early 2010s. The process of designing and building the new experience needed to be seamless, with minimal downtime and an experience familiar to users. We decided early on that XenForo 2 would be the ideal software to upgrade to, opting for its familiarity and power over other platforms to ensure consistency and a clean experience.

Modern experience for a long-standing community

User Experience

Designing the Interface

Our creative director worked closely with product designers at IGN to deliver an enormous improvement: a modern, mobile-friendly, and responsive experience that retained the classic and iconic vibes of the community.

Quick look at what we did

UI.X Pro

Framework for the Ideal

We used UI.X Pro, a product that offers a material base and easy-to-customize UX, which worked extremely well in getting IGN what they were looking for on the front-end. This framework was convenient for developing our mock-ups and adds tons of useful tools for the users.

Theme Style Switch

Best of Both Worlds

Offering a dark theme is a must for modern communities. We implemented a tool that allows for automatic detection of a user's operating system level preference (dark vs light) and automatically changes the theme accordingly. The development of the design and tools was straightforward and something our company is known for excelling at.

Setting the foundation for a successful data migration

Tech Challenges

Asking Questions

This was the largest migration we had executed up until that point. We started by asking a number of critical questions to plan accordingly:

Were there any server configurations or anticipated roadblocks that IGN was aware of?
What could we learn from the existing platform itself that might require custom needs?
How can we estimate the most accurate time from start to completion and an idea of how long the forum needs to be in read only mode?
Were there any major concerns given the amount of data and any unique solutions that we had to come up with?

Our Approach

Moving the Data

After onboarding with IGN's systems ops and devops, we consulted on the foundation and topology to get it properly configured and ready. We did three test migrations before go-live, ensuring we could make subtle improvements to the migration script and refine the expectations of downtime. The go-live day was very successful with minimal downtime, with the forum sitting in read-only mode so that users could catch up on discussions. Quality assurance and testing was done ongoing until the final switch.

Project Background

01 / 04

A word from the client

"We hired Audentio to build a strong user experience and handle the upgrade and migration for our (arguably) ancient community platform. We ended up with a new, slick look and fully responsive page that will allow for more consistency with our users. Audentio's deep knowledge of forum communities and XenForo's templates and plugins made the process quick and efficient. The test migrations and migration itself went smoothly, and required minimal follow up. We will be contacting Audentio in the future as we figure out what other improvements we'd like to make!"