bigair.tv

[thomas]

Hello,

we recently relaunched http://bigair.tv to the new Processwire version. The site used to be based on ViMP video CMS which itself is based on the Symphony framework.

After almost two years of trying to make ViMP/Symphony work the way we needed it, I decided to rebuild the whole thing in PW. It was well worth it, even though it still contains a lot of bugs and a lot of features are still missing. With Symphony, I spend my time looking for files and  classes, rebuilding classes, fighting my way through abstraction layers and trying to decipher Symphony Markup creation tags. With PW, my clients needs are easily implemented and I finally feel like I'm in charge of the site.

The site offers user registration through Google and Facebook, video upload for registered users and video transcoding through Zencoder. It was remarkably easy to build in PW (even though I'll take a close look at Apeisa's "Fredi" to see if I can learn something about frontend editing)

The main challenge was building an efficient caching mechanism for the video lists, which are customizable for registered users. I used MarkupCache for pretty much everything.

So here is my second PW project and by far the biggest one I build so far. Thanks to PW, the community and Ryan for answering my (sometimes silly) questions! 

http://bigair.tv/

-thomas

[onjegolders]

I really like it Thomas, you can see a lot of work's gone into it.

I'm a bit confused about the mobile menu though as the normal one is still visible and I'm not sure what content is sliding out?

[thomas]

The mobile menu (or sidebar on Desktop/wider displays) is really only useful when you're registered/logged in. It contains a category menu where you can enable and disable video categories, the search field and video channels. You are right, for the average visitor right now it's useless. That's one of the things we still need to think about ...

Thanks,

thomas

Edit: I find it really hard to decide which features to offer to "everyone" and which are only for registered users ... One one hand we need to offer more for people that register, on the other hand I don't want the site to look empty or too simple for unregistered visitors .... decisions, decisions ...

[kongondo]

Beautiful site Thomas and loads very fast

Cheers

/k

[MatthewSchenker]

Greetings,

Excellent work Thomas!  Fun and welcoming site, which fits the subject matter.  It loads lightning fast for me (desktop).  The "Videos" section is nice and clear, and the "Shop" section is easy to navigate.

My one small criticism... The horizontal split between the "article-text" DIV and the "aktuelles-pic" image on each "News" item makes it just a bit confusing to navigate specific entries.

Thanks for sharing!

Matthew

[jmart]

Good example of microdata use on the videos and on OG tags on all pages.

You place microdata on http://bigair.tv/video/vagabond-ritual and other videos.

Are you planning on adding microdata to your other pages such as Product and News Articles?

[thomas]

Hi jmart,

yeah I was focusing on microdata for the videos first because I was experimenting with G+ integration. I will include microdata on news and products as well (thanks for reminding me!)

I'm glad you say it loads fast because that means my caching strategies seem to work!

[jmart]

Hi thomas,

You may want to checkout http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

It shows "Page does not contain authorship markup" which you may want to add.

For example:

<a href="https://plus.google.com/YOUR_GPLUS_ID?  rel=author">Google</a>  

[thomas]

Hello jmart,

thanks for the info. To be honest I wasn't too sure about the authorship, since very few of the people writing for the site or uploading videos are on G+. I'll probably try to include the info for those who are ...

Thanks,

thomas