Building Campaign Monitor

A multi-part blog series on building and deploying a large scale commercial ExpressionEngine project.

Newism recently launched the new Campaign Monitor website - which so far is our biggest and most advanced project to date. Along the way we learned some fantastic things about building and deploying a major site, and rather than keep all of this amazing new learning to ourselves we’ve decided to share it via a multi-part blog series. Huzzah!

Starting next week probably, we’ll kick off with the first in the series of approximately seven posts, with the final post potentially landing in the next two weeks or so. If that sounds a little vague, it’s because we’d be mental to commit to a deadline for getting these babies out the door. We have jobs, and some would say, lives.

So what we’re aiming for is a bunch of posts that will cover all of the cool bits from the Campaign Monitor build, with an emphasis on the ExpressionEngine implementation and front-end XHTML / CSS tips. Some of the content will include:

Optimisation and caching
Fancy jQuery tricks
CSS wizardry
Combining MovableType and Wordpress into a single blog to rule them all
sIFR implementation
Graphic techniques from the trenches
Tasteful glamour shots of yours truly

There’s some great stuff there, and once we finalise the list of articles we’ll link them all up nice and neat. We plan to make all of this available as a tidy PDF or zip download once all is said and done, so keep an eye out. We’re also hassling the designer of the site, Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain, to contribute a design related post, but he ~~clearly hates us~~ is on holidays.

A great excuse for a competition!

To celebrate the launch of the new Campaign Monitor site we’re running a little competition. Actually, it’s a big one. The guys from Freshview and EllisLab, as well as Ryan Irelan and Michael Boyink, have all generously offered a truckload of brilliant prizes including Campaign Monitor credits, t-shirts, ExpressionEngine software, screen-casts and books – plus Newism are throwing in some of our own prizes for good measure.

Once you’ve recovered from your brainal meltdown, here’s what’s up for grabs:

1st prize

EE Commercial License + Discussion Forum Module + MSM Module
EE Learning Toolbox (EE Screencasts + Train-ee materials)
25,000 Campaign Monitor credits + T-shirt
Complete set of all LG ExpressionEngine add-ons

Total value: $1200

2nd prize

EE Commercial License + Discussion Forum Module + MSM Module
15,000 Campaign Monitor credits + T-shirt
Complete set of all LG ExpressionEngine add-ons

Total value: $900

3rd prize

EE Commercial License
10,000 Campaign Monitor credits + T-shirt
Complete set of all LG ExpressionEngine add-ons

Total value: $600

All up we’re talking almost $3000 in awesome prizes. If you’ve ever considered becoming a Campaign Monitor or ExpressionEngine user, this competition is for you. If you’re entering to impress your secret crush with your mad geek cred, that will probably work also.

How to enter

There are several ways you can enter, and you can enter multiple times:

Tweet about the series (click here or include the hash code #buildingcm in your tweet)
Digg any blog post in the series
Bookmark any blog post in the series on Del.icio.us
Leave a constructive comment on any post in the series
Subscribe to the RSS feed (click the secret link in any RSS article and leave a comment in our hidden blog post to register your entry)
Subscribe to the newsletter (sign-up form at the bottom of this site)
Forward the newsletter to a friend (you can do so after signing yourself up)
Write a blog post about the series and ping us

Some rules

Now we don’t want to get all authoritarian on y’all, but we will notice if anyone tries to rig entries or spam, so play nice. Violators will be ~~killed~~ disqualified.

We plan to draw the competition by collating all of the valid entries and randomly picking three winners, and this will happen a week after we post the final entry in the series.

The last word

Our main goal here is to document our experience building a major site, and in the process get some useful information out there. We really hope you enjoy reading each post and that you learn some things along the way; particularly about Campaign Monitor and ExpressionEngine (which we love and so should you).

We’re also very keen on your feedback. If you think any of our approaches or techniques could be improved, we’d love to hear about it. We are sensitive though, so think happy thoughts.

Finally a *huge* thank-you to Freshview, EllisLab, Ryan Irelan and Michael Boyink for their much appreciated generosity. We encourage you to check out their sites, and if you know what’s good for you, their services.

So get cracking on those competition entries, and good luck to everyone. Keep an eye out for the first post in the ‘Building Campaign Monitor’ series next week!

30/1/09 9:41am — A great suggestion from Steven Lewis made us think that we really should have asked for everyone’s input in terms of what articles they’d like to see. Is there something about the Campaign Monitor site you just love? Something that would be really handy in your dev toolbox? Let us know - we may just consider, considering it :)

Comments

The following 52 people were compelled to have their say. We encourage you to do the same.

Mat Packer said on Thursday 29th January, 4:09pm: 1

That’s pretty huge right there, really interested in seeing how you guys put together Campaign Monitor as it’s such a solid website.

Dunno about the glamour shots of Wayde though…little suss.. haha
Steven Hambleton said on Thursday 29th January, 4:19pm: 2

Kill all humans. That is all :)
Stephen Lewis said on Thursday 29th January, 9:45pm: 3

Hi Wayde,

Thanks for taking the time to do this, I’m looking forward to it.

Given that your publishing scope and schedule is still quite, um, flexible, perhaps I could make a suggestion (well, request really) regarding content.

I think a lot of EE developers would really enjoy — and benefit from — a peek behind the curtain at how you structured the CM site, in terms of the weblogs, category groups, and so forth.

What decisions did you make, and why; and would you do things differently with the benefit of hindsight?

There really isn’t much of this sort of thing out there for more experienced EE developers at the moment — “how to accomplish X” questions on the EE forums are typically answered quickly and comprehensively, whereas questions about best practise and real-world implementations tend to attract tumbleweed.

It would be great if this series could in some way plug this gap.

Many thanks,
Stephen
Frank Manno said on Friday 30th January, 2:02am: 4

Thanks for starting this series. I’ve decided to build my next site using EE and this will certainly help bridge the gap to learning it.

Thanks again!
Frank
Philip said on Friday 30th January, 2:36am: 5

Really excited about this series! The CM site is lovely.
Michael Hessling said on Friday 30th January, 4:35am: 6

I love JBC’s work. Outstanding.
David Tremblay said on Friday 30th January, 8:07am: 7

This is so great!

Looking forward the series as I’m currently using EE (for the first time) on a job project.
john reva said on Friday 30th January, 8:28am: 8

Looking forward to the articles, I’m moving many sites over to EE and ‘brain dumps’ from others experience tend to be invaluable.
Sean said on Friday 30th January, 8:40am: 9

Definitely looking forward to this series.
Wayde Christie said on Friday 30th January, 9:06am: 10

@Steven - Great feedback. We’ll definitely be doing a post along those lines, and in fact it’s likely to be the first post. Have updated this post to request other article suggestions too. Cheers.

@all - Thanks folks :)
Jon Livingston said on Friday 30th January, 9:56am: 11

Ditto @stephenlewis.

I’ve been very impressed with the work and ee plugins you are putting out and look forward to learning what you did behind the scenes. Keep up the great work.
Victor Leonard said on Saturday 31st January, 1:14am: 12

Nice One!!!

Looking forward to reading the series and well done on a very neatly and well developed site.
Casey Reid said on Saturday 31st January, 3:27am: 13

Really looking forward to this series. I love seeing how others approach situations when building out sites, especially a large scale one like Campaign Monitor.
Luc said on Saturday 31st January, 6:14am: 14

I’m about to embark on a huge (for me anyway) EE powered blog network, so the minutae of your decisions on how you implemented the EE structure would be very interesting.
A.Fruit said on Saturday 31st January, 7:59am: 15

I was just remarking to myself how nice the recent Campaign Monitor rebuild was, and looking at this site, it’s clear: you guys have it going on.
boydexter said on Monday 2nd February, 1:28am: 16

I just love this site, can’t get enough :) Keep it up
Kippi said on Monday 2nd February, 8:00pm: 17

Campaign Monitor looks spot on.
Great site and superb plugins/extentions from Newism!!
Todd said on Wednesday 4th February, 3:42am: 18

Can’t wait for the series and secret recipes I will learn. Plus, I just love swag.
Marcus Mucha said on Wednesday 4th February, 11:23am: 19

The new Campaign Monitor site is spot on; great job Newism; looking forward to the series and a glimpse at the process! I’m also big fan of JBC and Mike Boyink (found this post via Train-ee). EE, jQuery, CSS oh my!
Cameron Senior said on Thursday 5th February, 12:44am: 20

Great Idea guys!

This will really attract people to Expression Engine, not just because of the competition ;)

The fact that you are talking about a real, large scale implementation and all of the considerations and challenges that brings with it, will really help people.

Can’t wait! Looking forward to it!

Great job on the new CP site!
Jason H said on Sunday 8th February, 1:21pm: 21

I loved the sentence that said: Violators will be “killed”!

* I almost peed myself *
Jason C said on Monday 9th February, 12:40am: 22

Particularly interested in efficient sIFR implementation and optimisation and caching.
Conrad said on Thursday 12th February, 10:47pm: 23

Tweeted about your series :) @conradr
Adam George said on Saturday 14th February, 2:26pm: 24

I’ve recently started using CM for work, and can’t praise them enough. Their prices are reasonable, their website is a joy to use, and their support staff are generous, timely and informed.

Good to see two Aussie companies working together :)
ikreknin said on Monday 16th February, 7:27am: 25

I hope EE will be a usual technical tool as a calculator, phone, etc :) And we’ll use EE as a pen and paper in our daily work. Because everyone of us has a PC at home/work.
Ron said on Tuesday 17th February, 1:25am: 26

This sounds great. I’m excited to read on.
Ryan Battles - Jovia Web Studio said on Tuesday 17th February, 1:25am: 27

What an awesome idea. It is going to be really helpful for me to see how a major site is built. Thank you for taking the time to put this together and foster a spirit of community amongst web developers. It is funny how such a competitive field can also have people who are so willing to help each other out.
Liam Fitzgerald said on Tuesday 17th February, 7:06am: 28

Thank you for this really informative article. It’s great to get a behind the scenes look at a really popular site and see how it’s constructed.

It will really help in pointing out to prospective clients that there are top-level sites using EE very successfully.

Cheers,
L
Wayde Christie said on Tuesday 17th February, 1:24pm: 29

@all – Thanks for the brilliant feedback. Really glad everyone’s finding this useful.
Gerhard said on Wednesday 18th February, 8:04am: 30

This is a great project, and comes very handy, since I am about to launch a great project as well. So PLEASE. I am just dying to see EE 2.0 come out. I will certainly be keeping in touch with your project.
alex said on Thursday 19th February, 1:14pm: 31

Are the wonderful icons on the Campaign Monitor site designed by you? I noticed that some of them are also used on the also nice-looking ExpressionEngine website.

Really nice work.
Wayde Christie said on Thursday 19th February, 1:23pm: 32

@Alex – Icons are the ‘Classic’ set from Icon Drawer. Both the Campaign Monitor site and the ExpressionEngine site were designed by Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain at 31three.
Cem Gencer said on Friday 20th February, 12:40am: 33

I ask myself how you will recognize all the entries of each user? Or will you just put all incoming links into a database and select randomly?
Hasnain said on Thursday 12th March, 9:11am: 34

I would love to learn about process & thoughts behind the site architecture and attention to the user-experience. My first suggestion would be the design process (but I see Jesse has already talked about it).

Btw, how will you pick the winners of the prizes? Seems tough to randomly pick from such a variety of social networking (marketing) options you gave us.

Thanks!
Hasnain said on Thursday 12th March, 9:24am: 35

NEWISM GUYS: please have a simple main page with links to all (existing and upcoming) posts about the CM process! Would be great to have a bird’s eye view on the process.

If this already exists, great (and my bad). Where is it?
Wayde Christie said on Thursday 12th March, 9:27am: 36

@Cem and @Hasnain – We have a small number of entry methods and a simple system for drawing the prizes. We specifically chose each entry method based on the ability to easily list entrants.
Wayde Christie said on Thursday 12th March, 9:29am: 37

@Hasnain – We know. It’s coming :)
moosa hemani said on Wednesday 18th March, 9:09pm: 38

ya its really best
Brad said on Saturday 11th April, 6:09pm: 39

Congratulations guys!

I’ve followed Jesse-Bennett for some time now. To score that gig deserves much respect.
Thanks for taking the time to share the learning.

Rock,
B.
Joshua Russell said on Monday 20th April, 11:24am: 40

Really good post. Great to see so many good agencies working on such a great project :) keep up the good work.
David Tremblay said on Thursday 14th May, 12:42am: 41

Is the series over? There are no new post since March…
Web Development Chennai said on Friday 15th May, 12:24am: 42

Quick note to say about this post is……An excellent. Thanks for sharing.
Paul Warren said on Friday 15th May, 11:29am: 43

I’m actually incredibly surprised, to find that the team at freshview, didn’t make their own website design..

Very interesting indeed!

- Paul.
Patrick said on Sunday 14th June, 9:55pm: 44

Really curious about the next blog posts in this series.
Keren Lerner said on Tuesday 24th November, 12:46am: 45

We love Campaign Monitor, we are true fans and use them all the time. Please let me know when the blog posts are ready!
Brand Web Search said on Thursday 26th November, 9:56pm: 46

Superb work on Campaign Monitor Guys, I’m green with envy :)
Daniel Guillan said on Sunday 10th January, 12:05am: 47

Really excited about this series! Signed up at CM a couple of weeks ago and loved it header to footer, front page to login and settings screens. Great work guys. Thanks for sharing!
Andrew Browne said on Sunday 21st March, 7:28am: 48

This series is extremely helpful to me right now. I’m a total noob where EE is concerned. I checked out Ryan Irelan’s video series and that was very good.

Your series really helped me put those concepts into focus for a real world project.

Thanks!
Dylan Mullins said on Tuesday 22nd June, 2:06pm: 49

Thank you guys for the opportunity to be considered for this contest. I have just struck-out on my own full-time, and have always looked to Newism for inspiration and training/tutorial-ish learning. Looking forward to the series. I am NOT a Flash guy, but for once I would like to hear an “In Defense of Flash” article. Any thoughts on that topic?
Dylan Mullins said on Saturday 26th June, 5:54am: 50

Looking forward to the articles. Keep us posted, and I’ll keep checking RSS.
Java Code said on Wednesday 18th August, 9:35pm: 51

This is awesome article
wish you all the best
Yoosuf said on Thursday 26th August, 6:26pm: 52

a series of article, thats really cool, i’ve seen similar articles in this blog, especially jQUery and stuff, keep up the cool work.

Yoosuf