How WordPress VIP’s Digital Ecosystem Drives Innovation

Innovation in digital media is often hindered by technology systems that burden IT and development teams with routine maintenance, leaving them struggling to keep up with infrastructure instead of creating new features and solutions.

Disparate CMSes and cumbersome publishing workflows handicap newsrooms and content creators from getting stories out in new ways. 

Increasingly, the world’s largest media brands are saying no to barriers that hinder innovation. Their solution? Leveraging WordPress VIP’s digital ecosystem, including an extensive partner network, support, and off-the-shelf solutions.

Why our customers innovate faster

The Times: a foundation for future reader experience enhancements

Britain’s oldest daily national newspaper, The Times, transformed their operations, building a future-ready, technology-enhanced newsroom capacity for innovation through a digital-first strategy. 

Moving operations to WordPress VIP accelerated time-to-publish by 34% and reduced complexity by lowering the clicks needed to publish by 62%. Overhauling their technical architecture, including retiring outdated services, provided a foundation for integrating AI, new technologies, and other innovations.

Adopting shared WordPress plugins across their sister media properties also helped the publisher enhance operational efficiency and reduce complexity. By collaborating with WordPress engineers and WordPress VIP agency partner Big Bite, The Times developed a sophisticated CMS that accelerated their digital publishing workflow and prepared them for future storytelling innovations.

“By standardizing across News Corp and News UK, we can put more effort into building capabilities that benefit all our publications.”

Monica Mina, Director of Product Development, CMS & Publishing Products—News Corp

Her Campus Media: a common infrastructure for growth

Her Campus Media, the No. 1 portfolio of Generation Z media brands, struggled to manage three separate CMSes (including Drupal and WP Engine), which was a technological burden and damper on innovation. 

Standardizing their sites on WordPress VIP allowed them to innovate faster, drive additional traffic (120% YOY growth), improve the editorial experience, upgrade site performance and reliability, and innovate faster. Two key WordPress VIP partners, The Code Company and 10up, facilitated the seamless migrations.

The vast WordPress ecosystem of solutions also played a part, helping Her Campus control costs without reinventing the technological wheel. 

“Now we can take a plugin that does 90% of what I need—I just need to handle the other 10% that’s custom to us…The WordPress architecture enables us to deliver just the right experience for our unique needs without building from scratch.”

David Lievense, Director of Product Engineering and IT—Her Campus Media

Edutopia: reduced engineering need

Edutopia, a leading media resource for pre-K to K12 education, also felt severely limited by their Drupal CMS. They was unable to improve their digital strategy, focus on automation, and rapidly innovate. 

Edutopia partnered with WordPress VIP agency partner Trew Knowledge to migrate to WordPress VIP.  “(they) understood our business implicitly and had all the pieces to build a high-functioning publishing system,” says Chief Content and Product Officer Stephen Merrill.

Removing 18 years of innovation shackles, the publisher reduced development toil and costs, helped editors produce content faster (e.g., reducing content layout time by 80%+), and erected an architecture to turbocharge digital experiences. 

“With Drupal, the pace of production was slower, and it often required multiple engineers to get something built.”

Cindy Johanson, Executive Director—Edutopia 

By reducing engineering needs, Edutopia was able to reallocate resources to new feature development, like automated newsletters and enhanced web capabilities—“ultimately strengthening our impact and effectiveness,” adds Merril.

Support

Proactive, expert advice on performance and security

When media brands are freed from daily fire drills over security risks or site slowdowns, their development teams can prioritize building new features and innovative solutions. 

“…basically it’s like we hired another engineer,” says VentureBeat Director of Technology Steve Tidwell, commenting on WordPress VIP’s support. “We have an extra level of QA on our code now by people who actually know what they’re looking at, which helps a great deal. We have an extra set of eyes, so that helps us a lot with availability and performance.” 

WordPress VIP, staffed by the industry’s foremost WordPress experts, provides comprehensive security measures and performance optimizations for media brands. They include:

Full platform expertise

• 24/7 support
• WordPress support
• Cloud platform support
• WordPress upgrades
• DDoS investigation
• VIP platform performance debugging

Debugging support

• Guidance when you need it
• Performance debugging
• Deep troubleshooting
• Application downtime monitoring
• Support for themes and plugins
• Security review

“My favorite part about working with WordPress VIP is the level of support and collaboration we get from the team,” says Penske Media Corporation VP of Technology Gabriel Koen.

“(WordPress VIP) really feels like they’re invested in what we’re doing, and that’s something I haven’t felt with any other vendor we’ve worked with.”

Gabriel Koen, VP of Technology—Penske Media Corporation

Adds News Corp. Senior Project Manager Monica Mina: “(WordPress VIP really gets) down and dirty to solve a problem. Whenever we bring them something that’s troubling us or something we can’t get our heads around, they’re very quick to bring us solutions and say, ‘Maybe this person has already come up with it, or what about this other publication? Let’s take a look at it. Which I find is very helpful.”

Digital ecosystem

Off-the-shelf solutions to spur innovation

If publishers spend all their resources on maintenance or building things from scratch, they probably lack the resources to innovate to serve audiences and compete in today’s publishing landscape.

The WordPress VIP digital ecosystem offers more than 55,000 plugins, integrations, themes, and templates built and tested to optimize WordPress-based CMSes. This is a boon for development teams looking to innovate quickly. 

“You’re not going to get every feature (under the sun) in a newly released CMS,” says Al Jazeera Digital CTO David “Hos” Hostetter. “But given our timeframes, I knew I’d rather buy and leverage WordPress VIP than build it all ourselves. It’s much smarter to take something off the shelf and use that. Something that already has hundreds of millions of dollars, countless hours, and an amazing, passionate community invested behind it. You’re better off going down that path than trying to do it yourself.”

“(WordPress VIP customers) said (the) large number of plugins and other functionalities available in the WordPress ecosystem were sources of savings and that there is additional support in choosing plugins that have been tested and vetted by WordPress VIP,” says a Total Economic Impact Report, published by Forrester Consulting.

“We benefit from a global community using and testing capabilities, so we don’t always have to. The more we can reduce our unique footprint and align with (WordPress) Core, the less we have to manage ourselves.”

Umer Ehsan, Director of Content Systems—News UK

Partnerships

UX and design to digital transformations, yeah, there’s a VIP partner for that

As you’ve read in our media case studies above, our extensive network of agency and technology partners, global system integrators, and global service providers brings life to WordPress development and innovation. 

They’re at the center of the enterprise CMS ecosystem, offering everything from strategy, UX, design, and CMS migration to developing large-scale, best-in-class digital solutions using WordPress VIP technologies.

Another favorite success story (Unlocking Innovation With WordPress) is how Gold Agency Partner XWP helped the iconic publication and parent organization Penske Media Corporation (PMC) migrate decades of content (250,000+ articles, images, and other media files) to WordPress, empowering their digital team with easily manageable editorial workflows and a trusted platform.

“One of our smoothest and most successful launches to date,” says PMC Associate Vice President Nicola Catton. “Everyone who reviewed the site–before and after launch–commented on the exceptional quality. This was down to an incredible effort led by (XWP), with a focus and dedication that was a joy to be involved in.”

One more sterling example of WordPress VIP partner expertise for media comes from Gold Agency Partner BigBite, which just launched Newsrooms 2.0: Your Ultimate Guide to Transforming Modern Publishing in concert with WordPress VIP. 

Aimed at decision-makers at major news organizations, this CMS buyer’s guide helps “reimagine how global brands create, collaborate, and publish digital content.” 

Speaking of partner innovation, dive deeper into how WordPress VIP and our agency partners, including Multidots, helped media giants The Times, Vox.com, and Ask Media reach their digital transformation goals.

“When Multidots proposed migrating 11 sites in 12 weeks, I was skeptical and unsure if it was even possible,” says Ask Media Group VP of Software Engineering Vinodh Krishnamoorthy. “But they did it! Working with the entire team has been a pleasure.”

Learn more about WordPress VIP and innovation

These stories are just the tip of the iceberg. Hear more about why our customers love working with WordPress VIP and our partners:

Or if you want to learn more about how WordPress VIP reduces the burden on IT and web administrators so they can innovate, reduce costs, and keep their sites secure, read on below: