Hip2Save.com
- Engineering
- External APIs
- Infrastructure
- Ongoing Support
- Strategy
- WordPress.com VIP
Rebuilding significant pieces of Hip2Save's plug-ins and theme, 10up released a stable site to handle an increasing level of traffic.
Hip2Save is the American dream. It started as the simple WordPress.com hobby blog of a military wife looking for every way she could find to save money, sharing her findings with like-minded moms. Before she knew it, she had a massive audience, was employing family members, and moving to bigger hosts and pricier developers. Lightning struck again, and The Today Show decided to make Hip2Save an official part of their family, featuring their site during their semi-weekly “Jill’s Steals & Deals” segment. Traffic exploded again, but this time, Hip2Save struggled to meet the demand. That’s when they found 10up.
By auditing and rebuilding significant parts of Hip2Save’s plug-ins and theme, 10up was able to release a more reliable, less buggy, less demanding build. But even with new hardware, Hip2Save struggled under the weight of 200,000+ uniques hitting their site in a one-minute window upon announcement on TV. While the high traffic demands seemed like a perfect fit for WordPress.com VIP, Hip2Save also had 80,000 users registered in their local WordPress install, and unique user features like “saved deals” that weren’t a good fit, as constructed, for the VIP environment.
10up developed an innovative plan to implement all non-member functionality on WordPress.com VIP, while pairing that setup with a self-hosted WordPress.org setup that would house member data, member features, and non-VIP compliant requirements like the external coupon database. By placing the WordPress.org setup on a subdomain (my.hip2save.com), 10up was able to facilitate client-side communication between the sites using cookies, creating a seamless transition that kept members happy and kept Today Show constituents even happier. Today, Hip2Save doesn’t even miss a beat when The Today Show directs their massive audience to go to Hip2Save.com—even during the weekly segments during the holiday season.
10up also fully integrated special Today Show features, like their video feed, and custom MSNBC ad requirements involving loading upon view. 10up is continuing to develop new features and innovative functionality to keep Hip2Save fresh, growing, and vibrant.
