The Outcome

In September, MBC started the gradual move to Magnolia’s CMS through content migration. The project is still in the implementation phase, but MBC has plans to re-launch MBC.net in December 2011 with the new platform. “We are currently in the third of four development cycles, and heading toward going live,” says Baldé.

So far, any problems that have popped up have been easily solved.  “Every project has some challenges and things to overcome,” admits Baldé. For example, in regard to the editorial interface, MBC “wanted to use Magnolia, but on the same parallel to this they wanted to have no pop-ups at all, which is counterproductive to the Magnolia approach. We came up with a suggestion that was attaching the Google Web Tool Kit and how to build this on top of Magnolia. That worked very well,” says Baldé.

Samra acknowledges that there are challenges as well, noting that “there are plenty of problems we go through daily because of the size of the project, which is expected, but with the good planning we have in place, and the dedication from everyone, I think we are in overall very good shape.” MBC has also found comfort in the wealth of information available through the Magnolia community. Magnolia has “a forum where all the developers from all around the world who are using Magnolia as their CMS can go and they can share information and they can ask questions and get answers. The information is reachable, unlike the system that we had earlier, which was a closed system and was really difficult to find expertise in,” says Samra.

MBC has plans for improvements in the future, but right now it is focusing on making the move to Magnolia as seamless as possible for its audience. “When we move to Magnolia, which is hopefully by the end of the year, what is going to happen is the interface, what the users see on the MBC website, is going to remain the same, of course with lots of improvements in that regard. Our focus for this year is to replace this engine with a better one-which is Magnolia-that will enable us to develop anything in the future.”

Challenges aside, MBC is happy with its decision to adopt a new system. “Considering the lengthy process that we went through and the focused goals that we have, I think we have selected the right system and the right system integrators.” Magnolia and Aperto agree. “It’s been a real interesting project and I hope that we will have an ongoing relationship with MBC,” says Aperto’s Baldé. “It’s really fun to work with them.”