Case Study

Omega Institute Extends their Site Reach

Looking to increase their reach, Omega approached Mediacurrent to extend their existing Drupal website by building a live streaming video platform that would be the cornerstone of their online learning department.

Visit eomega.org

Project Highlights

Mediacurrent helped Omega Institute, a nonprofit, mission-driven, and donor-supported educational organization, create a smooth end to end experience for users and content administers from the moment they find the workshop, purchase the workshop, interact with the live stream, and watch archived video.

Results Include:

11 %

Increase in traffic to learning path pages.
16000 +

Online workshop conversions.
22 %

Increase in traffic to the website from social media.

Objectives of the Project

Mediacurrent worked with Omega Institute to

Integrate the registration process with Omega’s internal tracking systems to ensure affiliate link codes, coupons, and registration data were being properly captured for online learning workshops the same way they were for on-campus workshops.
Scope, build, test, and launch the live streaming platform in time for a highly publicized workshop.
Train the Omega team to be able to create their own workshops and broadcast live streams independently of Mediacurrent.

Development

Challenges & Solutions

Omega Institute utilized Drupal for its integration with live stream video services, ease of use, and extensibility of current code base.

High Traffic

To avoid lags in performance and even having the site crash entirely, we built the live stream platform as a lightweight PHP application and completed extensive load testing. We also recommended and assisted migrating the web properties to a flexible hosting platform that would let them scale the web resources as needed.

Integration With Third Party Systems

Mediacurrent leveraged several systems that were needed to create a seamless experience for the live stream and video on demand functionality- all of which had to be integrated with Drupal. Some of the key systems include Wirecast, Brightcove, Zencoder, & Livefyre.

Testing For Emergency Situations

To prepare, Mediacurrent and the Omega production team for anything, they created several test cases to cover the potential scenarios that could arise during a live stream. Including testing the system and workflows for the electricity going out at Omega, internet fluctuations, various browsers and systems, etc.

Drupal Modules

Key Modules for Launch

Our goal was to leave as small of a footprint as possible. In addition to the live streaming video application and bringing all of the current modules up to date, we installed and extended these key modules to accomplish Omega’s goals:

Commerce Suite: Utilized for registration for online workshops, secure online checkout, coupons, and early bird registration capabilities.
Varnish and Memcache: Improved the performance of the website - especially for anonymous traffic.
Rules: Created custom email notifications during the checkout process, auto-reminder emails for the broadcast, and for information recovery if someone lost their link to view the live stream.

On-going Support

Along with on-going enhancements to live streaming, Mediacurrent continues to provide Omega with ongoing Drupal support to ensure the continuation of optimal performance. They work through deployment improvements, a seamless integration of Brightcove with Drupal, improved site search, and a defined editorial workflow.