Industry: Sports
Site: www.mavs.com
Challenge: Lack of responsive design, keeping site online during traffic spikes.
Results: Increased flexibility in front-end development, 100% site uptime in the past year.
The Dallas Mavericks (also known as the Mavs) are a professional basketball team based in Dallas, Texas, USA. They are members of the Southwest Division of the Western Conference of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Founded in 1980, the Mavericks have won three division titles (1987, 2007, 2010) two conference championships (2006, 2011) and one NBA Championship in 2011. The Mavericks current home is The American Airlines Center in Dallas Texas. The Mavericks are currently owned By Mark Cuban.
Pixel Jar (the Mavs’ digital agency) is a Southern California based web development firm specializing in worldwide custom WordPress development. Although a small boutique firm, Pixel Jar serves clients all over the world and in all different walks of life. Their WordPress projects have ranged from launching large-scale BuddyPress powered social networks, to WordPress Multisite networks
Moving to WordPress has given us the flexibility to install plugins that directly solve a lot of the problems our team has faced in front-end development. The platform is one of the most popular CMS’s in the market for good reason.
—–Arya Ahmadi, Managing Editor, Mavs.com
THE CHALLENGE
In a world where unique digital experiences are key to standing out online, in the summer of 2013 the Dallas Mavericks decided to break away from the given NBA template on Drupal, which lacked flexibility in front-end design. Out of the 30 teams in the NBA, the Mavs were the first (and only) team to seek out a new website solution.
“We wanted to be the first NBA team website that was fully responsive across all platforms,” said Arya Ahmadi, Managing Editor of Mavs.com.
Aside from the challenge of doing something that had never been done with an NBA website before, the Mavs needed a solution that would deliver upon their needs to scale during high traffic influxes.
“We’ve seen the biggest bumps in traffic during the playoffs. The shot Vince Carter hit in 2013 was so spectacular, it brought our site down!” said Ahmadi.
THE SOLUTION
With the guidance of expert WordPress developers Pixel Jar, the Mavs were able to accomplish building a responsive solution on WordPress. In turn, Pixel Jar recommended they invest in WP Engine for their scalability needs.
Brandon Dove, WordPress Developer at Pixel Jar explained, “many of our larger clients benefit from having a dedicated support team available, not only at regularly scheduled times, but when a large spike in traffic is unexpected. If there’s a special event (such as the playoffs) that’s expected to trigger a lot of traffic, WP Engine will monitor server performance on request.”
The Results
After their site crashed back in 2013, according to Ahmadi, “WP Engine worked tirelessly with us to set up safeguards to avoid any complications since then. We recently moved over to HTTPS which was a breeze. Now we have the ability to serve our content securely, increase page rankings and display our video content directly through social platforms like Twitter cards, Google AMP and Facebook instant articles.”
“Moving to WordPress has given us the flexibility to install plugins that directly solve a lot of the problems our team has faced in front-end development. The platform is one of the most popular CMS’s in the market for good reason,” said Ahmadi.
He added, “Pixel Jar and WP Engine are two companies we’re lucky to call our partners. We’re proud of our mavs.com and wouldn’t be where we are today without the true heroes behind the scenes! Thank you!”