CHALLENGE
The customer is a provider of a social networking service that is among the top 20 social projects in the world market. Around 500,000 people visit the customer’s network daily, with a peak load of about 80,000 concurrent users.
The customer approached Artezio with the following tasks:
Functional components of the system:
Additional services for paying subscribers
Within the project, Artezio’s team organized the development and support infrastructure, including Jira, SVN, and Wiki.
In cooperation with the customer’s system administrator, Artezio’s engineers created a copy of the infrastructure on their side, including:
Originally, the development team started with three people who worked on the project for 4 months. Then it was extended iteratively by 2 more persons a quarter, ending up at 9 members at project end.
During the first six months, the team focused solely on correcting existing errors in the apps and expanding a system of operative and strategic records for owners and management on the client side.
During the second stage, it was decided to completely redesign the app which was carried out in two iterations. Within the first iteration, Artezio’s team performed a fast face lifting of the app and showed it to users. After receiving feedback, the design was optimized, and some functional elements of systems were changed. The new version was released 8 months later. The current development stage includes code porting, a web component on Symfony2 framework, providing reliability growth and real-time relevance of data caching. Based on the research results of the general system architecture in the first year of work, it was decided to introduce changes to allow more flexibility while working with users` data.
The errors were fixed, the system was expanded. During the second stage, the app was redesigned and new functional elements added. The new version was released within 8 months after the first one.
Currently we are working on code porting, a web component on Symfony2 framework, providing reliability growth and real-time relevance of data caching. Based on the research results of the general system architecture in the first year of work, it was decided to introduce changes to allow more flexibility.
According to the client’s records the speed of making modifications in the system has grown by 2 - 2.5 times.
Within half a year, the team studied all the systems and components of the social network and, as a result, we can now provide a twenty-four hour support.
- Support of the service capability (the website and mobile apps, backend 24 hours per day, 7 days per week)
- Complete redesign of the app
- Mobile app porting to the native platform
- Development of new functionality for all system components
Functional components of the system:
- Search over permanently growing user base consisting of 1.5M+ users, including Search by location (both from location directory and based on IP address positioning, GPS positioning), Search among active users, Search for online users, Advanced search
- Message exchange between users
- Work with photos, support of various devices and screen resolutions, integrated with Amazon Cloud
- Integration with banner systems
- In-app purchases
- Time zone justification
Additional services for paying subscribers
- Online user support system
- Blocking user system
- Access control system to administrative system functions
- Mass mailing, etc.
SOLUTION
Within the project, Artezio’s team organized the development and support infrastructure, including Jira, SVN, and Wiki.
In cooperation with the customer’s system administrator, Artezio’s engineers created a copy of the infrastructure on their side, including:
- Two apps servers with a load balancer.
- MySQL cluster
- Mobile apps API load balanced cluster
- Continuous integration components
- A push notifications server
Originally, the development team started with three people who worked on the project for 4 months. Then it was extended iteratively by 2 more persons a quarter, ending up at 9 members at project end.
During the first six months, the team focused solely on correcting existing errors in the apps and expanding a system of operative and strategic records for owners and management on the client side.
During the second stage, it was decided to completely redesign the app which was carried out in two iterations. Within the first iteration, Artezio’s team performed a fast face lifting of the app and showed it to users. After receiving feedback, the design was optimized, and some functional elements of systems were changed. The new version was released 8 months later. The current development stage includes code porting, a web component on Symfony2 framework, providing reliability growth and real-time relevance of data caching. Based on the research results of the general system architecture in the first year of work, it was decided to introduce changes to allow more flexibility while working with users` data.
RESULTS
The errors were fixed, the system was expanded. During the second stage, the app was redesigned and new functional elements added. The new version was released within 8 months after the first one.
Currently we are working on code porting, a web component on Symfony2 framework, providing reliability growth and real-time relevance of data caching. Based on the research results of the general system architecture in the first year of work, it was decided to introduce changes to allow more flexibility.
According to the client’s records the speed of making modifications in the system has grown by 2 - 2.5 times.
Within half a year, the team studied all the systems and components of the social network and, as a result, we can now provide a twenty-four hour support.
