Apperceptive | Case Studies

Arts Engine

As MediaRights.org was growing from 3,000 pageviews a month to 200,000, the legacy CMS and database were becoming unmanageable for an organization the size of MediaRights. As Director of Technology, David Jacobs designed and programmed a highly customized version of Movable Type which replaced the old CMS. One of the design challenges was accommodating the multiple constituencies who identify as MediaRights members: librarians, students, filmmakers, actors, distributors and activists needed to feel equally at home on the site.

In 2003, David Jacobs grew the The Media That Matters Film Festival website from a subpage on MediaRights.org to a standalone website that handles hundreds of thousands of pageviews while streaming high quality video files and dynamically generated “take action” links. The film festival was the first Movable Type powered website to feature streaming video and won the “Best Non-Profit Website” award at South by Southwest. The same architecture that powered the website in 2003 remains today. John Emerson was responsible for implementing the 2005 edition of the festival’s templates and designs.