Pin Media CMS
Building a cost-effective custom CMS to build websites and publish content with WordPress-level performance.
Company
Pin Media
Role
Founder & Design Lead
Type
Full-Time
Timeline
Sep 2023 - Dec 2024
Background + Problem
Automotive Design Planet is one of the largest automotive design media publisher that was started in 2022 by Nishant and me as a passion project. It started as an Instagram page to showcase the work of automotive design students and professionals. It quickly gained traction, reaching 10,000 followers in just two months, and we saw its potential to become something bigger. So, we launched a full-fledged website featuring projects, news, interviews, as well as job listings to serve the growing audience.
We used WordPress to power the site, expecting it to be a flexible and scalable solution. However, as the platform grew with complex content and active users, we ran into significant challenges that affected performance, usability, and SEO, with no easy workarounds or solutions. So, we decided to build our own solution with a focus on simplicity, speed, and scalability.
Users + Flows
The process begins when a piece is planned and approved by a Content Designer. Then, the structure is handed over to the Writer to create the draft. Once the draft is ready, it goes to the Reviewer, who checks it, suggests changes if needed, and either approves it or asks for edits before it gets published.
To make it work, the Writer needs a tool to add and edit content, while the Reviewer needs a tool to review, suggest changes, and approve the final version.
Writers
9
Crafts content following the approved structure and guidelines.
Reviewers
3
Verifies the content meets quality, accuracy, and brand standards.
How We Started
After our research, we discovered that every CMS (Content Management System) is made up of three main parts: pages, posts, and tags. To make it easier to understand, think of a CMS as a big library, where:
Pages are like the library’s important sections, such as a section about history or the one with contact information.
Posts are like new books or articles that are added regularly, like a fresh batch of news or blog entries.
Tags are like book labels, grouping similar topics so you can easily find all books on animals or cooking.
Each of these parts is connected by a navigation system, which helps visitors find their way around the CMS, just like a library’s directory.
So, this means we need options to create and edit pages, posts, and tags, with the ability to link posts to pages and tags to posts, allowing tags to act as filters for posts at the page level.
Cracking SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the art of making a website visible to search engines, ensuring it ranks high when people search for related topics.
While external factors like link building and content quality play a role, we cracked the implementation on the technical side in 5 simple ways:
Avoid Meta Tag Repetition
Ensuring that each page has unique and optimized metadata to prevent duplicate content issues using a similarity score.
Control Content Blocks
Managing how content is structured and displayed by following the Open Graph Protocol to improve sharing on social media.
SEO-Friendly URLs
Generating clean and easy-to-read web addresses that include important keywords to help with search rankings.
Automatic Sitemap Generation
Automatically creating a list of all website pages so search engines can find and index them quickly.
Optimized Image Handling
Making images load faster with compression, lazy loading, and alt text for better accessibility and SEO.
Ideation + Brainstorming
Process + Solution
When we started this project, we wanted to deeply understand the challenges content creators faced with the current CMS. I spent time interviewing writers and reviewers, gathering insights into their workflow struggles.
After mapping out the user flows, we collaborated closely with the team, refining the design in multiple stages.
Each draft went through a robust review cycle, where content writers worked on initial drafts, and reviewers provided feedback to ensure quality and consistency.
For the solution, we kept the needs of both writers and reviewers front and center. The design needed to allow writers to easily draft and edit content, without friction. We built a simple, intuitive interface for them to work within. For the reviewers, we focused on simplifying the feedback process, ensuring they could leave comments, track changes, and approve content seamlessly.
This iterative approach, where each piece of content was improved through cycles of feedback and collaboration, became key to the project’s success.
Outcome
The website currently hosts 25K+ monthly active users and handles 60GB+ of content with zero lag or performance issues.
We were able to achieve a creation-to-publication time of 2.2 seconds.
The implementation of Pin Media CMS resulted in a 40% increase in content creation speed, as writers could draft and edit content more efficiently.
SEO performance saw a 25% improvement in organic search rankings within the first 6 months.
Review cycles were reduced by 30%, with reviewers appreciating the simplified feedback process.
Overall, feedback from users highlighted how intuitive and user-friendly the system was, with a satisfaction rating of 4.8/5 from both writers and reviewers.
The CMS successfully met both the team's needs and business goals with intuitive interface and robust customization capabilities.
Pin Media CMS
Articles List & Edit Post
Automotive Design Planet
Home Page & Stories Section
Creating Content & Reviewing Draft
We introduced data fields like 'Author Name' and 'Mentions' features, letting us link any registered user’s profile directly to the content we published.
It helped us promote 2000+ designers, writers, and other contributors, giving them the recognition they deserved.
It marked our first step toward transforming the platform into a pseudo-social media space, fostering a sense of community among our users.
Pin Media CMS vs Open-Graph Protocol (OGP)
In November 2024, we started working on a new React-based white-label CMS based on current features to be an open-source platform like Wordpress.
However, due to financial constraints, we ultimately chose to step away and focus on new opportunities.
Last Demo of our open-source CMS - Dec 2024