Founded in 1990, The American Prospect began as an authoritative magazine of liberal ideas committed to a just society, an enriched democracy and effective liberal politics. Since its inception, The Prospect has grown to become a monthly periodical with a subscription base of 55,000 and a daily online magazine with more than 1,500,000 unique visitors per month. The Prospect stands to revive and rebuild liberalism in America by connecting American history to the 21st century.

The Challenge

A sprawling online readership had outgrown The American Prospect's current solution, as they had an extensive, but disorganized, content repository. This, coupled with the need for a more flexible design structure compelled The American Prospect to turn to BrowserMedia to provide expertise in combining interactive web design with functional technology solutions. For a group that prides itself in maintaining "cool analysis, dogged reporting, witty commentary and passionate argument," they needed a site that could both show and tell.

The Solution

BrowserMedia redesigned The Prospect's website using BrowserCMS, its Java/J2EE CMS. BrowserMedia integrated the BrowserCMS Publications Module to handle requirements unique to the online publication industry including: archived issues, content tagging, article date attributes and article-author relationships. BrowserMedia also incorporated the BrowserCMS Subscription Module to allow The American Prospect to generate revenue through the magazine's online version. Through the use of BrowserCMS tagging and metadata, content is dynamically populated, including topical, related content to all articles. The flexibility and scalability of BrowserCMS allowed the flawless incorporation of The Prospect's unique site design and layout within the framework of their new CMS.

The Results

Since the redesigned site's launch, The American Prospect now attracts a dedicated readership that uses the site for the spread of information and ideals, as well as a jumping point for more political discussion and debate. Website traffic has nearly doubled since the new site launched, from 26,000,000 hits per month to 48,000,000. In addition, The American Prospect has increased its revenue from the online site by 100%, far exceeding their initial goals. As a result, The Prospect has become a much more popular and influential resource for the spread of liberalism and democratic ideals.

Melanie Alston-Akers, Web Director of The American Prospect, said, "When our in-house Content Management System was no longer accommodating our ever-expanding content, we realized we needed a better system. The new system needed to efficiently organize and maintain our huge volume of articles, but also be flexible enough to meet the unique requirements of our business. With BrowserCMS we not only got a content management system that met our scalability goals, but also received the implementation and customization we needed from one company."