The Knot website
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The Knot

XO Group, Inc. is a leading Internet and media company dedicated to providing information, products, and services to consumers who are planning their weddings, pregnancies, and other life milestones.

XO’s flagship brand, The Knot, is the authority on all things modern wedding: launched in 1998, this #1 most visited wedding website provides comprehensive planning and registry information. In addition to offering thousands of wedding resources, The Knot also boasts an innovative, patented registry tool, providing vendors the opportunity to market their brands, and engaged couples the ability to both complete their gift registry through the site, and connect with their guests through 3rd party vendors. And this registry tool is just one of many products The Knot features. Fulfilling its mission to innovate and stay relevant, The Knot consistently offers today’s busy bride-to-be a fresh, stylish wedding perspective, and real planning solutions. In their own words, ”whatever their audience needs, [The Knot] will either direct them to the solution or develop one for them.”

The Knot website

Why We Built

For many brides and grooms, creating an original and memorable wedding is of the utmost importance. With Pinterest-fueled inspiration everywhere, today’s wedding is much more than a union: it’s a celebration of the bride and groom’s creativity and personality.

The Knot website

Daily life is hectic, though, and managing the wedding planning and registry process along with regular responsibilities can quickly become overwhelming. In keeping with its mission of providing its audience useful and innovative solutions, XO Group approached Intridea with the challenge of redesigning and streamlining its wedding website builder.

What We Built

By allowing users to launch a customized website to organize their personal style, nuptial ideas, and registry needs, The Knot’s Guest Services app solves the problem of burdensome planning. The redesign includes customizable templates, guest lists, and RSVP capabilities. It also features seamless API integration, gift registry management, and Google, Facebook, and Instagram synchronization. But getting all of these features just right for a user base of over 20 million power-users proved no small task.

By utilizing the agile process of Test Driven Development, or TDD, Intridea was able to quickly build Guest Services in short cycles, and continuously improve upon the app. With over 2000 commits, the Intridea team customized Guest Services to include the abilities to sync with Gmail and Facebook, pull hashtag specific photos from Instagram, and integrate the XO Group API with various wedding registry APIs.

The Knot website

In order to meet today’s bride where she is—on-the-go—the Guest Services app was architected to include dynamic pages, as well as fully-responsive displays for mobile, tablet, and desktop devices. Through the use of Sidekiq, Guest Services seamlessly integrates with Facebook and Instagram backends, ensuring that the engaged couple’s guests receive regular updates via the app. The original Guest Services app lacked simplicity and intuitiveness: navigating the app and launching a custom site proved less than efficient. The new version, however, empowers users to build a basic website in just 3 simple steps.

The Russian Doll

Finally, given the extraordinarily high levels of activity this app manages (over 1 million pageviews per hour!), exceptional architectural finesse was not a bonus, but a requirement. Accordingly, Intridea developed a caching strategy, known as the Russian Doll, which minimizes the load on The Knot’s server, enabling the site to consistently function at optimal levels—regardless of excessive traffic demands.

With the latest version of The Knot’s Guest Services app, XO Group, Inc. can continue claiming the title of the wedding media industry’s unrivaled leader.

The Knot website
  • Guest Services includes syncing with Gmail and Facebook, searching hashtag-specific photos via Instagram, as well as API integration between XO Group and 3rd party vendors.
  • Website builder allows brides to manage wedding guest lists via Facebook and Gmail.
  • Seamless photo album syncing with Facebook and Instagram.
  • Developed proprietary caching strategy, known as “The Russian Doll”, to minimize the load on The Knot’s server.

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