Comic-Con International
A WordPress platform celebrating comics in art & culture
The challenge
Design, architect and develop a new WordPress platform for Comic-Con International—unifying the experience between sub-sites, but ensuring visual distinction for each.
The Solution
A rapid, collaborative discovery and design phase focused on visual agility and feature prioritization, followed by onboarding additional developers for a speedy build timeline.
Flying into action
Comic-Con faced a formidable challenge: revamping its online presence while meeting an ambitious deadline for an MVP launch. Additionally, the project involved migrating from an older version of Drupal CMS to WordPress, necessitating training for the Comic-Con team on new site editing procedures. On top of that, the new platform required a unified yet flexible experience across sub-sites (including Comic-Con, WonderCon, SAM, and Toucan blog).
Modern Tribe knew this project would require quick thinking, close collaboration, and thoughtful prioritization, but we were excited to don our strategy, design and coding capes and fly into action to help Comic-Con realize their goals.
High-touch discovery & design
We kicked things off with a discovery and design phase, collaborating closely with Comic-Con stakeholders to define priorities and align expectations. Balancing cohesive design across diverse sub-sites while allowing for individuality presented a significant challenge. Yet, we embraced it as an opportunity to innovate.
Of all the interesting aspects of our Multisite design approach, the Modern Tribe team’s favorite was probably the themed “nebula”—an animated shape that morphs around the viewport, with each sub-site possessing its own special version.
Focus on feature prioritization & project efficiency
Identifying essential features for the MVP launch was critical. Based on input from stakeholders, we focused on the crucial objective of supporting ticket sales for Comic-Con 2024, rallying our efforts around getting site users the information they needed for ticket purchases.
We also onboarded additional developers to meet timeline goals, ensuring a robust team capable of delivering results. Simultaneously, Modern Tribe provided DevOps consultation to set up AWS hosting, including caching, redirects, and dev/stage/prod environments.
WordPress Multisite & custom blocks
WordPress Multisite installation with shared navigation, theme picker options, and seamless content sharing between sites was an integral aspect of this project. We leveraged our powerful internal WordPress framework to build out custom patterns and blocks, some of which featured inspector controls and new block editor features.
Accessible for all
As a California-based nonprofit, accessibility is of paramount importance for San Diego Comic Convention. Throughout this project, Modern Tribe concentrated on accessibility best practices to ensure the site met WCAG standards. The team was incredibly proud to achieve a 100/100 accessibility score at launch.
That’s a wrap
Delivering wins for Comic-Con
Revamping the visual online presentation of a large, well-loved brand like Comic-Con—and knowing our work would eventually extend beyond the web—was a challenge we took to heart. Successfully launching the MVP site in rapid fashion set a stable stage for subsequent feature rollouts, and a long-term partnership with Comic-Con. Plus, site editors and content creators were thrilled to benefit from a vastly improved WordPress publishing interface compared to the previous site.
Our work with Comic-Con demonstrates how strategic thinking, collaboration, and thoughtful use of WordPress technology can transform a digital platform. We’re proud to have played a role in shaping their online future.
