MOBO launches blog ahead of awards
- Added:
- Oct 15, 2008
Music of Black Origin (MOBO) has appointed Web design and development agency on-IDLE to release its blog ahead of its thirteenth MOBO Awards ceremony tonight.
on-IDLE were appointed to replace the current website with a blog after a three-way pitch earlier in the year. Following the Awards this month, large-scale development will commence on the entire MOBO website to give it
a new look and feel and make it more relevant and engaging to the target audience.
Henk Elzenga, director, MOBO Organisation explains, “The current MOBO site no longer reflects the MOBO brand and information needs. on-IDLE has been tasked to develop our blog and new interface design from where new elements can be added over time according to a digital roadmap for the MOBO brand.
The first new element was briefed this month; an image gallery, in association with Sony Ericsson W910i Walkman® Phone.”
Tom le Bree, editor-in-chief MOBO Magazine said: “MOBO is one of Europe's premier music brands; however, the awards show is only once a year. We at MOBO recognise our fans to not just disappear after the show only to return
the next year. As a way to communicate to these fans and others, MOBO is re-launching our website with aim of providing a platform for them to communicate with all year round.
“The site will host the latest music information including music and behind the scenes stuff from the show as well as information about our community work. The first stage of this development is the blog and gallery which has been designed by on-IDLE, who have done great work turning this site around very quickly."
The MOBO blog, which launched on Tuesday night (one day before the Awards ceremony), will be maintained by MOBO magazine editorial staff and supported technically by on-IDLE. The blog has been built specifically for MOBO fans, urban music fans and media audiences.
on-IDLE hand-coded the blog, electing not to use standard off-the-shelf blog software so that it could tailor the blog to meet MOBO’s individual requirements. The supporting blog’s content management system (CMS) allows
administrators to define users with individual access levels to controleditorial workflow and ensure that multiple users can keep the blog fresh.
The programming is specifically coded to meet current accessibility standards and optimised for search and social media marketing.
“The blog and image gallery is coded in PHP and stored in a MySQL database. MOBO will be able to collect new subscriptions which can be exported directly from the CMS as a Microsoft Excel worksheet for marketing use. The
CMS is used to manage the blog, image gallery and user access control and is a customised version of the CakePHP Framework,” comments Marc Peter, creative director at on-IDLE.
Le Bree, continues, “The blog contains an archive of previous MOBO Magazine features and will be used to keep MOBO fans up-to-date with news and reviews in addition to catering for social bookmarking and rich media (image and video online display). Blog entries are categorised and tagged to ensure the user can access related content easily and they will also be able to leave comments on blog entries.”
“MOBO, and in particular the MOBO Awards, is unique – online as well as off. Music is competitive, but the only real urban music portals at this stage are US-driven. Starting with the MOBO blog and image gallery, and then next
year a re-vamped website, we are starting something that is not just about the Awards, but about the amazing work MOBO Organisation does and really reaching out to young people,” concludes Elzenga.