What the Habras Creators talked about

    The audience was about 150 people, mostly naturally students, as well as developers, managers and users of Internet products. The authors of the best questions from the audience were given the book by Anton Popov, “ Blogs. A new sphere of influence . ”
    Meeting video recording (500 MB AVI) , alternative
    Presentation from Mio

    Project start

    Denis Kryuchkov thought about a product similar to today's Habr while working on the Web planet . After he was fired from there, he took up the idea more tightly - namely, for 2 months he walked around the city, thought, watched. So the concept of a resource was born where commentators had equal rights with full-time editors and journalists - they themselves would be the same authors. Then, for another 2 months, he himself drew the design, agreed with a familiar programmer on the development of the first version of the site. Denis was not happy with how quickly corrections were made to the system and he decided to approach the project more fundamentally - he took a loan from a bank, borrowed from his parents and set about creating a full version of the system.

    Habra revolution

    The primary concept of the site was that the editorial posts were published in the “texts” section, and the posts of other participants were published in the “blogs” section (?). However, over time, user dissatisfaction began to increase inequality of rights and a “habra-revolution” was committed, in which each user received the right to be a full-fledged author.

    The work of journalists and editors

    From the very beginning of the project, several journalists actively worked in it under the guidance of the editor. In the morning the editor studied the internet news environment, handed out assignments to reporters and wrote several notes a day. Over time, the share of their work in the total volume of content decreases.

    The appearance of Mio

    In the course of the growth of the user base and user activity, the attention of Deniskin was attracted by the user Mio, who in a record amount of time managed to reach the first place by karma among users. As it turned out, at that time Igor worked in Kazan in the field of political propaganda. Deniskin contacted Mio and convinced him to change this dull occupation to work for Habr in Moscow. Now Mio is a project manager for Habrahabr and Igrostnostra.

    Business aspects

    Some time after the start of the rapid growth of the project, an investor appeared. Now the company is owned by the investor and Deniskin. The first advertisement, by the hosting company Masterhost, was sold when it reached 5 thousand visitors a day. They have tried and are trying to buy the project repeatedly, for example, companies such as Afisha Publishing House and Yandex.

    Habrahabr as a product began to pay off relatively recently, but the costs of its development are practically covered. In the new version of the habr there will be a number of services for companies in communication with audiences, as well as paid features for users themselves.

    Market specialization

    If the Futuriko company is engaged in the creation of general thematic resources, without a clear focus, then Thematic Media see its task in meeting the goals of users in a particular thematic area.

    Selecting a topic and shaping a product image

    The topic of the next project is selected as a result of employees discussing topics of interest to them and competitive analysis. For example, Deniskin himself is actively interested in football, considers him one of his main interests and thus acts as the project manager for the Dribbler. Next, there is an outline of the structure of sections and pages of the site, joint generation of the project name.

    Design

    The design (and layout on tables) of the first version of the habr was made by Deniskin himself, now the key interface decisions are determined by the team, and the graphic development of details is handed over to specialized companies and freelancers in a row. Thus, Samara TurboMilk is currently working on AutoCadabra design , and Kazan Knock-Knock is working on Ignostroy . This approach, despite the seemingly high costs of communication, has its advantages, because creates a semblance of competition for quality between contractors.

    Organization of the development process

    Despite the fact that the authors of the project, according to them, read a sufficient amount of literature on project management, they believe that they work "not according to books." The changes are permanent, even at the stage of layout, despite the fact that in books like “ Management of complex Internet projects ” by Yordon “it is forbidden”. As a result, the terms of projects increase on average by 2 times compared to the planned ones.

    Now 15 people work in Thematic Media. Each project has at least a manager, programmer and technologist (layout designer).

    Frames

    People come to the company mainly through ads on the site. They are asked questions - why do you want to work with us, why do you leave your old job and questions about the professional sphere. No questions are asked about higher education. All employees of the company are active users of Habr.

    Technical configuration

    Now the site runs on 3 servers. Used technologies - PHP and MySQL.

    Security

    To protect against DDOS attacks, Cisco equipment is used, which collapses uniform requests at the hardware level. Identification of errors in the site code occurs mainly due to user reports, sometimes to deface.

    PS Those who were at the meeting - supplement and correct please.

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