On top of these two scenarios, the team was allowed to create infrastructure modules that can be easily shared and expanded as new services are added to the system. This enabled us to publish partial changes to the site in a matter of seconds. Due to the nature of static sites, this is also very cost effective as public traffic does not need to reach any internal systems; all of this traffic is directed to an AWS S3 bucket where the static files are hosted. Lastly, the internal systems are not exposed to the public, minimizing the attack surface and providing a secure framework for data entry and storage.

Modular, scalable and turnkey on boarding

There are three things required for onboarding a new market: environment configuration, data entry and feature configuration. Our approach makes the first two steps effortless as the technical teams can accomplish these steps in a matter of hours. In regards to feature configuration, the market has the capability to decide on which modules they would like to use. Each local market has the capability to toggle title pages, feature queues, banners, brands and collections as they see fit. This allows for a great deal of customization while staying on the path of being a unified global brand.

Headless CMS

The headless CMS approach allowed us to provide a place where publishers and developers can safely store title data. This was accomplished by allowing access only to users within the Warner Bros. network and whitelisting internal systems that need to be able to communicate with the CMS to export the title data. This headless CMS is also entirely configurable. Settings such as database, server, cache size can be customized to fit each market’s needs.

A Modern Front End System

Our approach uses the React Static framework to create a static site. In order to achieve this, we created small, reusable components that are shared throughout the site. The benefit of this approach is that it pushes the concept of one brand across all of the markets. Font sizes, color palettes, and overall styles can be shared with all of the markets. Another benefit of sharing components between markets is that new features and enhancements are automatically applied to every market. This approach has proven to be effective as it is currently deployed to 26 global markets, with many more in the roadmap.

System Dependencies

Terraform: The framework for infrastructure as code. Any setting for each market can be easily searched and modified.

AWS Lambda: A serverless solution that allows us to run code without provisioning or managing servers. This allows to run functions for updating content, providing a search service, and resizing assets.

AWS Elastic Container Service: A fully managed container service that allows us to host the headless CMS with flexible options for each market.

AWS S3: Provides a location to store and host the static site. This allows us to deliver a site that is highly available and scalable.