XOXO Explore
📰 Daring Fireball
Learn how to design and build a flexible website for a festival using a CMS and a design system, and explore the features of the new XOXO Explore website
Action Steps
- Design a flexible design system for a website
- Build a simple CMS to manage content
- Create a website with a unique visual identity for each festival year
- Develop a video archive with filterable videos by year and topic
- Preserve important documents such as a Code of Conduct and Inclusion policies
Who Needs to Know This
Developers, designers, and project managers can benefit from this example of building a website for a festival, and learn how to create a flexible design system and a functional CMS
Key Insight
💡 A flexible design system and a simple CMS can help create a functional and efficient website for a festival
Share This
🎉 Introducing XOXO Explore! 🎉 A new website for the XOXO festival, featuring a flexible design system, a simple CMS, and a video archive 📹
Key Takeaways
Learn how to design and build a flexible website for a festival using a CMS and a design system, and explore the features of the new XOXO Explore website
Full Article
Title: Launching XOXO Explore · Blog · XOXO
URL Source: https://xoxofest.com/blog/2026-launching-xoxo-explore/
Markdown Content:
# Launching XOXO Explore · Blog · XOXO
[](https://xoxofest.com/)
Years
[2024](https://xoxofest.com/2024/)
[2019](https://xoxofest.com/2019/)
[2018](https://xoxofest.com/2018/)
[2016](https://xoxofest.com/2016/)
[2015](https://xoxofest.com/2015/)
[2014](https://xoxofest.com/2014/)
[2013](https://xoxofest.com/2013/)
[2012](https://xoxofest.com/2012/)
[Videos](https://xoxofest.com/videos/)
[Guide](https://xoxofest.com/guide/)
[Blog](https://xoxofest.com/blog/)
[About](https://xoxofest.com/about/)
[Merch](https://xoxofest.com/merch/)
[All Posts](https://xoxofest.com/blog/)
April 23, 2026
# # _L_ _a_ _u_ _n_ _c_ _h_ _i_ _n_ _g_ _X_ _O_ _X_ _O_ _E_ _x_ _p_ _l_ _o_ _r_ _e_
Back in 2015, four years into producing XOXO, we decided it was about time the festival had a proper website.
Up until then, we had been designing and building three completely separate mini-sites each year: one to announce our dates, a second to publish our lineup and open registration, and a third to share our schedule with attendees.
While this gave us a great excuse to collaborate with some exceptionally talented designers, it was also wildly inefficient to build a website every time we had something new to share.
We figured it wouldn’t take much to wrap a flexible design system around a simple CMS, something we could feed new announcements, lineups, and schedules into, while still leaving space for us to express the unique and vibrant visual identity of each festival year.
Today, over 10 years later, and almost two full years after we retired the festival for good, we’re finally launching that website. Named after what we thought would be a throwaway title for a short-lived GitHub repo, allow us to introduce [**XOXO Explore**](https://xoxofest.com/).
[](https://xoxofest.com/)
## XOXO Explore
We hope you’ll take the time to scroll around and notice all the little details and considerations, but let us point you in the direction of some highlights.
Each festival year now has its own index, featuring the complete lineup of every speaker, performer, artist, and project from that year, along with a detailed (and accurate!) schedule with descriptions, dates, times, and venues meticulously imported from our print attendee guide. Our recap video and conference talk videos are also prominently featured, as well as credits for each year’s patrons (thank you forever!), and, last but not least, links to a restored archive of every previous announcement, lineup, and schedule mini-site.
Our [talk videos](https://xoxofest.com/videos/) finally have a proper home on the XOXO website, filterable by year and topic, with each video page now including a talk description, relevant tags, and links to other related videos from our full archive of conference talks.
[](https://xoxofest.com/videos/)
Our [Guide](https://xoxofest.com/guide/) and [Blog](https://xoxofest.com/blog/) have also been preserved, including the most recent versions of our [Code of Conduct](https://xoxofest.com/guide/conduct/), [Inclusion](https://xoxofest.com/guide/inclusion/), [Accessibility](https://xoxofest.com/guide/accessibility/), and [COVID](https://xoxofest.com/guide/covid/) policies, which remain available to use under a permissive Creative Commons license, and which we hope will continue to inspire other thoughtfully produced events well into the future.
And, for the first time ever (!) on an XOXO website, we now have an actual [About](https://xoxofest.com/about/) page, where we’ve attempted to explain what XOXO actually was, documenting the 12-year history of the festival and its related projects, and featuring a bunch of our favorite quotes from press and attendees over the year
URL Source: https://xoxofest.com/blog/2026-launching-xoxo-explore/
Markdown Content:
# Launching XOXO Explore · Blog · XOXO
[](https://xoxofest.com/)
Years
[2024](https://xoxofest.com/2024/)
[2019](https://xoxofest.com/2019/)
[2018](https://xoxofest.com/2018/)
[2016](https://xoxofest.com/2016/)
[2015](https://xoxofest.com/2015/)
[2014](https://xoxofest.com/2014/)
[2013](https://xoxofest.com/2013/)
[2012](https://xoxofest.com/2012/)
[Videos](https://xoxofest.com/videos/)
[Guide](https://xoxofest.com/guide/)
[Blog](https://xoxofest.com/blog/)
[About](https://xoxofest.com/about/)
[Merch](https://xoxofest.com/merch/)
[All Posts](https://xoxofest.com/blog/)
April 23, 2026
# # _L_ _a_ _u_ _n_ _c_ _h_ _i_ _n_ _g_ _X_ _O_ _X_ _O_ _E_ _x_ _p_ _l_ _o_ _r_ _e_
Back in 2015, four years into producing XOXO, we decided it was about time the festival had a proper website.
Up until then, we had been designing and building three completely separate mini-sites each year: one to announce our dates, a second to publish our lineup and open registration, and a third to share our schedule with attendees.
While this gave us a great excuse to collaborate with some exceptionally talented designers, it was also wildly inefficient to build a website every time we had something new to share.
We figured it wouldn’t take much to wrap a flexible design system around a simple CMS, something we could feed new announcements, lineups, and schedules into, while still leaving space for us to express the unique and vibrant visual identity of each festival year.
Today, over 10 years later, and almost two full years after we retired the festival for good, we’re finally launching that website. Named after what we thought would be a throwaway title for a short-lived GitHub repo, allow us to introduce [**XOXO Explore**](https://xoxofest.com/).
[](https://xoxofest.com/)
## XOXO Explore
We hope you’ll take the time to scroll around and notice all the little details and considerations, but let us point you in the direction of some highlights.
Each festival year now has its own index, featuring the complete lineup of every speaker, performer, artist, and project from that year, along with a detailed (and accurate!) schedule with descriptions, dates, times, and venues meticulously imported from our print attendee guide. Our recap video and conference talk videos are also prominently featured, as well as credits for each year’s patrons (thank you forever!), and, last but not least, links to a restored archive of every previous announcement, lineup, and schedule mini-site.
Our [talk videos](https://xoxofest.com/videos/) finally have a proper home on the XOXO website, filterable by year and topic, with each video page now including a talk description, relevant tags, and links to other related videos from our full archive of conference talks.
[](https://xoxofest.com/videos/)
Our [Guide](https://xoxofest.com/guide/) and [Blog](https://xoxofest.com/blog/) have also been preserved, including the most recent versions of our [Code of Conduct](https://xoxofest.com/guide/conduct/), [Inclusion](https://xoxofest.com/guide/inclusion/), [Accessibility](https://xoxofest.com/guide/accessibility/), and [COVID](https://xoxofest.com/guide/covid/) policies, which remain available to use under a permissive Creative Commons license, and which we hope will continue to inspire other thoughtfully produced events well into the future.
And, for the first time ever (!) on an XOXO website, we now have an actual [About](https://xoxofest.com/about/) page, where we’ve attempted to explain what XOXO actually was, documenting the 12-year history of the festival and its related projects, and featuring a bunch of our favorite quotes from press and attendees over the year
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