When you open a ScreenRant movie hub, tap a CarBuzz model-year card, or check a GameRant title for a day-one patch, you’re stepping into something much denser than an ordinary article. Those pages are miniature web apps, stitched together from half a dozen data feeds, a home-grown CMS module, and a thin layer of editorial polish. Since August 2024, Valnet, the publisher behind all aforementioned three brands, has been quietly standardising that machinery so every brand can spin up an authoritative “database” in weeks, not years. Here’s how it works under the hood, why it matters for readers, and where the engine is headed next.
Vendor Feeds to Fan-Ready Hubs
The process always begins with a solid foundation of structured data. For ScreenRant’s film and TV index, that foundation is WatchMode; for CarBuzz it’s JD Power; for GameRant it’s Steam. Those services supply the basics: release dates, runtimes, horsepower, developer, photos. But data alone isn’t a page. Valnet’s Lead Functional Analyst, Fabio Del Greco, meets with the different brands to decide the extra details that make a hub genuinely useful to their readers: Where can I stream this tonight? Do the 2020 and 2021 Miata share the same curb weight (and what’s the difference between trims)? Who are the publishers behind this game that I adore?
“CarBuzz was by far the most challenging database to onboard as it already had a substantial database, not to mention strong authority, in place,” Del Greco said. “We essentially had to build the database twice: first, to create an interim version aligned with our long-term vision, and later, to fully realize what we had originally envisioned.”
Every decision becomes a new column in Valnet’s shared schema. For ScreenRant, that meant adding season-by-season Database pages and user reviews. For CarBuzz, the must-have was a gallery that automatically pairs interior and exterior shots with each year of a model. GameRant’s 2.0 relaunch later this summer will introduce exciting new features. The rule is simple: if a fact answers a question readers routinely Google, it belongs on the page, no matter which brand owns it.
Throughout the process, maintaining the quality and continuity of content for CarBuzz’s readership was paramount. We thrive on these kinds of challenges at Valnet and it’s what keeps every day interesting.
–Fabio Del Greco, Valnet’s Lead Functional Analyst
Inside Valnet’s Flexible Stack
All that information lands inside Emaki, Valnet’s proprietary CMS. Once a tag exists, our authors are able to inject a mini “display card” in any article. Open a CarBuzz comparison of best AWD wagons and you’ll automatically see the spec sheet for every model referenced; no writer has to copy or paste a shortcode. Because the cards are server-rendered, the finished page weighs under 200 kilobytes, dramatically faster than client-side JavaScript mash-ups.
This frictionless experience is the product of years of deliberate design. “When Valnet decided five years ago to move away from WordPress and build our own CMS,” explains Del Greco, “we intentionally structured everything to be reusable across all our brands. At first, the benefits weren’t obvious, it often felt like we were creating extra hurdles for ourselves. But by consistently designing with future possibilities in mind, not just present needs, we laid the groundwork to scale databases smoothly.”
When Valnet decided five years ago to move away from WordPress and build our own CMS, we intentionally structured everything to be reusable across all our brands.
That “build infrastructure first, then refine” mindset shapes everything from internal tooling to author workflows. Portfolio Manager Mars Monnier summed it up best: “Most database sites look old school—ship it fast, beautify later.” That bias for speed lets Valnet launch verticals at a tempo that would have been hard to conceive two years ago. The result: a CMS that feels bespoke to each brand, but is powered by a flexible core built for the network as a whole.
What’s Next
For readers, the payoff is obvious: instant context, fewer clicks, and no need to bounce over to IMDb or Edmunds. For Valnet, the benefits are deeper. First, structured data satisfies Google. Because every ScreenRant hub outputs proper Schema.org markup, titles routinely appear in the “rich result” carousel, which is free real estate in search.
The most intriguing upside, however, is how reusable the infrastructure has become. With the underlying importer scripts and the generic database pages, launching entirely new domains is largely a matter of picking a vendor feed and writing the field definitions. That is precisely what’s happening this year:
- Network & FAST TV schedules will land on ScreenRant first. Roughly 370 channels will refresh every hour through a pro licence to the TVMedia API. Show titles will link back into the existing movie and TV hubs, knitting linear schedules and streaming availability together.
- Aviation DB follows on Simple Flying: 770 aircraft variants, 735 active airlines and the 500 airports that handle 95 percent of global passenger traffic. Cirium and FlightAware feeds supply fleet numbers and on-time stats; open-source OurAirports fills gaps.
- Sports DB comes next on GMS. The first drop covers the English Premier League, the Champions League, MLS and major CONCACAF divisions, with 1,100 teams and about 15,000 active players. Calls from Sports.io bring in live scores and head-shots, fantasy-style performance ratings are pencilled in for phase two.
Crucially, each of those launches is penciled in as a three-week sprint. All metadata will be gathered, deduplicated and scored by the end of May. Front-end scaffolding then rolls out one vertical at a time, carving relentlessly toward an August finish line.
The long-term vision is ambitious but clear-eyed: any topic Valnet’s writers reference should resolve to a live, structured hub that updates itself. When an article asks “Where can I watch tonight’s Lakers game?” the answer will come from the same engine that notes Blade Runner’s theatrical aspect ratio. And because the workhorse underneath never changes, every new launch becomes easier than the last. For a reader, that future will feel effortless. For the engineers and tag editors wiring it together, it’s an elegant testimony to a simple principle: do the hard work once, then let the data flow everywhere.