Dan Silver, Deputy Head of Publishing at The Sun, was at the helm of the team that created #SunNation - The Sun’s experimental politics site. Here, he examines its success, his favourite pieces of content and the impact it had on what proved to be one of the most extraordinary elections in recent memory.

Subtitled ‘Politics without the boring bits’, #SunNation was intended to give us a ‘loud and lairy’ digital presence in the run up to polling day. And from quizzes like ‘How Katie Hopkins are you?’ to games such as ‘Can you parallel park Harriet Harman’s Pink Bus?’, it’s fair to say we achieved our aim.

It all came together incredibly quickly. Modern media companies often talk about the need to be nimble and agile in the digital space; the first working(ish) prototype for #SunNation was built from scratch barely three weeks after The Sun’s Managing Editor, Stig Abell, and I first discussed the concept. The final site went live a fortnight later.

They say a week is a long time in politics but it’s not in web development, and in hindsight, we would probably have benefitted from a little more time and forward planning. However, I’m still incredibly proud of what the team managed to achieve in such a short period.

It’s worth mentioning that the team behind #SunNation was as experimental as the site’s content. In contrast to the complicated Content and Publishing operations that produce the rest of the The Sun’s digital products, I put together a small, self-contained unit comprising talented individuals from disparate parts of the newsroom.

Tim Gatt (Website Editor) and James Manning (Head of Social Media) were in charge; Amy Jones and Emer Martin were recruited from the Features and News desks respectively; bright young things Alain Tolhurst, Tom Witherow and Georgina Stubbs were hired on short-term contracts; and front- and back-end developers Pete Hurst and John Denton were brought on board to perform technical wizardry.

The result was a melting pot of skills and experience that allowed #SunNation to produce some of the most engaging and innovative digital coverage of the General Election. And so, in keeping with house listicle style, here’s my five favourite pieces of #SunNation content:

1) Can you parallel park Harriet Harman’s Pink Bus?

Topical games were a central part of my vision for #SunNation and this first one is still my favourite. Modelled on the early Grand Theft Auto games, it was funny, political and actually quite addictive to play. It also earned me a guest spot on the BBC’s Daily Politics Show and a live grilling from Andrew Neil - my personal highlight of the whole campaign.

2) How Katie Hopkins are you?

Personality quizzes really helped establish #SunNation on social media, starting with the political parties (‘How Ukip are you?’ etc) but eventually broadening out into divisive individuals. They don’t come much more divisive than Sun columnist Katie and of the 40,000 people who played this quiz, many were detractors hoping to get 0%.

3) Can you guess who our Page 3 girls are voting for?

The second most popular piece of content published on #SunNation, this quiz was a great lesson in how to make content socially shareable. The feature started life as a straight Q&A explaining how some of the models were intending to vote but I thought there was a great opportunity to make it interactive instead.

4) Al Murray sues Nigel Farage

There was more to #SunNation than games and quizzes, mind. We also carried the cream of the paper’s political stories and opinion, and often broke exclusives too. This Al Murray tale, supplied by the Features desk, was a great example of the latter and really helped put #SunNation on political news map.

5) I Clegg Your Pardon?

Jamie East’s video team produced a steady stream of brilliant content for #SunNation, starting with the world exclusive Day in the life of David Cameron, and taking in such varied delights as Musical Manifestos, Gyles Brandreth rapping and a psychic sturgeon called Nicola predicting the election result (yes, really). The pick for me was this hilarious clip featuring a demob happy Nick Clegg reading out tweets in which people had been really mean about him. The prospect of watching the then Deputy Prime Minister talk about his ‘scrotal neck skin’ proved phenomenally popular, and the clip has been watched over 340,000 times to date.