New SilverStripe based website release
After months of efforts spent on trying to keep our previous site up to date, dealing with the technical aspects of the WordPress system it was based on, it was time to take a decision and switch to a SilverStripe based site.
If you remember few months ago, we released a video comparing WordPress and SilverStripe which might have been an eye opening factor leading to that decision.
"What were the issues?" You may ask.
Well, the translation module and the Avada template system didn't really like each other and some error messages were publicly appearing. We checked and double checked, nothing was outdated and only one language had that problem. So that's not good as would say Mr Peterson.
Another major issue was the growth of the RAM used by the system. On the front end it was fine, as we leverage the power of an efficient cache system and all the optimization available. Unfortunately on the back end, WordPress with a theme builder loaded of features using tons of HMTL tags, icons, CSS stylesheets, JavaScript and what not felt like starting an out of maintenance tractor.
Our server kept seeing peaks of CPU usage at every WP core update, and increasing the RAM of the database only partially helped. We were already at 2 Gb of RAM on a private database and still, the back end was slow and bulky. And all the ads and notifications were the cherry on the cake.
As we try to get the shortest load time of the planet, obviously an impossible task but the journey is what matters, we've decided to build the new version on our favorite CMS, SilverStripe. A bit more challenging as it's not a click-here-and-it-should-work-even-if-its-slow type of framework but it's supa dupa efficient. Load times of the back end went from 5 seconds to less than a second.
The front end loads now at the speed of light (it's an expression, our tests don't show 300.000 m/s yet) and our server feels like he's running well, finally able to breathe after leaving the backpack full of useless snippets of code in the locker room.
This new version of the site is a milestone in the development of Digitweaks, in which we defined and refined our identity and kept the fluff out the way. We hope you like that brand new iteration and see you in the next article!