SPIDER'S WEB IS PREPARED
FOR EVERY TRAFFIC SPIKE

SPIDER'S WEB CASE STUDY

Spider’s Web is one of the most popular Polish blogs dedicated to new technologies. It provides a variety of content by sharing its opinions and analyses with readers. In the age of social media and the viral spreading of content, a popular blog must be ready to withstand a surge in web traffic at any time. Scalable and performant website hosting is paramount to earn a loyal audience and stay in the game.

CHALLENGE

Initially, Spider's Web was hosted on a shared server and then moved the website to a dedicated server. Despite the upgrade, the performance and reliability of the infrastructure left a lot to be desired. The main problem was the frequent interruptions in the website's availability.

Blogs, as well as other media, are characterized by significant fluctuations in traffic and huge spikes caused by particularly popular articles. This problem is intensified by social media. Popular posts create a snowball effect - the more people share the link, the more of their followers enter the site and share the link with other people.

To attract more readers it is important that the website works properly and deals with traffic. Unfortunately, Spider's Web infrastructure was never optimized to support sudden peaks. Very often the loaded server "crashed" and remained unavailable for a long time. Support and customer service were also disappointing.

It is therefore important that at such moments the website works properly and deals with traffic that will help attract more readers. Unfortunately, Spider's Web infrastructure was never optimized to support sudden peaks. Very often the loaded server "crashed" and remained unavailable for a long time. Support and customer service were also disappointing, at a low level. "Despite repeated complaints from our side the hosting provider failed to prevent further incidents, and deliver on the SLA. Even if the server was back on, it would crash again after 5 minutes and stay down for an hour" – complains Przemysław Pająk, editor-in-chief of Spider's Web

The loss of traffic was indeed a loss of revenue from ads that could not be displayed to users. Deficiencies in the infrastructure can also damage the reputation. Over the years, Spider's Web has earned the trust of readers and the renown of a serious publisher, and as such, it could not afford any further problems with hosting. Changing the infrastructure to one that will ensure a trouble-free operation of the website was necessary for its further development.

SOLUTION

As a well-informed editorial office, writing about new technologies, the Spider's Web team knew about Oktawave even before the official launch of the service. "I followed the information about the project with interest. I knew it would be a fully scalable real cloud platform" – recalls Przemysław.

Before the final decision to migrate the website was made, the Oktawave team proposed the optimal specs of the infrastructure, its configuration, and how to carry out the entire process to make it as smooth as possible. The editors decided on a configuration consisting of two virtual machines (OCI) and a private network (OPN) that enables the creation of isolated zones. Thanks to that, for example, the instances responsible for database service cannot be accessed from the public network.

The next stage was the website migration. It started with collecting information about the existing hosting configuration. Based on the collected data, the environment was prepared on the Oktawave platform. Then it was tested to ensure its proper functioning. In the end, the website was moved and tested again.

The whole process went without any problems. To increase the speed of Spider's Web the Oktawave team has configured extra tools and services, including the Varnish accelerator and Hyper Cache plugin. A much more efficient platform allowed the restart of Live Blog, which was impossible in the previous hosting. The entire moving process was supported by Oktawave administrators, who helped in the configuration of the environment and the correct transfer of the website to the new architecture.

BUSINESS BENEFITS

After several months of using Oktawave, Przemysław Pająk confirmed that his website works much better. Finally, the previous problems with server performance have ceased to occur and the website can easily accept almost any number of users.

From the beginning, scalability was the most important for us. Oktawave is doing great in this matter, the sharp increases in visits no longer cause us concerns about the efficiency of the infrastructure.

Przemysław Pająk, editor-in-chief of Spider's Web

Przemysław is also very satisfied with the support and quality of customer service, incomparably better than with the previous supplier. His team has a special emergency number and has direct contact with Spider's Web administrator at Oktawave.

While working with the previous hosting provider, the editorial office very often wasted time talking to a random customer service employee about a situation that he had no idea about. At Oktawave, they have a dedicated support person who allows handling all matters much more efficiently. Response times have also dropped from several hours to several minutes.

Oktawave infrastructure turned out to be a good choice, considering its stability, speed and scalability. We have finally gained a great hosting, enabling further rapid development of Spider's Web

Przemysław Pająk, editor-in-chief of Spider's Web