Äripäev: a rebuilt news site and custom CMS that is faster and costs several times less to run

The challenge

The old site was slow, expensive to run and rigid for the newsroom.

• Pages loaded slowly. Readers waited too long for articles and the front page to open, especially on mobile and during traffic peaks. For a news publisher, every extra second means lost readers.
• The infrastructure needed many servers. The site ran in the cloud and needed a large number of servers to handle the load. Hosting costs were out of proportion to the content volume and traffic.
• Front page changes required developers. Editors couldn’t change the layout of the front page or section pages themselves. A new block or a different order meant development work.
• The old code couldn’t support further development. The frontend was technically outdated. Building new features on the old foundation would have been slower and more expensive than starting fresh.

The solution

We rebuilt the frontend and gave the newsroom control over page layouts.

A custom CMS for the front page and landing pages

We developed a custom content management system that the newsroom uses to manage the front page and other landing pages. Pages are built from blocks: editors choose the blocks, set their order and decide which articles and podcasts each block displays.

This lets the newsroom react to the news cycle immediately. When big news breaks, the story is promoted on the front page within minutes, with no developer involved.

CMS capabilities:

• front page and landing pages built from blocks
• block reordering
• article and podcast selection per block
• changes go live immediately

Frontend rewritten from scratch

The entire aripaev.ee frontend was rebuilt. Pages are rendered on the server, and a cache serves repeated content without every request hitting the backend systems. This makes the site fast and cuts the server capacity required.

A dedicated search index powers search and fast content queries. The site is integrated with SSO and other business systems, so reader accounts and access work seamlessly.

What we built:

• new frontend with server-side rendering
• caching to reduce load
• technical SEO and structured data
• search built on a search index
• SSO and other system integrations

The results

The new site is faster, cheaper to run and more flexible for the newsroom. The project is ongoing and we continue to develop the platform.