High performance of a website with 300,000 searchable articles
Historical knowledge, future-proof technology
The Dutch Journal of Medicine (NTvG) relies on digital agency SWIS and TrueFullstaq for a powerful Drupal 9 website that makes 300,000 medical scientific articles searchable and can handle 5000 requests per minute. Together, the partners ensure a seamless migration and optimal digital accessibility.
Drupal upgrade as a catalyst for digital ambitions
The NTvG distributes medical knowledge among physicians and interprets recent developments in medical science. The website contains 300,000 searchable articles, some dating back to 1857.
The old website ran on Drupal 7, which was approaching end-of-life (EOL). NTvG seized this necessary upgrade to Drupal 9 as an opportunity to work with digital agency SWIS on a renewed digital presence. While the new website was being developed, the old website had to remain operational. The new website has been online since December 2021.
"The upgrade meant a completely new structure for the website, a complete migration," says Björn Brala, Technical Director at SWIS. "Drupal 9 offers significant advantages, including more possibilities for management and accessing content via APIs."
"To realize (future) online ambitions, a migration to a future-proof data model in Drupal 9 is fundamental," adds Floris Lovink, Digital Strategist at SWIS.
Infrastructure on managed private cloud
SWIS has been a TrueFullstaq customer for more than ten years. "SWIS prioritizes performance, security, and scalability for all its clients. That's one of the reasons for choosing a private cloud," says Hylke de Jong, Senior Linux Engineer at TrueFullstaq. We keep this environment up-to-date with the right software versions. We ensure that each component is distributed optimally on the platform for maximum scalability."
"NTvG's previous web host left much to be desired regarding availability. We moved that website to our private cloud at TrueFullstaq," says Björn. "Many services at the old host weren't maintained as they should have been. Together with TrueFullstaq, we looked at how we could run that on our platform."
As a publisher, NTvG deals with a landscape of collaborating services, including specialized software for peer review and publication of articles in both print and online. These connections also needed to be supported.
Björn: "With TrueFullstaq's collaboration and services, we could keep the old website running while building the new one. Supporting that for two years would have been much more difficult if we hadn't done it together with TrueFullstaq."
Challenges: 5000 requests per minute
"For such a big database, that means a lot of requests. The onsite search engine must offer both good results and be fast. The new website needs to handle 5000 requests per minute," says Björn. "We ensure this with the application landscape and the setup of the hosting environment. We work with TrueFullstaq using Varnish cache and Redis as an extra layer to reduce database load."
TrueFullstaq and SWIS worked on a clustered environment. "We proposed application-specific components that improve performance. A virtualized database wasn't good enough for the requirements, so we set up a standalone database server with MySQL and a high availability cluster," says Hylke. "We also provided a staging environment that reliably reflects production."
Custom work and configurations
SWIS implemented Apache Solr, a search platform necessary for a website with so many articles. "Together with TrueFullstaq, we customized Solr for NTvG to enable fast and efficient searching. We chose Solr because of its reliability and stability," says Floris.
Ready for digital-first strategy
"During the migration, we examined all data and content. The new structure enables NTvG to innovate," says Floris. "It's now much easier for editors to flexibly request and cluster content."
NTvG wants to transition from print-first to digital-first in the coming years. The organization can now respond much better to this with the new website on solid hosting, ready for all requests and readers.
