Location: New York City, New York
Client: CultureSonar
Platform: WordPress (with LiteSpeed Optimization)
Services: Website Design & Redesign, WordPress Development, Mobile/Responsive Design, Performance Enhancement
Package: Custom Plan
Inwebify recently had the pleasure of working on the CultureSonar website redesign, where we stayed true to the original design scheme that was crucial to the owner. CultureSonar had an established presence, but its older WordPress site was facing some significant challenges that were affecting the user experience and backend functionality.
The main issues with the site included:
- Database Corruption: The site was suffering from database corruption, which caused errors across the board.
- Sluggish Site Speed: Page load times had deteriorated drastically, affecting the user experience.
- Admin Panel Performance: Authors were finding it incredibly difficult to connect due to the slow-loading admin panel.
- Cluttered Root Directory: The root directory was filled with leftover files and folders from outdated plugins, further complicating management.
To resolve these issues, we took the bold step of rebuilding the WordPress website from scratch for the CultureSonar website redesign, ensuring that the core design and user experience remained intact while addressing the underlying technical problems.
Challenges Faced
One of the most significant challenges we faced during the CultureSonar website redesign was the inability to export posts due to the database corruption. Not even the export plugins we tried could retrieve the data. We had to roll up our sleeves and take a more manual approach, working directly at the database level to move the necessary data. This involved migrating posts, postmeta, users, usermeta, comments, commentmeta, terms, termmeta, and taxonomy tables. The process was intricate and time-consuming, but we successfully transferred all the required data without loss.
Preserving SEO
An essential part of the CultureSonar website redesign was ensuring that the SEO efforts from the old website were preserved. We carefully imported the previous site’s SEO data into the newly redesigned website, ensuring that all meta tags, URLs, and structured data were kept intact. This was critical to avoid losing any of the SEO value and ranking that the client had built up over time. Our goal was to make sure that the new site was optimized for speed without compromising its established SEO foundation.
Building with Blocksy Pro, Elementor & Prime Slider
To create a visually appealing and highly functional site, we built the CultureSonar website redesign using a powerful combination of the Blocksy Pro theme, Elementor, and Prime Slider.
Blocksy Pro offered a lightweight, flexible, and customizable theme that perfectly matched the site’s requirements. We paired it with Elementor, a robust page builder, allowing us to craft a dynamic and responsive design with ease. To add an engaging and modern touch to the site, we integrated Prime Slider, delivering smooth and captivating slider presentations that enhance user interaction.
To further boost mobile performance, we implemented lazy loading for the slider’s background images. This optimization significantly reduced initial page load times, contributing to the impressive speed improvements.
This combination of Blocksy Pro, Elementor, and Prime Slider gave us the perfect balance of design freedom and performance optimization, allowing us to preserve the original design scheme while dramatically enhancing speed and functionality.
Project Gallery
Optimizing Site Speed
We didn’t just focus on the design; we also implemented a comprehensive strategy to optimize site performance for the CultureSonar website redesign. By leveraging our fast LiteSpeed web hosting, we ensured a solid foundation for speed. Additionally, we utilized the LSAPI PHP handler, which is known for its enhanced performance and speed over traditional PHP handlers.
To further optimize, we integrated Brotli for compression, ensuring that all static assets were compressed for faster load times without compromising quality. We also made full use of LSCache and Redis to enhance caching and database performance, along with enabling the site crawler to ensure faster delivery of content across all pages.
Another key factor was image optimization, which we provide for free as part of our services, ensuring that all images on the site were compressed and optimized for faster load times without sacrificing quality.
We also connected the site with our LiteSpeed CDN powered by QUIC.cloud, offering a blazing fast content delivery network that ensures even faster load times globally.
Outcome
After a thorough rebuild and optimization for the CultureSonar website redesign, we not only restored the functionality of the website but also made significant improvements in speed and performance. The mobile page speed score, which was initially a disappointing 47, shot up to an impressive 98. This represents a 109% improvement in mobile speed.
For desktop, the score was initially at 74, but after the rebuild, it reached a perfect score of 100—an increase of 35.1%.
Cultsonar: PageSpeed Before and After
Project Wrap Up
This project highlights Inwebify’s commitment to providing exceptional web design, development, and performance optimization services, ensuring that every project, no matter how complex, meets our high standards of functionality, usability, and speed. We’re proud to have helped CultureSonar achieve a faster, more reliable, and visually consistent website while preserving all prior SEO efforts.
Looking to have your WordPress website redesigned for true fast performance? Contact us here at Inwebify, and let us make your WordPress website a success!
