De Hippe Vegetariër

Code Orange helps De Hippe Vegetariër migrate from WordPress

Overview

De Hippe Vegetariër is a leading online platform for vegetarian and vegan food lovers in the Netherlands. With thousands of recipes, restaurant reviews, and food trend articles, it has built a strong following. However, as the site grew, its legacy WordPress setup became increasingly inefficient, slowing down the website, hindering SEO performance, and making content management cumbersome. To future-proof the platform, De Hippe Vegetariër partnered with Code Orange to develop a high-performance, scalable, and SEO-optimized solution.

Opportunity: Overcoming performance challenges

The previous WordPress-based system presented several critical challenges:

 

  • Performance Bottlenecks: Slow load times and poor Core Web Vitals negatively impacted both user experience and search rankings.

  • SEO Limitations: Limited structured data capabilities restricted visibility in Google search results, rich snippets (recipes) and Google Discover.

  • Scalability Issues: Managing a large and growing content database led to backend inefficiencies, making updates and optimizations difficult.

  • High Maintenance Costs: Frequent technical issues and plugin dependencies required ongoing fixes, diverting focus from growth strategies.

Solution: A Fast, Scalable, and SEO-Optimized CMS

Code Orange implemented a custom-built CMS using Laravel Nova, designed specifically to optimize performance, scalability, and SEO for content-heavy websites. Key developments included:

  

  • Migration to Laravel Nova: A streamlined content management system built to handle extensive recipe databases and structured data efficiently.

  • Performance Optimization: Enhanced caching, image optimization, and codebase improvements significantly boosted speed and responsiveness.

  • Advanced Structured Data Integration: Schema.org markup was implemented across all recipes, reviews, and editorial content, improving search engine visibility and increasing the likelihood of rich snippets.

  • Scalability & Future-Proofing: The new system ensures seamless handling of thousands of indexed pages, allowing for future growth and content expansion.

  • User Experience Enhancements: A cleaner, more intuitive backend enabled editors to work more efficiently, reducing manual effort and improving content workflow.

Outcome: Faster, More Visible, and Easier to Manage

The migration to a custom Laravel Nova CMS delivered immediate and long-term benefits:

 

  • Stronger SEO Performance: Increased visibility in search results due to structured data enhancements and improved Core Web Vitals.

  • Significant Traffic Growth: Organic search traffic rebounded rapidly, surpassing previous benchmarks.

  • Better User Engagement: Faster load times and an improved site experience resulted in lower bounce rates and higher session durations.

  • Reduced Technical Maintenance: Eliminating WordPress plugin dependencies simplified backend management, freeing up resources for strategic growth initiatives.

AWS Services used

To ensure DHV’s new CMS was high-performing, scalable, and resilient, Code Orange leveraged key AWS services to build a modern cloud-based infrastructure.

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  • Amazon RDS
  • Implemented for efficient database management, enabling the CMS to handle millions of product updates daily while maintaining high availability and performance.
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  • Amazon ECS
  • Used to orchestrate and manage containerized workloads, ensuring smooth and scalable backend processing for product feeds and real-time data updates.
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  • Amazon CloudFront
  • Deployed to accelerate content delivery, reducing latency and improving page load speed for users in the Netherlands and Belgium, critical for SEO and Google Discover rankings.
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  • AWS Lambda
  • Used as a serverless CDN to efficiently distribute content and reduce backend load, ensuring optimal performance for high-traffic periods.
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  • AWS CodePipeline & CodeBuild
  • Integrated for CI/CD automation, enabling fast and consistent deployments while reducing manual intervention and maintenance efforts.
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  • AWS WAF
  • Implemented to protect against malicious traffic and spam bots, reducing database load by blocking automated requests that could degrade performance.
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  • Amazon ElastiCache
  • Used for application caching, improving response times and reducing database queries, ensuring a faster and more efficient user experience.
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  • Amazon CloudWatch
  • Provided real-time monitoring and alerting for infrastructure health, helping detect and resolve performance issues proactively.
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  • AWS EC2 Application Load Balancer
  • Ensured efficient traffic distribution across ECS containers, optimizing availability and performance.
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  • Amazon Route 53
  • Managed domain and DNS routing, ensuring reliable and fast access to the Fashionchick platform.
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  • AWS Secrets Manager
  • Secured sensitive information such as database credentials, API keys, and other configurations, improving security and compliance.
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  • Amazon GuardDuty
  • Continuously monitored and detected potential security threats, providing runtime threat detection to identify anomalies, unauthorized access attempts, and malicious activity in real time.

 

By leveraging these AWS services, DHV achieved a robust and scalable architecture capable of handling real-time product updates, improving website performance, and optimizing operational efficiency.

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