WebCitz started working with this client in 2022
- Client: American Theatre Guild
- Platform: WordPress
- Industry: Entertainment / Recreation
- Services: Maintenance / Support, Web Hosting
The Challenge
The American Theatre Guild manages a massive, multi-city network of Broadway performances and theatrical events. When they partnered with WebCitz, they were struggling with a legacy WordPress site built by a previous developer that was technically unstable and poorly optimized. The site featured a massive database several gigabytes in size and utilized complex rewrite rules to funnel traffic from various regional landing pages to specific performance pages. The client needed a partner capable of keeping this resource-heavy site online during high-traffic ticket releases and fixing deep-seated theme and server-level errors.
The WebCitz Solution
WebCitz stepped in as the primary technical and hosting partner, moving the site into a high-performance environment and providing advanced engineering support:
- Enterprise-Grade Managed Hosting: To handle the site’s massive database and traffic surges, we deployed a custom hosting solution with incredible amounts of virtual CPUs and memory. This infrastructure was specifically tuned to prevent crashes during peak performance and ticket sale periods.
- Complex Debugging & Theme Repair: We inherited a theme from a different developer that contained numerous bugs. Our team systematically audited the code, resolving theme conflicts and improving the overall stability of the WordPress frontend.
- Rewrite Rule Optimization: One of the most critical tasks was debugging and maintaining complex URL rewrite rules. These rules ensured that traffic from dozens of regional sites and landing pages correctly funneled users to the specific city-based performance and ticketing pages without breaking the user journey.
- Database & Speed Optimization: Managing a multi-gigabyte database requires specialized care. We performed routine database maintenance and performance tuning to improve site speed and ensure that the backend remained responsive despite its massive scale.
The Result
For three years, WebCitz provided the technical “heavy lifting” required to keep the American Theatre Guild’s digital presence functional and fast. By providing an enterprise-level hosting environment and solving complex development issues that others could not, we ensured the Guild could focus on bringing Broadway to cities across the country without worrying about their website failing under the pressure of its own success.
