MANAGED HOSTING FOR WORDPRESS
Travel Website Becomes Top Traffic Destination for Frequent Fliers
BoardingArea.com gives millions of daily readers fast access to some of the best travel content on the web, powered by WP Engine and next-gen infrastructure from Google Cloud.
Site:
Industry:
Media & Publishing
“If I call WP Engine and say, ‘I’ve got a problem,’ they’re going to say, ‘We’ll figure this out together.’ That’s a partnership.”
— Randy Petersen, Founder, BoardingArea.com
125+
Articles published per day on average
500,000+
Average daily readers
115
Active WordPress® installs powering BoardingArea
The Client
BoardingArea is a network of popular business travel and frequent flyer websites producing content sought by millions of global readers every day.
Founded more than 25 years ago, BoardingArea’s websites have provided news, information, and advice for every type of traveler. The publication aims to provide frequent travelers with the information they need to make the most of every trip.
The Challenge
Scale a growing WordPress network with faster, more secure, and more reliable infrastructure. Manage traffic spikes without downtime and reduce disruptions from plugin conflicts and unsupported themes across more than 100 WordPress installs. Reduce time spent resolving server-side performance issues.
The Solution
WP Engine’s Managed Hosting for WordPress, along with specialized tools like Smart Plugin Manager, has eliminated the complications associated with self-hosting, allowing BoardingArea to spend less time tackling performance and server optimizations and more time supporting a globally distributed cohort of content creators.
The Results
BoardingArea has been connecting travelers with the insights, tips, and strategies they need to maximize travel rewards and points since 2008. The company went through a few technological changes over the years before finding WP Engine.
The first big move was migrating its entire network to WordPress, which helped streamline a number of disparate processes, but there were still some lingering issues as the team tried to scale up its operations. “One of the big mistakes we made early on was thinking we could host WordPress ourselves,” said BoardingArea Founder Randy Petersen.
“So we started with our own server in-house, which really kept us up at night. Then we hired a webmaster, which went okay for a while, but we quickly fell behind the technological curve.”
Petersen recalls one incident as the catalyst that sent him searching for a better solution.
“We had our webmaster, who did a really good job, and he was due to go on vacation. I went through the checklist, making sure everything's solid so we didn’t have to call him while he was out,” Petersen said.
“So off he went on vacation, and literally hours after he left, one of the blogs went down. I didn't know how to get it back up. Nobody else on the staff did either, and our in-house guy was unreachable because he was backpacking!”
BoardingArea fully migrated operations to WP Engine’s Managed Hosting for WordPress in 2015, leveraging our technology to scale its publishing network while eliminating the costly inefficiencies of self-hosted infrastructure. The improvements in speed, reliability, and dedicated WordPress support have allowed the business to focus on what it does best: maintaining a global community of bloggers while delivering content to hundreds of thousands of daily readers.
BoardingArea’s readership has grown from 318 readers on its first day to more than half a million per day on average, with spikes reaching upwards of 1.4 million readers in a single day. With WP Engine, the network can handle this level of traffic without disruption.
As Petersen put it, “For our readers, speed is king; content is king. I take care of content. WP Engine takes care of speed.” Instead of worrying about bandwidth or outages, BoardingArea’s team can now confidently deliver content around the clock to readers in more than 230 countries.
The platform has also eliminated one of BoardingArea’s most significant historical pain points: traffic surges that once overwhelmed servers and knocked sites offline. “We might have 200,000 readers one day and somehow have 1.5 million the next day. Well, how do you handle that bandwidth? Back in the day, readers simply couldn’t get on the site,” said Petersen. “With WP Engine, I don’t worry about that anymore.”
WP Engine has also solved another source of disruption—plugin conflicts—through Smart Plugin Manager. With nearly 1,000 plugins running across 115 unique WordPress installs, updates required up to 20 hours of manual troubleshooting whenever something went wrong.
“Before WP Engine, we would spend 10, 15, 20 hours trying to figure out which plugin wasn’t playing well with others,” Petersen said. “With Smart Plugin Manager, I don’t have to worry about things like that.”
Theme support has produced similar benefits, saving BoardingArea an estimated 40–60 hours per month in maintenance time. “That’s valuable time. When trying to grow a business, your time shouldn’t be spent manipulating a theme. We’ve recaptured those hours and put them into growth instead.”
Perhaps the most meaningful impact has been found in the freedom to focus on readers and contributors rather than server-side performance issues. Petersen sums up the relationship simply: “WP Engine is my wingman. It allows us to manage bloggers without worrying about technology. They say, ‘You go out and grow your business, we’ll take care of everything else.’”
By partnering with WP Engine, BoardingArea has swapped hosting headaches for a powerful, performant foundation for future growth. With speed, security, and scalability built in, specialized tools like Smart Plugin Manager, and 24/7/365 support, BoardingArea can support a thriving global network of bloggers and continue expanding its reach worldwide.
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