The situation
Kryptografen is a Norwegian crypto news site with product reviews and guides. VPNguiden tests and compares VPN services for Norwegian readers. Both live on search, and both depend on the same few things: pages that load quickly, editors who can publish without waiting, and a clear rule for which visitors get in. Search engines and legitimate AI crawlers should. Junk bots should not.
Over the years each site had collected its own custom code, plugins and server settings. Nobody had looked at all of it together, and it showed in slow editing, odd errors and pages that sometimes failed to load.
Where we started
In December 2021 the owner asked for help fixing the crypto site. That turned into debugging, then a second site in 2023, and since 2025 a standing job of upgrades and audits for both. The brief was always the same in spirit: go through everything the sites had grown, and make it work properly.
What we did
- Custom code, reviewed and rewritten. We went through the custom code and templates, fixed what threw errors and removed what the sites did not use.
- Editing that keeps up. The editor was slow to load categories and images. We cut what loads during editing so writers are not left waiting.
- Caching and a CDN. Page caching, an object cache on Redis and CDN delivery, set up to work together.
- A tuned server. PHP workers, memory and upload limits set for how the sites are actually used.
- Cloudflare in front. DNS, firewall rules and rate limits, with bot protection that lets search engines and legitimate AI crawlers through.
- Clean redirects. One address per page, and the old domain redirected to the new one.
- Plugin housekeeping. Abandoned and duplicate plugins removed, and the rest kept current.
- Audits with a written report. Each round of work ends with what was found, what changed and what to do next.
Plugins behind it
WP Rocket for caching and CDN, Redis for the object cache, Cloudflare for DNS and protection, Yoast SEO News for news publishing, ACF Pro for custom fields, Pretty Links for outbound links, SearchWP Live Ajax Search and Mega Menu for navigation, and GN Publisher for the news feed.
What it makes possible
Two publishing sites that can be edited without a wait, found by the crawlers that matter, and looked after by a team that already knows how every part fits.