Project Title: New Content-Rich Cruise Booking Website on Drupal with Focus on SEO and Performance

The Challenge

The Customer is a successful provider of integrated media for the travel industry, which specializes in cruises. As part of their business growth and expansion, the Customer saw the need for a game-changing digital channel for cruise – one that would give users one place to explore, share, plan and book their cruise trip. They seized this opportunity to leverage rich content, multimedia and editorial, along with social media to provide a single online destination for everything cruise-related.

Many challenges stood in the way of the new site development:

• The client had to make a mid-project vendor change 
  
• The go-live timeline was very intensive
  
• The project and application goals pressed the boundaries of the Drupal technology:
  • The site has 50,000 Drupal nodes of 20+ different content types
    
  • The data schema is very complex due to numerous relationships
    
  • Multiple Drupal modifications were required to comply with modern HTML5 UI
• To support booking, the application must be updated with cruise-related data (pricing and availability) on a regular basis

The Solution

EPAM started on the project already in-flight, and worked closely with the Customer for quick work transition and focus on delivery. The solution was heavily based on Drupal content management, and EPAM had to configure multiple Drupal add-ons to support the site.

Also, EPAM redesigned the data schema with concentration on performance.  The data schema was complex in terms of business design, but technically efficient for supporting content, cruise booking, and an automated nightly importer to move thousands of prices into Drupal’s data structure.

Performance was also a focus beyond just the data schema, and a multi-level caching solution was used to achieve fast response times. Rounding out the solution, the team have delivered an ad management capability, integration into several social sites, and SEO optimization. The resulting website is compatible with multiple browsers and devices through the use of HTML5.

As part of the project, EPAM provided multiple fixes to various Drupal modules and committed them to the Drupal community. Some examples:

• Views comprising the UI majority
  
• Feeds for data importing
  
• CDN to comply with a widely-used US hosting provider
  
• Tagging for interconnecting elements

Technologies and Tools

• Drupal 7 and multiple third-party modules
  
• HTML5
  
• OpenX for ad handling and management
  
• Automated XML importer in PHP running from Linux Shell
  
• Clustered Apache web-servers with PHP and Memcached
  
• Master-Slave MySQL setup with automated backups
  
• CI via Jenkins
  
• Social APIs of Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter
  
• MailChimp for sending and tracking email campaigns

The Results

The new website is one of the most complex Drupal websites developed with the following features:

• Flat design that showcases rich media, inviting users to explore
  
• Editorial content that promotes the Customer’s expertise in cruise
  
• Powerful SEO optimization
  
• Context-based Ads and Coupons 
  
• Social shares and recommendations
  
• < 1 sec webpage generation times

The Customer was able to launch their new business model behind a well-constructed, maintainable and performing site.

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