Wheels24 just relaunched their site last night. So why is it hot? You might not like the design or the content but the magic here is that it is the first 24.com site to be launched on the new content management system (CMS) that we built in-house. That’s the sexy part.

Major systems like CMS’s that can handle our editorial processes and scale to our load are hardcore. Many people are boisterous about writing a CMS but writing one for a small site and writing a system to power a multitude of content sites with over 2.5 million domestic visitors is another kettle of cows and not for the faint-hearted. But writing an unstable CMS can put your entire business at risk - so it’s not small potatoes!

Matt Buckland highlights some of the issues in his post about technology choices

I asked our head 24.com architect geek (Mike Needham) for three lines on why he thinks it’s so hot and I got a little more than 3 lines : ) …..

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The new CMS is a hybrid of .Net, AJAX and Linux based technology. It’s a result of 6 months worth of development with a core team of .Net/Web developers (a total of 5.5 person years of dev work)

Some key technical features for the geeks out there:

• An advanced pure AJAX based administration tool connecting to C# service layer running over Microsoft SQL in a master slave configuration. The Ajax admin tools means we can administer our CMS from anywhere in the world from machines running various browsers and operating systems. With the great functionality that an AJAX interface affords us the editors are able to move articles around the CMS with technologies like drag and drop, multi-tabbed interfaces etc.
• The front end site that the customers connect to is purely written in .Net and also makes use of AJAX technology to dynamically populate menus etc
• We’ve applied some pretty advanced URL re-writing techniques to support all legacy format URL’s from previous CMS systems going back as far as 1999
• The search is powered by our in house search engine which is some of the leading technology in the world right now.
• We’ve also improved our SEO relevance with the inclusion of Title and date in our new URL format.
• Our caching system is one of the more complex architectural pieces of the new CMS. We run 6 layers of caching which are expired in real-time off events from the admin system. So the latency in getting new content to the site from the moment of publishing could be brought down to near real time where required (thi is configured on a per widget basis). The caching is actually so extensive that most parts of the system can be taken down for maintenance without stopping the site. This is largely thanks to memcache - our middle tier distributed cache (the same one Facebook uses).
• In terms of scale the system is only limited by physical servers. All layers scale out (even the database layer which can be load balanced).
• We run compression across all pages which puts our home page down to sizes of +-22k (original content sitting at +-90k)
• Wheels24 falls in to one of the heavy trafficked sites in the country. With the switch over we are barely putting our servers above 2% CPU. No doubt we will come across the odd glitch over the next week or so but so far so good. Hope you all find it responsive and stable.”

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So WELL DONE to the CMS Crew! They did a shithot job on a hardcore piece of tech.

Connected South Africans spend 27 percent of their time on websites created by 24.com.

This equates to slightly more than one in every four minutes online – at least 16 percent more than any other local digital publisher and double that of the largest digital publisher in the UK.

Read the report here

Got this mail from Vinny Lingham this morn….
“I have absolute pleasure in announcing that Synthasite has finalised a Series A investment round of $5m from Columbus Venture Capital - the investment arm of the Richemont Group (Johannesburg Stock Exchange & Swiss listed company).

Please find the press release attached and thanks to everyone for their support during our startup phase this year - especially all the input, which was greatly appreciated. ”

I find it heart-warming to see that SA Internet start-ups are being recognized globally.

Well done.

Press release here >>synthasite-series-a.pdf

My marketing team at 24.com are going to think that I am naughty to scoop our own press release but I could not resist. It is such a proud moment. NEWS24.com last week became the FIRST EVER South African website to achieve 1 000 000 South African unique browsers in a calendar month.

After over 7 years in the online media to be a part of such an awesome moment is a memorable achievement I will cherish.

Thank you to my team at News24.

I’m glad this was my first blog post on elanlohmann.com. I hope that you will find my commentary useful.