ArtNow
DevOps
I optimised ArtNow’s legacy PHP/Craft CMS site to handle high traffic and AI bot activity by implementing a custom caching layer, significantly improving performance and scalability.
ArtNow is New Zealand’s most comprehensive guide to the art scene: galleries, exhibitions, essays, walks, events. It’s a large site with a lot of traffic, and it was crashing roughly once a day when I came on board. The cause was a surge of AI training bots hitting every page in sequence and overwhelming the server. Real visitors were getting a slow, unreliable experience as a result.
What started as a routine hosting migration turned into something more interesting. Rather than recommend a costly rebuild of the existing Craft CMS site, I looked for a solution that solved the actual problem without unnecessary work or expense. I built a caching layer using Cloudflare and OpenResty that sits around the existing site without touching the original code. Cloudflare handles intelligent bot filtering at the edge; anything that gets through hits a cached response that never reaches the server. The site loads faster, the server stays stable, and hosting costs stay low because the origin server is handling a fraction of the traffic it used to.
I manage the hosting, maintain a staging environment for testing changes safely, and handle ongoing updates as they come up. Since taking over, there’s been zero downtime. I spent time upfront making sure the infrastructure was solid, and I think that’s usually the right call. The most useful thing I can do for a client is understand the problem clearly and find the most direct way through it.
Technologies
