Running 600+ websites for a Swiss political party from one system.
Built and now maintain the platform behind Die Mitte's web presence: a custom WordPress multisite that lets the party run more than 600 websites across languages, domains and local chapters, all from a single place, wired into their CRM and kept online through the moments that matter.
Context
Who they are.
Die Mitte is one of Switzerland's main political parties, and a Swiss party is not one organisation with one website. It is a federal party, cantonal parties and local chapters, each wanting a presence of its own, in more than one language region. Wirz Branding delivered the design and the specification. We built the system underneath it.
The problem
What they walked in with.
The platform had to carry hundreds of interconnected websites across multiple languages and a separate domain per language, keep them in sync with the party's CRM based on where each chapter sits, and stay standing under the kind of traffic and hostile attention a national political party attracts. And it had to be operable by people who are not engineers.
Our approach
How we worked.
Built the system under the design
Wirz Branding delivered the design and specifications; we built the theme and the custom WordPress multisite it runs on. One platform, hundreds of sites, each with its own separated database.
Wired it into everything else
Custom plugins connect the multisite to the party's CRM and surrounding systems, synchronising on party location so members and content stay current across every site and every language.
Made it fast, and hard to knock over
Public pages are generated as static HTML out of the multisite, so nothing resource-intensive happens on a page view. A master/slave failover setup, separated databases and daily backups keep downtime to a minimum, alongside DDoS mitigation and hardening.
One switch for the whole estate
Privacy compliance and updates are managed centrally: change it once and it lands on every site. Since launch we've maintained, secured and kept developing the system.
Highlights
The interesting parts.
- Local chapters get a real website without their own budget, their own agency or their own rebuild. The system gives them one.
- Public pages are served as pre-generated static HTML, which makes them fast and leaves far less surface to attack.
- Privacy compliance and platform updates roll out across 600+ sites in one move instead of 600.
Stack
What we built it on.
Timeline
How it unfolded.
Build
Theme and custom WordPress multisite built to Wirz Branding's design and specification.
Integrate
Custom plugins connecting the platform to the CRM and the party's other systems, synchronised by location.
Resilience
Static HTML generation, failover across master and slave servers, separated databases, daily backups.
Ongoing
Maintenance, security and continued development of the platform as the party's needs change.
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