A Robust Web Platform Handles Paula Deen’s Wide-ranging Business

In 2017, we partnered with Paula Deen Ventures to create a new platform to house all Paula’s content. The Paula Deen marketing team needed an easy to update, robust website to handle every aspect of Paula’s business: recipes, videos, blogs, events, and stores. With the architecture, design, migration, and build complete, the Paula Deen marketing team easily manages the site, dynamically displaying content as it becomes available.

Standard WordPress templating with a MySQL backend easily handles Paula’s large library of content types and the connections between them. ElasticSearch not only enables site-wide search and an ingredient specific recipe search, but it also links related content and filters. The React JavaScript framework enhances interactive user experience through sharing, comments, and filterable content.

The Paula Deen website generates revenue through a combination of paid subscription, in-page ads, and pre-roll video ads. The site is hosted on an AWS Load Balancer with CloudFlare CDN using W3 Total Cache and Memcache. The site averages around 30k unique visitors a day, with intermittent peaks around 60k users.