Migrate, Fix and Rebuild
This project included a full hosting migration, performance-focused WordPress rebuild, and deep advertising system integration to support millions of daily visitors and transform site traffic into a stable long-term revenue stream.
It’s Gone Viral (igvofficial.com) experienced rapid and unexpected growth, expanding from a few hundred thousand daily visitors to millions in a relatively short period of time.
Unfortunately, their existing infrastructure was never designed to handle this level of traffic. The platform relied heavily on outdated WordPress versions, unsupported PHP environments, an off-the-shelf theme, and an increasingly fragile collection of plugins and legacy code.
When Make Do were brought into the project, the site was suffering from severe instability and repeated downtime, often failing three to five times per day. The immediate priority was to stabilise the platform and prevent outages while protecting the growing business behind it.
Review, Audit and Switch Hosting
Our first step was a complete hosting and infrastructure review. We migrated the site onto a custom-configured server environment specifically designed around the demands of a high-traffic publishing platform. This immediately transformed stability, taking the website from multiple daily outages to effectively zero downtime, even while maintaining the legacy build during the transition period.
Once stability had been restored, we worked closely with the client over a period of roughly ten months to progressively improve performance, optimise the codebase, and modernise the editorial workflow. At the same time, our engineering team began developing a brand-new custom WordPress theme built specifically around the needs of the business.
Redesign and Rebuild
The rebuild focused heavily on simplicity, speed, and scalability. We replaced the previous off-the-shelf setup with a leaner custom architecture and introduced Gutenberg block editing to provide a far more consistent and manageable publishing experience for the editorial team.
A critical part of the project involved integrating the site with the company’s advertising systems. Advertising revenue represented the core of the business model, so the new platform had to support flexible ad placement, campaign management, and ongoing optimisation without negatively impacting performance.
The successful integration of these systems became one of the most commercially important outcomes of the rebuild, directly supporting the company’s continued growth and profitability.
Ongoing Growth Support
Since launch, Make Do have continued to work with It’s Gone Viral on an ongoing basis through monthly support and SLA-style development work. During busy campaign periods and high-traffic events, our team remains closely involved to ensure the platform continues to operate reliably under pressure.
This project is a strong example of Make Do stepping into a failing and unstable WordPress environment, stabilising it rapidly, and then transforming it over time into a scalable, revenue-generating publishing platform capable of supporting millions of visitors every day.
