Python CMS Solutions (Plone) for State Forests

The Customer

The General Directorate of State Forests is a state-owned unit. Tens of years of perfection allowed it to base its operation on the self-funding principle. It is tasked with the preservation of Polish forests, which are a precious natural environment resource. It also enlarges national forest resources, enriches plant species composition and manages wild forest animals. It obtains good quality wood material and, at the same time, preserves forests.

The Need

Over time, more and more needs emerged, that were to be satisfied. The development and availability of the Internet caused an increase in the number of visits on the State Forests web page. Caring for its image, the unit needed to deploy a new graphic design, that would suit present-day users. The increase in the number of visits caused performance problems. Solutions were sought that would allow changing the appearance and improving the operation of the web page. Having considered various options, the modern Plone technology was selected, and data migration to the latest version was decided. There was a need for skilled programmers, capable of carrying out an important state unit operation.

The Solution

Without any doubts, the General Directorate of State Forests goes for professionalism. As a serious organization, it cannot afford any shortcomings. Therefore it chose the STX Next Python Experts company to complete the tasks related to improving the web page within the Python CMS Solutions (Plone) service. For migrating data to Plone 3, our programmers used our own custom script. As professionals, they offered hosting on a dedicated server. In order to meet visual and performance needs, a new architecture was introduced, including the Varnish reverse caching proxy. State Forests is a developing website with growing number of new users, and the Python On Demand service was used for its development.

The Results

Creation of the web page at http://www.lasy.gov.pl/ was a noticeable result. Satisfaction of the Customer resulted in hosting in STX Next since 2009, with no problems with availability and performance, as well as in continued cooperation. This state-of-the-art page based in the latest technologies is the showcase of State Forests in Poland and in the world.