The Problem Nobody Wants to Deal with
The Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic in Białystok is one of Poland’s leading cultural institutions, hosting opera, symphonic concerts, and a wide range of other events. Its website plays a key role in informing audiences and managing event communication.
Over time, however, the platform accumulated technical debt. Outdated technology and unresolved issues began to affect performance, security, and day-to-day usability for both visitors and the internal team.
What was Going Wrong
Key functionality around event listing was unreliable. In some cases, users couldn’t load additional event dates, particularly on mobile devices and in the English version of the site.
The multilingual setup was also inconsistent. Many interface elements, including buttons, labels, and parts of the search and calendar, were missing translations or could not be translated due to limitations in the existing implementation.
The translation system was generating excessive background processes, pushing CPU usage to 100% and severely impacting performance.
How We Fixed it
We modernised the backend by upgrading the platform from PHP 7.4 to 8.3 and refactoring parts of the codebase to resolve compatibility issues and recurring errors across both PHP and JavaScript.
We fixed key frontend and backend issues affecting event management and user interactions, ensuring consistent behaviour across devices and language versions.
We then reworked the multilingual setup, removing hardcoded elements and enabling proper translations of UI components.
We identified and eliminated the root cause within the translation system, preventing it from generating excessive background tasks and stabilising server performance.
We also optimised media assets, reducing the size of loaded images by nearly 50%, significantly improving page load times.
Additionally, we cleaned up the database, recovering around 250 MB of space and improving overall system efficiency.
The Outcome
Critical performance issues were eliminated, reducing server load and improving overall reliability. Event listings and key user flows now work consistently across devices and language versions.
Additional optimisations, including a nearly 50% reduction in image sizes and database cleanup that recovered around 250 MB of space, further improved performance and efficiency.
The internal team can manage content without technical blockers, and the platform provides a solid, dependable foundation for communicating the institution’s cultural programme.
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Legacy Platform Causing Issues?
Audit and Identify Root Causes
We analyse the system beyond surface-level issues, identifying technical debt, bottlenecks, and hidden dependencies that affect performance and stability.
Stabilise Critical Functionality
We fix key user flows and eliminate the most disruptive issues to ensure the system works reliably across devices and environments.
Optimise and Future-Proof
We improve performance, clean up the codebase and infrastructure, and prepare the system for further development without requiring a full rebuild.