American Kennel Club

If you ever consider getting a purebred labrador or a poodle, akc.org is probably the first website you’ll find in your search. Founded in 1884, the American Kennel Club (AKC) is the largest purebred dog registry in the world. 

The flagship site serves as an informational hub and launching point for the AKC's other tools and applications related to dog registration, events and breeder connections. Over the last five years, the AKC’s monthly traffic grew by 30%, especially for popular content like dog name lists and pet care articles. While widespread dog adoption during the pandemic accounted for some of the spikes, the AKC’s IT team has also made fundamental changes to site hosting and content management to secure growth. Enter Pantheon and WordPress. 

From ExpressionEngine to WordPress

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Before 2017, the AKC family of sites used the open-source CMS ExpressionEngine and was hosted on premise. The AKC team had to handle all server responsibilities in-house, which led to significant overhead in maintenance and security. 

The organization sought a more scalable solution. “We wanted something more robust,” remembered Torraine Williams, Director of IT at the AKC. “We felt like WordPress is the number one CMS globally so hiring resources and developers that could support and maintain it would be easier.” 

In 2017, AKC transitioned its first three WordPress sites, including www.akc.org, to Pantheon’s managed web hosting platform. This allowed the AKC to offload server maintenance and security responsibilities, thus reducing the need for a dedicated system administrator role. Williams and his team selected Pantheon for its robust hosting capabilities, development workflows and improved security guarantees.

Pantheon’s Advanced Global CDN (AGCDN) played a significant role in enhancing site security and performance. For instance, when the invasion of Ukraine heightened concerns over malicious traffic, the AKC leveraged Pantheon’s AGCDN and its rate limiting feature to block bot traffic from Russia. 

Multidev is the team’s favorite developer feature, allowing for efficient collaboration and feature rollouts. “Being able to spin up a site quickly in Multidev is great. That’s one of the things that a system administrator would have had to do if we were still on prem,” said Williams. 

Results: More sites, higher traffic

AKC's move to WordPress allowed for better integration across its digital ecosystem. Customers now enjoy a unified login experience across multiple AKC platforms, including Marketplace, Shop, and custom-built apps, providing a seamless and user-friendly journey.

The transition to Pantheon allowed flexibility to scale the organization’s web presence further. Since 2017, the AKC has moved four additional websites to Pantheon, including AKC Reunite, AKC Winners, AKC Humane Fund and the Museum of the Dog. Their flagship site’s traffic grew from 15 million monthly page views to 19 million in 2023. 

By moving to Pantheon, the AKC reduced its data center footprint and definitely saved on the cost of employing a full-time system administrator. These savings were reallocated to other critical areas within the IT department and allowed the organization to grow."

- Torraine Williams, Director of IT, the American Kennel club