SaunaCentral · Wellness venue, Prague · 2025–2026
Opening the door the ads were paying for.
SaunaCentral's ads were working, and sending people to a site that was down more often than not. We moved the site and the shop off the failing server, rebuilt the site in Czech and English, and put the evening's programme on screens around the venue.
- Architecture
- Site rebuild
- Migration
- Bilingual content
- In-venue screens
Overview
The ads were working. The website wasn't answering.
SaunaCentral is a sauna and wellness venue in Prague, and its ads did their job. The people they sent landed on a site and a shop that shared one server, which went down almost every day.
The shop is also where guests book, so every outage cost twice: the click, already paid for, and the booking that never happened. Regulars couldn't sign up for a ceremony they had already chosen. Newcomers couldn't see what was on.
For a business whose ads are working, and whose website isn't there when the customer arrives.
What it had to do
- Be there whenever the ads send someone.
- Keep booking open for people who have already decided.
- Read as well in English as in Czech.
- Tell guests in the building what's on now, and what's next.
Try it
Tap the ad.
In the afternoon, then at night, the way the ads sent people to the old site.
≈60 %of afternoon visits ended in an errorApproximate · our founder's account of the monitoring at the time
Averaged over a day, the server looked almost fine: it stayed up at night, when nobody visits. In the afternoon, when people look and book, more visits failed than loaded.
The rebuild
Split on purpose.
We moved both off the failing server and gave each the home its job needs. Kept together, the site could never be faster than the shop.
The site, static, from the edge
Rebuilt from Sanity as a static site, served from the edge. It carries the campaigns and stays fast whatever they send.
The shop, on a host of its own
It kept its platform and moved to its own hosting, for the smaller audience that has already decided to book.
Before and after
Now race them.
The old site at the hour that mattered, against the rebuild.
The rebuild: a full page from a cold start, as we measured it. The old site is re-created, at the afternoon peak.
The site
A site worth the click.
Only half the old site could be read in English. Now every page exists in Czech and English, page for page.
The blog was worth keeping. A converter we wrote moved every post into structured content in both languages, with a language model's help: the archive was large, and the translation had to be consistent. Later we shaped the content for AI assistants too.
Inside
What's on, and what's next.
A printed schedule goes stale the moment a ceremony moves. Now screens around the venue show the evening's programme, from an app of its own.
The hard part
Every screen, a different browser.
Each TV in the venue runs a different browser, and the oldest decides what the board may use. A live connection would have worked on some of them. A full reload every minute works on all of them the same way, and each screen is held awake, so a board never dims halfway through the evening.
Change the programme once, and every screen has it within the minute.
Where it landed
The door opens now.
−70 %reservations against the year before, while the old server was failingClient-reported · year on year
+15 %reservations against the year before, after the moveClient-reported · ad spend rose over the same period, so not the rebuild alone
The daily outages ended with the move, and bookings came back. The venue has since raised its ad budget, now that the money reaches a site that loads.
