Migrating Scientia Clinical Research's Website Without Interrupting Recruitment
Faster page loads
Average load time down from over five seconds to three.
Website uptime maintained
Across every reporting month since monitoring began.
Audiences, 1 website
Volunteers, patients, referring physicians and biotech sponsors.
Scientia Clinical Research runs first-in-human clinical trials from the Randwick health precinct, alongside the Prince of Wales Hospital and UNSW. It is a not-for-profit, and much of its work is in oncology. Every study it runs recruits through the website, whether the person signing up is a healthy volunteer or a patient hoping there is still something to try.
However, the site was throwing errors, and the process people use to apply for a trial could no longer be updated. Recruitment stalled.
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The site had four jobs: recruiting healthy volunteers, connecting patients with relevant trials, supporting referring physicians and presenting Scientia to biotech sponsors overseas. While it was failing, it did none of them.
- A site that had stopped letting them work. Server errors blocked updates to the trial application process, so recruitment for studies already running had stalled.
- Foundations nobody had maintained. Accumulated files had exhausted the server’s memory, and the page builder running the site had gone years without an update.
- Hundreds of pages for studies that had finished. Closed trials left behind pages and live URLs that carried on consuming resources.
- A migration that could not go wrong. The new site’s forms still lived on the site that had stopped working, and they had seen a badly handled migration cost an organisation a year of enquiries.
- A registration form that could not go offline. Participant sign-ups fed the database used to track people through trials. It had to stay live through every change.
Phase 1: Getting the site working again
Studies were open and recruiting, and nobody could touch the page people applied through. Almost everything on the site needed updating at once, so guessing at the cause risked breaking more than it fixed.
- Server logs analysed to pinpoint the plugin conflicts behind the errors
- Server memory exhaustion diagnosed, and memory limits raised as an immediate fix
- Full backend audit across server, plugins, theme and content
- Obsolete study pages and dead URLs identified across the site
- Audit findings turned into a prioritised implementation list
- Weekly client meetings and shared project tracking put in place
Phase 2: Making the new site fit to launch
Before the new site could go live it had to stand on its own and hold the search visibility the old one had earned. That is how participants were finding studies.
- Unnecessary plugins removed and the page builder brought up to date
- Contact forms rebuilt in Gravity Forms so the email marketing integration survived the move
- SEO settings configured to mirror the live site
- URL slugs matched to the existing site so rankings could carry across
- Seven pages updated, including the study finder people use to search current trials
Phase 3: Moving the site without stopping recruitment
The registration form feeds the database that tracks participants through trials, so it could not go dark even briefly. The website migration had to work around it, not through it.
- Registration functionality replicated and tested against the live database
- Registration page kept live so sign-ups continued through the move
- DNS switched during a low-traffic window chosen to limit disruption
- Analytics configured so performance could be measured
Phase 4: Keeping it running
Studies open and close constantly, and each one changes what the site needs to say. That makes maintenance a monthly job rather than an annual one.
- Monthly website maintenance, security patching and backups
- Caching, security hardening and login protection in place
- Monthly service reporting to the client
- A growth roadmap now in development with the team
Scientia could not afford a migration that interrupted recruitment. The website had to improve while the systems participants relied on stayed available.
That is what the project delivered. Registration remained live through the move, the errors blocking updates were cleared, and seven key pages were updated.
More importantly, Scientia now has a website that can keep pace with its trials. As studies open, close and recruitment priorities change, the team has a safer, faster platform they can improve, rather than one they have to work around.