The mechanics powering the Driver web platform

Experience peace of mind with advanced, open source driven technology

Don’t pay for an outdated website. Driver’s cutting-edge technology provides the peace of mind you deserve, delivering enhanced security, unbeatable page load speed, and long-term scalability.

And it’s driven by key open source technologies, meaning you’re never locked in.

 

Technologies & Frameworks

Driver’s technology stack has focus on performance for the end-user, with the goal of delivering the right content in milliseconds.

The main components of its tech stack are:

Next.js

Driver is developed using Next.js (a cutting edge performance-first React framework) that delivers significantly fast websites. Used by some of the world’s largest companies, Next.js enables the creation of full-stack Web applications by extending the latest React features, and integrating powerful Rust-based JavaScript tooling for the fastest builds.

Vercel

Vercel is a platform for frontend development, providing the speed and reliability innovators need to create at the moment of inspiration.

Algolia

Algolia is the leader in globally scalable, secure, digital search and discovery experiences that are ultrafast and reliable. In short, it delivers awesome in-site search and content filtering experiences.

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive cloud computing platform provided by Amazon that provides a highly scalable and flexible cloud computing environment, allowing users to easily provision, configure, and manage virtual servers, storage, and other resources, as well as deploy and manage applications and services.

Widely used by businesses, startups and governments, AWS offers a global network of data centers, allowing users to choose from a wide range of geographic locations to host their applications and data, which enables low-latency access and high availability.

Content Management

Driver’s content management is provided through WordPress – the world’s #1 content management platform. However, Driver is NOT a traditional WordPress website, as it utilising a leading-edge ‘headless’ development model that delivers significant benefits over the older, traditional web development build approach.

 

👆 Jump to the top of the page

 

Headless website model

What is headless?

The term “headless” comes from the concept of removing the “head” (front-end) of the website from the “body” (the back-end CMS and the content repository).

Driver’s headless model provides significant advantages including allowing breakthrough user-experiences and innovation, blistering site speed and improved security.

 

Old “Traditional” Website Build Model

Antiquated model

• Slower
• Less secure
• Less scalable
• More expensive to modify
• Less flexibility
• Less reliability

 

Headless Web Build Model

High-performing model

• 10x faster page load speed via CDN
• Faster page load speed assists SEO rankings
• More secure
• Highly scalable
• Version control
• More flexibility
• More reliability
• Easier to update & modify

 

Headless benefits

The headless approach delivers enormous benefits, specifically around page load speed and security.

Key benefits include:

 

No plugins!

Too many WordPress websites utilise a tonne of cheap, poorly coded plug-ins to provide functionality. These are often extremely buggy, significantly slow down the speed of websites, and can cause security threats.

Accordingly, we only utilise a very small, select range of essential, safe and proven, industry standard plugins.

The above issues, combined with the fact that a large majority of traditional WordPress plugins do not work in a headless website environment, means that with an Avenue website, if you need functionality, we either build quality, custom coded solutions to deliver these needs for you, or integrate with 3rd party solutions via non-plugin methods.

If you’re expecting a cheap WordPress site with plugins, best to look elsewhere!

 

👆 Jump to the top of the page

 

WordPress CMS

Why WordPress CMS?

A key benefit of Driver is that it’s a flexible, scalable and high-performing website platform that meets existing and long-term needs.

Technology stack decisions should include:

• Open Technologies – so you aren’t locked in.
• Scalability – to allow long term growth.
• Standards compliant – ensures longevity and security.
• Usability – ease of content maintenance.
• Insurance – access to widest pool of developers.

WordPress is the world’s leading solution for all of the above criteria.

It’s the most popular Website CMS in the world:

• 60.4% market share of all content management systems.
• 33.5% of all websites built in the world.
• Over 27,000,000 websites globally.

WordPress is used by the world’s leading organisations, such as:

• The White House
• The New York Times
• Sony Mobile
• University of Washington
• Mercedes Benz
• The New Yorker
• Walt Disney
• Guggenheim
• BBC America
• Microsoft News
• Facebook Newsroom
• Reuters
• The Wall Street Journal
• The Obama Foundation

Why is WordPress the most popular CMS in the world?

• Far easier for people to manage and use.
• Far more efficient to develop with.
• Allows for almost unlimited customisability (design and functionality).
• The largest community of developers constantly enhancing the platform.
• WordPress is endorsed by senior engineers at Google as being the best CMS platform for SEO.

Version & WYSIWYG editor

Driver utilises the latest version of the WordPress content management system for the content authoring experience. The Driver WordPress installation also utilises the Gutenberg WYSIWYG editor.

 

👆 Jump to the top of the page

 

Website Security

As a ‘headless’ (or ‘static’ website), the Driver web platform can dramatically improve website security.

“No build” process

When a user requests a page from a static site, the server just sends them the file for that page, instead of building that page from various database requests each time.

This “no build” process means standard hacking attacks like scripting or database security exploits don’t work.

Protection against brute force attack

WordPress’ Brute Force Protection is activated.

Use of TLS V1.3

The latest version of Transport Layer Security (TLS) and the successor to SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). TLS provides secure communication between web browsers and servers. The connection itself is secure because symmetric cryptography is used to encrypt the data transmitted.

Enforced strong passwords

The iThemes Security plugin can be installed to enforce strong passwords for all the users on the website.

Malware protection

The iThemes Security plugin has scheduled malware scans.

Two factor authentication

Two factor authentication can be enabled for website administrators through the iThemes Security plugin.

HTTP protection headers

HTTP protection headers are configured to assist in hardening the overall security posture of the associated web application.

Hostname Disclosure Protection

The website front-end development is protected by Vercel load balancers, and is used to hide the origin IP address of the WordPress instance.

Other security aspects (available through on-going website support)

Installation of regular updates

The website software has a patching program in place to ensure all major software patches are installed.

Regular backups and disaster recovery

The website database and files are backed up to an Amazon s3 bucket periodically.

Since the website is built with JAMstack every CMS content change generates a new website build which has a snapshot taken of it. Even if the WordPress server is completely destroyed, the website will not go down.

If the WordPress server is compromised and a website build is made with no pages, all the previous snapshots can be rolled back to with a click of a button.

 

👆 Jump to the top of the page

 

Hosting Requirements

2 Tier Architecture

The “Headless CMS” approach requires Driver websites to be hosted on a 2 tier architecture; where the front-end of the website and the CMS (back-end) live on seperate hosting environments.

The 2 tiers are as follows:

1. Back-end – WordPress and Database
2. Front-end – HTML, JS, CSS, Node.JS

Back-end (WordPress)

Driver websites require access to a VPS (virtual private server) that Avenue provisions. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is installed on this server, plus SSH access permissions.

The VPS is provisioned on AWS, and the minimum requirements are:

• 2 GB of ram
• 60 GB SSD storage
• 1.5 TB Bandwidth

Front-end (Vercel)

Driver websites use a Next.js front-end that is hosted at Vercel.

Content to CDN Workflow

All Driver website pages are hosted on the the Vercel Edge Network (CDN).

When a CMS users creates/edits website content, the backend and frontend workflow is as follows:

1. User creates/edits a page in WordPress (back-end).
2. The website polls for new data for the page and caches it on the CDN indefinitely (front-end).
3. Any future changes to the page will cause the CDN cache to purge for the page and the fresh content is then updated on the CDN.

Hosting Ownership

With Driver websites, all hosting is set up as client owned accounts, giving clients ownership and control of the website’s hosting, allowing full access, cost transparency and peace of mind.

We help you set these up – it really is very straight forward and only takes a few minutes.

This set up then allows you to pay the provider’s directly; it’s complete transparency with you paying direct for what you use.

We then manage the website deployment to the hosting infrastructure as part of the website project. And if you commission us for ongoing website support post launch, we continue to oversee and manage the hosting for you.

 

👆 Jump to the top of the page

 

IRAP Compliance

Information Security Registered Assessors Program (IRAP) compliance is provided via Amazon Web Services

Driver websites are hosted via an external 2 tier architecture. Both tiers of the architecture (Ubuntu and Vercel) run on Amazon Web Services, which has been IRAP assessed and marked as IRAP Compliant.

Amazon Web Services meets the requirements of the Australian government Information Security Manual (ISM) and assessed by an independent IRAP assessor against applicable ISM controls. More details can be found at the links below:

• Information Security Registered Assessors Program (IRAP)
• AWS Services in Scope by Compliance Program

Amazon Web Services Hosting

Both Ubuntu and Vercel use Amazon Web Services for IRAP Compliance.

Ubuntu

• This is hosted on an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance.

Vercel

• Uses the following Amazon Web Services
  • AWS Lambda
  • Amazon CloudFront
• Is also SOC 2 Compliant and more information on Vercel security can be found here.

 

👆 Jump to the top of the page