Paid content platform
Redesign of a leading sports news platform in the USA with paid membership, Stripe and PayPal, ad placements and a daily audience grown to tens of thousands.
The leading gymnastics information platform in the USA. We redesigned and rebuilt it on Gutenberg, with paid membership and built-in ad placements, and the daily audience grew from thousands to tens of thousands of visitors.
Task
The Client came with an old site. It needed a full redesign in line with the domain and with how similar news resources present their content, a paid membership model and room for advertising, while staying fast and secure for a growing audience.
What I built
- Redesign and rebuild of the theme in Gutenberg style, with ACF blocks for configuration.
- Content system: articles, analytics, announcements, video, podcasts and galleries.
- Paid membership on MemberPress. Free readers see part of the content with ad teasers. Premium content such as photo galleries, video reports and statistics opens only the first few items, then the reader is invited to join the members.
- One membership plan for a start, while the Client shaped the roadmap of the project.
- Personal account: subscription, basic preferences, messaging.
- Stripe and PayPal payments.
- Ad blocks: placements for advertising built into the layout.
- Newsletter integration.
- Enterprise hosting on WP Engine with page cache and CDN.
How it went
The hardest part was security. A leading resource in its niche draws attention from competitors, so the platform and paid content had to be well protected. The other challenge was sudden, situational load peaks, which the caching and hosting setup had to absorb.
Result
After the redesign the audience grew many times over: from thousands of visitors a day when the Client came to us to tens of thousands a day.
