Migration, design & development, maintenance & growth

Intro

Client: IMP Bridge Magazine
Industry: Digital Publishing
Scope: Migration, design& development, maintenance & growth
website: imp-bridge.nl

Background

IMP is one of the most respected bridge magazines in the Netherlands, serving a dedicated community of professional and competitive bridge players. For years, the magazine relied on an outdated Drupal-based website that no longer reflected the quality of its content or the expectations of its audience. The editorial team needed a modern digital platform – one that could handle a wide variety of content types, from in-depth articles and archived magazine issues to interactive bridge problem diagrams and community discussions. They came to us with a clear goal: rebuild the website from the ground up, migrate years of legacy content without losing a single piece, and introduce new tools that would make the platform self-sufficient and engaging.

Challenge

The project came with several layers of complexity. The legacy Drupal system held years of articles, bridge problems, forum threads, and newsletter subscriber data – all of which had to be migrated cleanly into a completely new architecture. Bridge content is uniquely demanding from a frontend perspective: hand diagrams and bidding tables require precise rendering across screen sizes, and even small alignment issues can make the content unreadable for players. The editorial team needed independence – the ability to create interactive quizzes, manage ad placements, update homepage banners, and send newsletters without developer involvement. On top of that, the site had to serve a multilingual audience, comply with cookie legislation and GDPR requirements, and remain secure and performant on modern infrastructure.

Solution

We designed and built the entire platform from scratch on WordPress, with a custom theme and layout system tailored specifically to bridge magazine content.

  • Content migration & architecture – We migrated all legacy content from Drupal, mapping it into a new, well-organized content structure. Articles, problems, forum posts, archived issues, and subscriber data were all transferred and verified.
  • Custom quiz engine – We built an interactive bridge problem system on top of QSM (Quiz and Survey Master), extending it with custom add-ons for scored results, result export to CSV, and a dedicated results page – giving the editorial team a powerful tool to engage readers directly on the site.
  • Community forum – We developed a fully styled forum where readers discuss bridge problems, share solutions, and interact with moderators. The forum includes email notifications for moderators, post templates, and a follow-up system for tracking discussions.
  • Newsletter management – We integrated MailPoet for onsite newsletter management, complete with subscription forms, reCAPTCHA protection, audience segmentation, and multilingual email templates translated into Dutch.
  • Ad management system – We built a custom solution that gives the client full control over ad placements across the site – including the ability to place multiple ads side by side and manage them through a simple interface with shortcodes.
  • Responsive bridge content rendering – Special attention went into making bridge hand diagrams and bidding tables render correctly on desktop, tablet, and mobile. We created custom CSS grid templates specifically for bridge notation and adjusted column widths and alignment across breakpoints.
  • Self-service banner system – We delivered a custom banner graphics system with editable text layers, allowing the team to update homepage visuals independently – supported by video tutorials on how to swap cover images in Photoshop.
  • Infrastructure & security – We migrated the server to PHP 8, implemented a security hardening checklist, upgraded reCAPTCHA to v3, addressed spam issues, and set up a staging environment for safe testing before production deployments.

Impact

The new platform transformed IMP’s digital presence from a static, outdated website into a living, interactive hub for the Dutch bridge community. The editorial team gained full autonomy over content creation, quiz publishing, newsletter campaigns, and ad management – eliminating their dependency on developers for day-to-day operations. Readers got a modern, responsive experience where bridge diagrams render cleanly on any device, and the forum became an active space for community engagement. The migration preserved the magazine’s entire content archive, ensuring continuity for long-time subscribers. After launch, we continued with ongoing maintenance and iterative development across 168 tracked tasks – from UAT fixes and feature requests to plugin updates and security patches – keeping the platform stable, secure, and evolving alongside the client’s needs.
Project content