Stregspiller website redesign case study: 15+ years, rebuilt for discovery

Four Eyes has partnered with Stregspiller for 15+ years, and we just launched the latest rebuild, designed to make the archive easier to explore, faster to read, and simpler to publish.

If you want the “what is Stregspiller” overview from the source, start at the official About Stregspiller page.

The relationship: why Joachim (Jo) keeps coming back

Jo keeps working with Four Eyes for a reason that sounds boring until you need it:

• We’re constant. Same standards. Same steadiness. Less chaos.

• We’re reliable. When something breaks, it gets handled. Cleanly.

• We act in his best interests. Which sometimes means saying “no” to shiny ideas that wreck performance, readability, or maintainability.

That last one matters more than people admit. A publisher does not need a partner who “ships fast.” They need a partner who ships smart and doesn’t torch the archive for a trend.

The challenge

Stregspiller isn’t a simple blog feed. It’s a living archive of analysis, interviews, opinion pieces, and recurring coverage. The rebuild needed to support:

• Content discovery at scale: readers should browse intentionally, not scroll endlessly.

• Search that works like an archive tool: not a tiny box that shrugs.

• An editorial-first layout: clear hierarchy, scannable cards, consistent templates.

• Performance discipline: media-heavy pages plus traffic spikes need guardrails.

You can see the focus on discovery in the new Articles hub, the dedicated Search experience, and the series-style presentation of Up Close.

Our approach

Build the structure first, then the styling

We started with content architecture and templates, then refined the UI around real reader behavior. If it doesn’t help readers find the next piece, it doesn’t ship.

Treat archives like a product feature

Stregspiller’s archive is the asset. So we built discovery tools that make older work easy to resurface, especially through the structure and filtering on the Articles page and the framing of the Search page as an entry point into “years of coverage.”

Keep it maintainable

This is where “builder sites” usually go to die. We built the system so new series and formats can be added without turning the admin into a haunted house.

What we built

A proper Articles hub with filtering and sorting

The Articles page isn’t a chronological dump. It supports sorting and category filtering, which turns the archive into something readers can actually navigate.

Search that acts like an archive gateway

The dedicated search results experience invites readers to explore across years of content and filter by category. That’s the right posture for a serious editorial platform.

“Up Close” as a distinct editorial series

Up Close is treated as its own content lane, with profiles presented as feature pieces, not posts that get buried.

The tech stack we used

WordPress as the foundation

WordPress remains one of the best platforms for editorial publishing when you lean into structure, not shortcuts. We modeled content for scale using WordPress fundamentals like custom post types and taxonomies to keep discovery clean as the archive grows.

If you’re curious how we think about long-term growth on WP, this rebuild reflects the same principles we outline in WordPress scalability for growing sites.

Theme Pro builder for templating

We used Themeco’s tooling to control templates consistently, while keeping room for editorial variety. Their Theme Pro documentation is the reference point for how we approach maintainable templating.

JetEngine for dynamic content and archive UX

JetEngine powers key dynamic parts of the experience, including structured listing grids and the building blocks that make a content-heavy site feel organized instead of overwhelming. Crocoblock’s JetEngine knowledge base is the canonical reference, and it aligns with how we typically evaluate this toolset (see our internal breakdown: JetEngine vs Toolset for advanced WordPress builds).

Performance and quality signals

We tune for real UX metrics because they impact readers and visibility. For the standards we align to, we reference Learn Core Web Vitals and Google’s own Core Web Vitals guidance for Search.

And yes, image weight still matters. A lot. If you want the practical playbook we use on content-heavy sites, it’s baked into our approach in image optimization tips for SEO and web performance.

Results

• 15% year-over-year increase in user views after launch.

• Stronger content discovery through the structure of the Articles hub and the archive-first framing of the Search experience.

• Clearer editorial identity via distinct lanes like Up Close and the broader story of the platform shared on About Stregspiller.

What this means for the next 5 years

Editorial platforms don’t get simpler over time. They get bigger. More series, more authors, more formats, more archive value. The whole point of this rebuild was to give Stregspiller a system that can keep expanding without becoming fragile.

And if you want the unglamorous part that makes that possible, it’s maintenance. The boring work that prevents late-night “why is this broken” messages. Our philosophy is the same one we share in the monthly website maintenance checklist.