Taking control of 180 years of content: replatforming The Pharmaceutical Journal to WordPress

The challenge

The PJ’s website was hosted on a third-party platform, which announced it was moving every client onto a new SaaS model. Rather than accept the change by default, the PJ used it as a reason to review its options. It ran internal workshops, researched what comparable publishers were doing, and put out an RFP across open source, closed source and SaaS providers.

The brief was demanding. The platform had to hold a vast back catalogue, support a subscription business, connect to the membership body’s own systems, and stay flexible enough to adapt as technology moved on. And it had to match the journal’s standing with a worldwide professional readership.

Our approach

We recommended WP Engine, an enterprise platform built on the WordPress CMS. Its open source, modular stack meant the PJ could adopt, adapt or drop components as it needed, rather than being locked into one vendor’s roadmap. WP Engine also runs on cloud providers including AWS and Google Cloud, so the PJ could change hosting provider if performance ever demanded it.

Our UX and design consultants were involved from the first workshop. They started with a review of the existing content, to understand how it should be presented to readers and to accommodate the PJ’s hierarchy of titles, issues and articles. That shaped the platform around how people search for and read dense scientific and practice content.

What we built

• An information architecture for tens of thousands of articles, making the archive findable and searchable.
• Custom components and templates that help readers work through long, complex scientific and practice content.
• A mobile-first design, so the journal reads as well on a phone as it does in print.
• Subscriptions through WooCommerce Memberships, including monthly caps on the number of articles some tiers can read, and restricting certain article types to particular subscription levels.
• Single sign-on, so members can move from the main membership site into the journal without a second login.
• LearnDash integration, supporting members’ Continuing Professional Development inside the platform.
• On-site advertising through the Advanced Ads plugin, connected to Google Ad Manager, promoting services from across the PJ’s range and the benefits of membership.

Delivery: moving content and subscribers without losing access

A publication with this much history carries a lot of content. After reviewing what was on the existing platform, the PJ identified tens of thousands of articles to migrate. A third party handled the content migration, and we supported them to make sure everything mapped across accurately.

The subscribers were the harder part. Thousands of them, across a range of user types and permission levels, all needed to land in the right place with the right access. We mapped those permissions carefully, including the article caps and tier restrictions built into the subscription model, so every reader could reach the content they were entitled to.

The outcome

The Pharmaceutical Journal now publishes and presents specialist content on a platform it controls, with full ownership of its development roadmap. Its editorial team can prepare and publish content efficiently, and present it in a clean, readable format across devices. The launch drew very positive feedback from subscribers and stakeholders.

We’ve continued to develop the platform since launch, most recently adding personalisation through LogicHop, so readers see content more relevant to them.