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Babelli.de & Elterngeld.de

Two content portals with more than a million visitors a month: under continuous maintenance since 2020, with custom plugins and a Gutenberg block theme that passes every Core Web Vital.

  • WordPress
  • Maintenance
  • Performance optimization
  • Core Web Vitals
  • Plugin development
  • Gutenberg
  • Theme development
  • Technical support
The babelli.de home page shown on a desktop monitor and a smartphone

Selected reference

Two high-traffic portals and a WordPress setup that has been maintained without interruption since 2020.

babelli.de is one of the highest-traffic publishers for expectant and new parents in the German-speaking market. More than 1.2 million visitors a month and 175,000 newsletter subscribers come for editorial expertise and digital services around family planning. The brand also runs an award-winning pregnancy app used by roughly one in five pregnant women in Germany.

elterngeld.de covers the bureaucratic and financial side of starting a family. Germany pays new parents a state benefit called Elterngeld, and the rules around it, along with parental leave and maternity protection, are notoriously hard to navigate. The portal answers those questions with interactive calculators, application guides and reference articles, and its own data-driven studies are regularly cited by outlets including Handelsblatt, Stern and Finanzen.net.

Both portals are operated by Fabulabs GmbH and run on WordPress. Bajorat Media has supported the company with technical maintenance and optimization for both systems since 2020. Over the years that support has produced custom plugins, a theme relaunch and continuous performance work.

RoleBajorat Media is responsible for maintenance, performance optimization, the development of custom plugins, the relaunch of the themes on Gutenberg blocks and support during technical emergencies.
ResultSince the theme relaunch both portals pass every Core Web Vital, with a PageSpeed score of 99 on desktop and 92 on mobile. Editorial tools such as calculators and campaign flows run as purpose-built plugins, and the editorial teams have a fixed point of contact for technical questions.

Workstreams

What ongoing support looks like for editorial portals at this scale.

Operations, development and performance feed into each other on both systems. The tasks have shifted over the years; the responsibility for the technical foundation has not.

Performance at high traffic

A portal with more than a million visitors a month forgives very little. Loading behaviour, resource use and delivery are therefore permanent work rather than a one-off project: whatever is fast today has to stay fast after the next update, the next plugin and the next content push.

Custom plugins for editorial tools

Many of the features these portals rely on cannot be bought off the shelf. So they were built: interactive calculators for due dates, cycles and conception, processing for prize draws, and flows for the newsletter.

Theme relaunch on Gutenberg blocks

The WordPress themes were rebuilt as a custom theme based on Gutenberg blocks, with page speed and Core Web Vitals as the design constraint. The result is measurable: every Core Web Vital passes, and the PageSpeed score sits at 99 on desktop and 92 on mobile. For the editorial teams, the block structure also means pages can be assembled from defined components without development work for every variant.

Maintenance and technical emergencies

Ongoing support covers updates, security and the review of changes before they go live. When something breaks in production, there is a fixed technical contact. For portals whose content has to be findable every single day, that is the difference between a short outage and a lost day.

Collaboration

Maintenance that turned into development over the years.

The collaboration began with support for existing WordPress systems and today covers features, themes and performance across both portals.

2020: technical support begins

Taking over maintenance and optimization for the two existing WordPress portals babelli.de and elterngeld.de.

Custom features for the portals

Development of purpose-built plugins, including interactive calculators for expectant parents as well as processing for prize draws and newsletter flows.

Theme relaunch with Gutenberg blocks

The WordPress themes were rebuilt as a block-based custom theme. Since then every Core Web Vital passes and the PageSpeed score sits at 99 (desktop) and 92 (mobile).

Ongoing support in day-to-day operations

Continuous performance work, further development of individual features and support during technical emergencies.

Images

Two brands, the same technical approach.

Most of what is shown are category and article pages. They carry the bulk of the traffic, and they are where a portal this size either stays fast or does not. Both assemble their pages from defined Gutenberg blocks that the editorial teams combine without development work.

A birth preparation category page on babelli.de shown on desktop and tablet
The elterngeld.de home page shown on a desktop monitor and a tablet
A guide article on parental allowance on elterngeld.de shown on a tablet

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Pascal Bajorat, owner of Bajorat Media

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Pascal BajoratOwner & Marketing Expert