Client: Warpaint Magazine
Role: Freelance Developer (Design by Wellington Graphic)
Project: A fully bespoke, high-performance WordPress theme for Warpaint Magazine, including a custom-built advertising system plugin that enables the team to sell and manage ad placements across the site.

Warpaint Magazine is one of the UK’s leading publications covering professional makeup artistry, beauty industry news, competitions, and creative talent. When Wellington Graphic completed a fresh visual redesign for the brand, they needed a development partner to bring it to life as a fast, flexible, fully bespoke WordPress theme. I was brought in to translate the new designs into a robust, high-performance theme that supported the magazine’s editorial workflow.

Warpaint’s existing website had become slow, inconsistent, and difficult to manage. The redesign provided a modernised look and improved layout structure — but the site still needed a completely rebuilt foundation to fix long-standing technical issues:

• The previous theme was heavily modified and unstable

• Editing workflows were complicated and reliant on plugins

• Page layouts weren’t consistent across articles and categories

• Mobile performance was a major issue, hurting engagement

• Site speed was below acceptable Core Web Vitals standards

My task was to develop a custom theme from the ground up that faithfully matched Wellington Graphic’s designs while improving performance, stability, and editorial control.

Bespoke Theme Development

Using the approved design system from Wellington Graphic, I developed a custom WordPress theme with:

• Modular templates for articles, categories, interviews, competitions, and brand features

• Clean, scalable architecture using modern WordPress development standards

• Responsive layouts matching every breakpoint specified in the design

• Advanced ACF setups for structured content where needed

• Custom post types and taxonomies to organise competitions, events, and features

Every component was built to be lightweight, intuitive, and easy for the editorial team to update.

Custom Advertising System

A major part of the build was developing a bespoke, fully integrated advertising system plugin that gave Warpaint complete control over their ad inventory without relying on third-party ad managers.

Key features included:

• Custom “Ad Slot” post type for managing all advert creatives

• Flexible placement options across article templates, category pages, the homepage, and sidebar areas

• Scheduled campaigns, allowing ads to run only between specific dates

• Weighted rotation, enabling premium ads to appear more frequently

• Per-category targeting, so adverts can be assigned to specific editorial sections

• Fallback logic to ensure no empty ad spaces appear on the site

• Performance-optimised loading to keep ad scripts lightweight and non-blocking

The system was built to be intuitive for the editorial team while giving Warpaint new opportunities to sell advertising space across the site.

Performance & Technical Improvements

Performance was a major focus of the build. I optimised the site using:

• Server-side rendered templates

• Minimal JS and no heavy page builders

• Native responsive image support, including WebP

• Clean HTML markup aligned with SEO best practices

• Reduced plugin dependency by baking functionality directly into the theme

These changes dramatically improved loading times, stability, and long-term maintainability.

Editorial Experience

A key goal was to give editors more control without overwhelming them. I delivered:

• A tailored block set that preserved design consistency

• Pre-built article and category templates

• Easy management of homepage feature areas

• Structured ACF fields for sponsor tags, advert placements, and promotional content

• Consistent formatting across all articles and media

The team can now publish content faster, more consistently, and with fewer technical hurdles.

The new bespoke theme launched smoothly and immediately improved both performance and editorial workflow:

• Significant speed improvements, reducing load times and improving mobile scores

• Reliable, consistent layouts across all article formats

• Improved search visibility thanks to cleaner markup and better structure

• A future-proof foundation built for scalability

• A CMS workflow tailored to editors, reducing publishing time

With Wellington Graphic’s design and my custom development, Warpaint Magazine now has a modern, performant platform that reflects their brand and supports their busy editorial schedule.

This project demonstrates how strong design and clean, purpose-built development can come together to modernise a publication. By rebuilding Warpaint Magazine’s site with a bespoke WordPress theme, I delivered a fast, intuitive, and long-lasting platform that faithfully implements Wellington Graphic’s vision while giving editors the flexibility they need.