Custom WordPress Build for Magazine

The project I'm building a German-language magazine on longevity, fitness, nutrition and sleep — evidence-based, editorial in tone, aimed at an educated and sceptical audience. The defining feature is a transparent evidence rating: every article, glossary term and recommendation carries a visible rating of how solid the underlying science actually is. It is what separates the site from the usual supplement marketing, and building that component well is the heart of this job. This is a private long-term project, not agency work. It's already carefully thought through — I've written the brief, the content model and the mockups myself, and I have roughly 360 finished glossary entries waiting to be imported. The interesting part The evidence rating is not a badge you drop in a template. It is: Five states — three of them points on an evidence scale (solid / promising / hype), two of them orthogonal categories that deliberately render differently. Three rendering variants from a single source value: a compact inline chip (automatic, appears wherever an item is listed), a header badge (automatic, one per article), and a detailed in-body callout (placed manually by me, mid-article). Taxonomy-driven, not post meta — so listings and category hubs can filter by it cheaply. A Gutenberg block with server-side render, plus an equivalent shortcode fallback. Both are needed: I draft articles as Markdown outside WordPress and paste them in, and blocks don't survive a paste. Built for volume. A supplement round-up routinely contains 15–20 callouts in one article, all referencing a single shared source-numbering namespace, with the anchor IDs owned by the sources block rather than the callouts. That constraint is where most implementations would break, and §4.2.2 of the brief spells it out. If that reads as a fun problem rather than a headache, we'll probably get along. Scope I'd like to commission this in two phases, and I'd like the quote split accordingly. Phase 1 — the magazine. Remove the existing demo content, build a custom editorial layout, article and category templates, seven categories with hub pages, menus, core pages, the complete evidence rating component, the German legal layer (cookie consent, Consent Mode v2 via GTM, self-hosted fonts, template-enforced disclaimers), and the performance baseline. Success criterion: I can publish articles properly. Phase 2 — the two content systems. Glossary: custom post type for 500+ terms, one indexable page per term, DefinedTerm / DefinedTermSet schema, thematic cluster hubs, A–Z index, lightweight instant filtering, and a re-runnable, idempotent CSV importer (I supply the content; matching on slug so corrections don't create duplicates). Recommendations: custom post type for a curated affiliate section, with a per-entry toggle that drives rel="sponsored nofollow" and the advertising label automatically — because the site launches with plain links and I swap them for affiliate URLs later, once the networks approve me. Plus handover documentation. Explicit non-goals No page builder. No Elementor, Divi, WPBakery. The article body is Gutenberg; a builder would mean maintaining the evidence component twice for no benefit. No demo or starter-site import. The current GeneratePress "Journal" demo is being discarded, and I don't want a different one in its place. No WooCommerce. The recommendations section links out to third parties — it is an editorial link collection, not a shop. No cart, no checkout, no payment. No content writing. I write everything: articles, glossary, page copy. No logo design. Already finalised. Environment Shared Apache hosting (ALL-INKL Premium), PHP 8.5, Zend OPcache only — no Redis, no server-side page cache, no CDN. Core Web Vitals still matter to me, so caching strategy and image delivery need actual thought rather than a default plugin install. The tariff includes real cron jobs, SSH and full .htaccess access, all currently unused. §11 of the brief covers this in detail. All custom functionality must live in a site-specific plugin, not the theme, so it survives a theme change. One requirement I care about more than usual After handover I must be able to maintain the site myself. Adding glossary terms, correcting entries, swapping affiliate URLs — all of it without hiring a developer each time. Concretely: labelled German fields with helper text, list views with sortable columns and filters, bulk edit, and a short written guide. A system only its author can operate is not a finished system, and §8.5 and §9.2 of the brief make this an acceptance criterion rather than a preference. What you get A brief that has already answered the awkward questions — data model, naming, edge cases, failure modes, accessibility, schema, legal. You should have to guess very little. HTML mockups as visual reference. They're direction, not a pixel contract; sensible UX improvements are welcome. No deadline. Genuinely none. This is a personal project — you can fit it around urgent paid work, and I'd rather have it done well over several weeks than rushed. Follow-up work if the collaboration goes well. I have further projects planned, including a searchable studio map and a premium listing service. What I'm looking for in you Comfortable writing custom WordPress code — custom post types, taxonomies, a Gutenberg block with block.json and server-side render, template hierarchy, a CSV importer. Understands structured data and why DefinedTerm and additionalProperty are the right choices here. Takes accessibility seriously — WCAG AA is a requirement in this brief, not a wish. Willing to push back where you disagree with the spec. The brief marks a dozen decisions as yours; I'd rather hear an argument than get silent compliance. How to apply Two things, and please skip the generic pitch: One specific question about the brief. Anything — a decision you'd make differently, an edge case you think I've missed, a constraint you'd challenge. It tells me far more than a portfolio does. A quote split by phase (Phase 1 / Phase 2), plus a rough timeline for Phase 1. If you'd also answer the questions in §16, that's ideal — but the one question above matters most.