Bluegrass Today is the go-to news source for tens of thousands of readers across the Bluegrass community. It is the site fans and industry professionals look to first when they want to know what is happening in the genre.
That reputation is not an accident. Founders Terry Herd and John Lawless run a free daily newsletter that lands in more than 17,000 inboxes six days a week, and they host the radio airplay charts that the industry treats as its gold standard. When they came to us for a rebuild, the brief was refreshingly clear. Make the site faster, friendlier on phones, and easier to manage, and do it without losing a single thing that already worked well.
When Terry described his vision, he landed on an electronic, dilithium crystal and caffeine-powered digital steampunk printing press (Star Trek fans, anyone?). That steam-and-gears spirit felt right at home with an agency named Clockwork. And having teamed up on previous projects, we had a strong read on their goals and where the site was ready to hit new heights.
The Challenge: Moving Without Losing the Goods
Bluegrass Today is an active website. It publishes daily, hosts community comments, runs the charts, powers a newsletter, and holds roughly two decades of archived news and features that fans and researchers still dig through. Busy sites naturally accumulate content and out-of-date pages over the years. The older build had begun to show that bulkiness so it wasn’t always easy to find what you want, especially on mobile, where most of their readers land.
So the project pulled in two directions at once. The site had to load faster and feel natural on phones without moving pages or information around so loyal visitors can’t find them. The sitemap, the logo, the brand, and every custom feature stayed exactly where people expected them. We also protected the SEO from the existing site, from the schema to the meta descriptions, so their years of hard-won search rankings would only improve from here.
The Website Rebuild Started From What Already Worked
Re-importing twenty years of content into a fresh install is a great way to lose images and break links along the way. So we skipped that risk entirely. Rather than re-import, we cloned the existing site and rebuilt it in place, cleaning things up as we went. That approach protected the archive, the images, and that hard-won SEO equity Bluegrass Today had earned.
From there, the dev team set out to clear away the tangle of one-off fixes and third-party plugins that had stacked up over the years. They pulled much of that scattered functionality into a single, well-built custom plugin, updated the pieces that had gone stale, and merged the overlapping ones, so there is now one place to maintain instead of a dozen. The payoff is a lighter, faster site, and because the moving parts no longer trip over each other, future updates are far safer and easier to make.
Fun, User-Friendly Features For Bluegrass Fanatics
A news operation like this one lives on its features, so the rebuild had two jobs. Sharpen the pieces that had room to work better, and carry everything else across without a hiccup.
- The radio airplay charts, the feature the industry leans on more than any other, display cleanly on every screen size.
- Every Mediavine and AdSpeed placement moved into the right spot for the most eyes, and we improved the responsiveness. The ad zones also respond more cleanly across devices now, so they can keep earning whether a reader is on a phone or a desktop.
- The Events system lets readers browse upcoming shows, and still submit their own as they could before. It runs on a rebuilt custom post type with a simpler tagging structure that readers can easily sort through and the team can update without touching any code.
- Disqus comments from loyal readers never stopped coming in across the site, including on the crossword puzzles, which have a whole devoted following of their own.
- The newsletter automation that sends to more than 17,000 subscribers six days a week never skipped a beat. We moved it over carefully and kept a close eye on delivery.
- We also sharpened site search across the content by refining how results rank and display, replacing the outdated search modules, and adding clearer messaging when a search turns up empty.
A Design That Stays In Tune with the Brand
Bluegrass Today already carried a strong, recognizable brand identity. Our job was to honor it rather than reinvent it. We kept the existing logo and shaped a layout that feels solid, professional, and dependable, the same words the team reached for when they described themselves in our first intake discussions.
Terry had once pictured the brand as a caffeine-powered steampunk printing press. Rather than take that literally or get away from it altogether, we let the machinery show up in the motion. Small custom animations give the pages a bit of life, like the animated mailbox on the newsletter signup. They also help guide the user’s eyes to where they should go. And then go next.
Michael Earley, our creative director and head in-house design wizard, led the refresh and set the tone on the homepage. He built the site in dark mode, a direction the team took to right away. Light text on a deep background keeps contrast high and reading comfortable, which suits a publication people scroll through every day. That same treatment carries across every interior page, so the site reads as one piece wherever a reader lands. On phones, where most of the audience visits, it holds up as gracefully as it does on a desktop.
These design elements are really a set of custom pieces working together. The events and crossword puzzles each run on their own custom post type we mentioned above, and the page builder was customized to match that aesthetic. The team can add new stories and news updates themselves and trust the layout to look as good as new.
A Collaborative Build, Start to Finish
None of this happened in a vacuum. We ran weekly syncs from the first design drafts all the way through launch with the Bluegrass Today team. We worked through a detailed QA sheet page by page. When the review needed a little more breathing room, we adjusted the timeline rather than rush the finish. The Bluegrass Today team stayed engaged the entire way, which kept the project sailing along and the whole build genuinely collaborative. The results speak volumes!
The Rebuild, In Their Words
“[The Clockwork team] delivered an outstanding website on time and on budget. For all of us here at Bluegrass Today, a standing ovation. We could not be happier. Great work and professional perseverance through the challenges. Bravo!”
– Terry Herd, Co-founder and CEO, Bluegrass Today
Trained, Documented, and Ready to Run It
Before we handed over the keys to the castle, we walked the BGT team through managing the new site. As we do on all of our projects, we recorded the whole session, with the full transcript included, so anyone who joins later can catch up without much other training.
Along with the training documents, our clients also get a 30-day post-launch warranty, because a great launch is only as good as the team’s confidence in running things once we step back. Whenever they want us, or whenever any client wants us, we are just one message away.
What Changed for Bluegrass Today
- Pages load faster and read comfortably on phones.
- The full content archive, its SEO, and the brand all came through the rebuild.
- The airplay charts, Bluegrass Today’s signature, are front and center.
- The BGT team can publish news, events, and updates themselves without breaking the design or site structure.
- The new site search functionality returns sharper results.
Built to Keep Ticking
The music never stops, and neither does your website. How does a steampunk printing press translate into a website? We think the new Bluegrass Today launch took the best parts of that concept, and kept going. Not only does the modern look match the reputation of the brand, the site is faster, more dependable, and ready for whatever the next chapter of bluegrass brings.
If your site holds years of history you cannot afford to lose in a rebuild, that is exactly the kind of web design and web development project we love. Let’s talk.
