The story
The Challenge
Dadvengers had built a 5,000-strong community of modern dads, a four-season podcast, an expectant fathers course, national press coverage, and a royal endorsement from HRH The Princess of Wales.
- Years of growth had left the site carrying 28 plugins, each adding scripts and database overhead, and load times were slow enough to lose visitors
- Navigation ran through a dropdown maze that made years of content hard to find
- Podcast episodes and testimonials depended on brittle third-party plugins, so Dadvengers did not own that content on its own platform
Our Approach
Kickass Online stripped the site back to its foundations.
- Rebuilt the foundation: Kickass Online hand-coded the site on Oxygen Builder with OxyExtras, with both licences provided free for life, and replaced the plugin stack with clean, semantic code.
- Native content ownership: Podcast episodes and testimonials are now native custom post types that Dadvengers owns, with no third-party dependency.
- Simplified navigation: A custom-coded mega menu replaced the dropdown maze, and one design system now runs across the whole site.
- Hardened security: Kickass Online added a firewall, login protection, and automated backups to protect a platform that handles community data and events.
The Solution
Dadvengers now runs on a site built from the ground up.
- Rebuilt the foundation: The site runs on Oxygen Builder with OxyExtras, both licences provided free for life, on hand-coded, semantic code.
- Native content ownership: Podcast episodes and testimonials live in native custom post types that Dadvengers owns.
- Simplified navigation: A custom-coded mega menu and one design system run across the whole site.
- Hardened security: A firewall, login protection, and automated backups protect the platform’s community data and events.
The Result
Dadvengers cut its plugin count from 28 to a lean, well-maintained core, brought its load time under control, and now runs a platform built to scale with a community of 5,000+ active dads.