Rebuilding Our Publishing Platform: The Unified Theme

A full-scale technical redesign to unify 50+ content websites, accelerate experimentation, and unlock $3M+ in new revenue.

Mobile screenshots of WalletGenius, ActiveBeat, and CarsGenius on the new Unified Theme

System1’s portfolio of content sites were built across three aging WordPress themes, creating mounting tech debt, inconsistent monetization options, and slow site launches. I led the development of a new scalable platform—the Unified Theme—to consolidate operations, increase velocity, and enable network-wide monetization testing at scale.

The Challenge

  • 3 legacy themes with isolated ad integrations, styling, and deployment workflows

  • Engineers siloed by stack, making reassignments and velocity difficult

  • Winning monetization flows couldn’t scale across sites

  • Redundant 3rd-party tooling bloated costs and maintenance

Legacy Complexity Wireframe

The Process

I led the full product lifecycle—from discovery and stakeholder alignment through delivery, testing, and iteration. My strategy centered around reusable architecture, a dynamic injection layer, and QA automation.

Key initiatives included:

  • Defined and managed the product roadmap, MVP scope, and phased rollout strategy

  • Designed and developed a parent-child theme structure for shared and site-specific components

  • Created an internal knowledge hub with launch playbooks, JIRA ticket templates, onboarding guides, and CI/CD-friendly tooling

  • Partnered with UX and data teams to define user journeys and validate monetization templates

  • Collaborated with Design to develop a robust design system and component library, ensuring scalability and consistent implementation across all sites

The Solution

  • Consolidated sites under one scalable WordPress architecture

  • Developed a dynamic ad injection layer for consistent monetization delivery

  • Standardized editorial tools and page templates

  • Streamlined site launches through CI/CD-aligned tooling

Company
System1

Year
2021 - 2022

Key Results

+15% revenue/session within 30 days of first site launch

$3M incremental revenue generated within first 6 months on hybrid monetization flows

45% improvement in page speed and consistent Core Web Vitals performance

60% faster site launches and $600K+ in annual engineering and tooling savings

40% reduction in hot fixes after implementing standardized QA automation

Zero downtime or revenue loss across 15+ site migrations

95% tracking accuracy across all monetization flows

Launched a comprehensive design system and code-backed component library, accelerating dev onboarding and ensuring consistency across all properties

Impact

The Unified Theme project transformed how we launched, maintained, and monetized content sites.

It eliminated years of tech debt, unlocked scalable experimentation, and dramatically improved team velocity and morale.

By aligning engineering with business goals, we built a foundation for future innovation.

Creative Direction | Abby Bartlett, Mallory Jacobs
Design | Stephen McGhee, Dave Upper
Development | Shane Landry, Sam Hebeisen, Joel Tersigni, Phil de Vries

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