Most WordPress case studies are written by agencies about agency work. This one is about an editor with no design background who built a single-market Dutch site on a Canyon theme, ran it as a business, and then talked us through what worked. We have restructured the original interview into a build log — decisions in the order he made them — because the sequence is what other single-market publishers can reuse.
The site is Nederlandse Gokkasten (“Dutch slot machines”), an affiliate publication covering gratis gokkasten online casinos for a Dutch-language audience. The niche is not the point. A Dutch site about tax software, e-bikes or camping would face the same constraints: one language, one market, a competitive SERP, and content that has to be updated faster than the competition.
Decision 1: Customer journey before design
Jeroen’s first rule was that the design exists to get readers what they came for. His example: a reader who wants the rules of European roulette and then wants to sign up somewhere that offers it should be able to do both without hunting. That translated into three structural requirements before a single colour was chosen:
- Every informational page has a clearly marked next step (a comparison, a top list, a sign-up route).
- Top lists are reachable from the main menu in one click.
- Nothing that is not on the journey — no unrelated widgets, no decorative sidebars — competes for attention.
Reusable lesson: write the two or three most common visitor journeys as sentences before opening WordPress. Every template decision is then a test: does this help or interrupt the journey?
Decision 2: Theme choice — “neat and clean” over feature lists
He did not have a favourite theme, and said so. His view was that any well-built, clean theme can be adjusted to the job if you know your way around WordPress, and that time spent learning the platform pays back more than time spent theme-shopping. He built on a Canyon theme because it met the “neat and clean” bar and stayed out of the way.
For the same brief today we would point to Danfe if the site needs a branded homepage with sections in front of the content, or Business Path for a more editorial, content-first structure. Both are translation-ready, which matters for the next decision.
He also noted the one feature he relied on most as a non-designer: revisions. Being able to restore the previous version of a page removed the fear of experimenting. If you are new to WordPress, make sure your host has not disabled revisions (WP_POST_REVISIONS in wp-config.php).
Decision 3: Single-language, single-market setup
A Dutch-only site should be configured as one, not as a multilingual site with one language filled in. The settings that matter:
| Setting | Value | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Settings → General → Site Language | Nederlands (nl_NL) | Sets html lang=”nl-NL”, the only language signal a single-language site needs |
| Timezone / date format | Amsterdam, d-m-Y | Local formats in every template |
| Permalinks | /%postname%/ with Dutch slugs | Keep the words native; WordPress handles accents |
| Multilingual plugin | None | Empty alternate languages split authority and create thin duplicates |
| Yoast → Site representation | Organization, legal Dutch trading name, KvK number on About page | Local trust and entity signals |
| Domain | .com with Search Console international targeting, or .nl | Either works; consistency matters more |
Trust pages — about, contact with a Dutch phone format, privacy naming the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens — were built as real pages in the footer menu, not afterthoughts. Dutch users check for them.
Decision 4: Speed budget set by the content plan
The technical constraints he listed were page loading time, image weight, and the sheer amount of text the site planned to publish. Those three interact: a site publishing long, image-heavy comparison pages every week cannot afford a theme that adds weight to each one. The approach:
- Images resized to their display width before upload, converted to WebP, with descriptive Dutch filenames and alt text.
- One caching plugin, server-level if the host offers it.
- No page builder — every page is posts and blocks, so the per-page overhead is the theme’s CSS and nothing else.
- Comparison tables in the core Table block rather than a table plugin with its own framework.
- Fonts self-hosted, two weights.
He also observed that Google measures user behaviour, so a design visitors like and a design that ranks tend to be the same design. That is the practical case for following UX conventions rather than inventing them: familiar layouts get used, and usage is what the ranking systems see.
Decision 5: Publishing cadence as a competitive weapon
“As an affiliate your work is never done” — the industry changes constantly and the site that reports a change first wins the query. In WordPress terms that meant an editorial setup optimised for updates rather than launches:
- A visible “last updated” date in the post template, and a habit of actually updating.
- Top lists built as single pages that are edited, not re-published, so their URL keeps its history.
- Categories fixed early; tags used sparingly. Restructuring taxonomies later means redirects.
- A small team of experienced writers who know the audience — his main differentiator, and not something a theme provides.
What he wanted that WordPress could not yet do
Asked what he missed, he said nothing — but described a wish: a top list ordered by current offer value, updated in real time. In 2026 this is achievable without custom development: store the offer data in a custom post type or a spreadsheet, pull it in with a block that queries on render, and cache for a few minutes. Plugins such as WP All Import on a schedule, or a small custom block calling a JSON endpoint, both work. The lesson is that “the technology isn’t there yet” on WordPress usually means “no one has wired the existing pieces together yet”.
His advice for people stuck choosing a theme
Envision what you want from the site first. If that is hard, browse existing sites and themes — including to find out what you do not want — and learn from other people’s mistakes. Then pick something clean and spend the saved time learning WordPress. It is intuitive, but there are too many options to be good at it immediately, and it is worth the investment. We keep a list of content-heavy sites running WordPress for exactly this kind of browsing.
Which Canyon theme fits a single-market niche site
- Danfe — branded homepage plus blog, translation-ready, no builder dependency.
- Business Path — content-first business layout for sites that publish weekly.
- Bloge — if the site is purely editorial with no homepage sections.
More in the business theme category.