New web design for football club 1.FC Kaiserslautern

1. FC Kaiserslautern is one of Germany’s most storied football clubs. Its history dates back to the year 1900. Acting on a recommendation, 1. FCK approached Sebastian Klammer Grafikdesign Berlin in 2017 to have their website—which had visibly begun to show its age—revamped. It was an immensely interesting project, though one that, as it turned out, was beset by a number of challenges. For many years, 1. FCK had operated its own website, which was built on the Typo3 Content Management System. Over time, this site had been continuously expanded and adapted with new features; consequently, numerous custom-developed components had been integrated into the site alongside the core Typo3 system. These additions later led to issues regarding content editing, as well as the website’s display and overall performance. A fundamental overhaul became inevitable.

Following an extensive initial planning phase, the decision was made to rebuild the website from scratch on WordPress—complete with a new, modern, and responsive web design. This design was intended not only to improve the site’s user-friendliness but also to streamline its structure and integrate additional external sources, such as a Twitter feed.

A particular challenge of this project lay in the necessity of migrating all existing news content from the old website to the new one—a volume amounting to tens of thousands of articles. To meet this requirement, a custom script was specifically developed to extract the entire archive of news items from Typo3 and import them into WordPress—including correct categorization, as well as the transfer of all metadata, tags, images, and links.

Furthermore, 1. FCK sought to segment its previously cluttered website into several distinct, topic-specific microsites—specifically, sections dedicated to offers for children, youth development, and the club’s dining and service areas. Consequently, the new WordPress-based website was set up within a multisite environment designed to enable the club to create new sub-sites with relative autonomy and manage their content independently.

Following extensive work spanning several months—encompassing both web design and content creation—the new website for 1. FC Kaiserslautern went live in the autumn of 2017.