WordPress Football Club Redesign

I am preparing to relaunch derrycityfc.net and need a WordPress expert who can give our League of Ireland club the same polished feel supporters see on modern UK League 2 and National League sites such as Salford City, Grimsby, Exeter, Chesterfield and Tranmere Rovers.

Scope
• Rebuild the entire site on WordPress, working with a free or very low-cost theme that still delivers a modern, sleek aesthetic.
• Migrate every article, gallery and historical page currently online, then set up fresh sections so we can highlight Community projects, the Academy, Under-age sides and our growing Women’s team.
• Structure the new main navigation around News, Teams, Shop, Tickets and Community to make those areas immediately accessible on both desktop and mobile.
• Configure Sportspress (and any companion plugins you recommend) so the homepage automatically shows latest news updates, upcoming match schedules and featured merchandise without manual duplication.
• Create a clean, obvious link-out to our separate Shopify store so fans can move from the main site to the full club shop in one click yet remain confident they are still “with” Derry City.

Key deliverables
1. WordPress theme installed, branded and fully responsive.
2. All legacy content ported and checked.
3. New pages laid out with placeholder text/imagery where our team will drop final copy.
4. Sportspress configured for fixtures, results, player stats and league tables.
5. Homepage widgets or blocks for news, upcoming matches and merchandise.
6. Menu and URL structure that passes SEO best practice tests.
7. Launch assistance to switch from the old site with zero downtime.

Acceptance criteria
• Site loads comfortably on current mobile and tablet break-points.
• Core Web Vitals in the green on Google PageSpeed for the homepage once live.
• No missing images or 404s after migration.
• Shopify hand-off tested and working in both directions.

If you have recent football or sports portfolio pieces, especially where you leveraged Sportspress, please share them when you respond. I am ready to start as soon as I find the right partner.