Theology Matters

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The brief

Theology Matters is a Reformed and Presbyterian publication run by Dr. Richard E. Burnett. It produces a free quarterly journal, runs an annual theology conference, and operates an institute for theological education. The content operation is serious: multiple authors per issue, a growing article archive, conference sessions with individual speaker pages, and a journal edition system that needed to work like a real publication database rather than a simple blog.

The site they had was built on a dated Frames Framework theme. Updating it required editing raw PHP and CSS. The editorial team had no path to add a new journal edition, update a faculty listing, or create a conference page without developer involvement. The rebuild needed to make all of that self-service without sacrificing the editorial weight the publication had earned.

The approach

WordPress was the right platform for this kind of content operation. The editorial team already knew it, the archive needed real taxonomy management, and the publishing cadence (quarterly issues plus recurring conference prep) did not call for a headless CMS with a separate Studio interface.

We built with Bricks Builder for precise visual control and used ACF Pro to structure the seven content types the site actually has: articles, journal editions, conference sessions, speakers, courses, faculty, and board references. Each type has its own fields, its own archive template, and its own relationships to the others. An article knows which edition it belongs to, which authors contributed, and which conference sessions it relates to. That structure makes the archive genuinely useful for readers doing research, not just browsing.

For audio, we wired in ElevenLabs Audio Native at the template level. Every article now has a professional-sounding audio version without any production overhead on the editorial side. The publication does not think about audio; it just exists on every piece.

The editorial design system took its cues from academic press publishing: a cream and oxblood palette, Newsreader serif type, article tables of contents with scroll-spy tracking, drop caps, reading-time estimates, and Google Scholar citation metadata so the articles are properly indexed for academic search.

What we built

The full build, including the pieces above:

• Fourteen page and post templates covering the full content architecture
• Seven custom post types with ACF field groups: articles, journal editions, conference sessions, speakers, courses, faculty, board references
• Journal edition taxonomy so each issue can be browsed as a distinct publication entity with PDF download
• Article archive with sort, filter, and pagination across the full back catalog
• Author archive pages with topic filtering across each author’s body of work
• Multi-author article support with co-author attribution built into the template
• Conference section with session listings, speaker pages, and recap pages for past events
• ElevenLabs Audio Native wired at the template level so audio appears on every article automatically
• RefTagger integration for Scripture citation tooltips, so biblical references in prose expand to the full verse text on hover
• Article table of contents with scroll-spy so readers can jump within long pieces
• Google Scholar metadata on every article for proper academic indexing
• RankMath SEO configuration tuned to theological search terms
• 73-section custom CSS architecture with BEM naming for reliable long-term maintenance