Forbes: Forbes Custom

Flexible, Design-Driven Editorial Platform for Custom Brand Content

Overview

Forbes Custom is Forbes’ branded content division, responsible for producing high-quality, design-forward editorial experiences for partners and advertisers. Gigareef partnered with the Forbes Custom team and Born & Raised to build a WordPress platform that balanced creative flexibility with editorial consistency, allowing authors to easily create rich, visually engaging articles without sacrificing structure or control.

Project background

Forbes Custom required a platform that could support highly designed editorial layouts while remaining intuitive for non-technical authors. Standard WordPress editing tools were too limiting for the type of content the team needed to produce, and overly custom solutions risked slowing down publishing workflows. The challenge was to create a custom editor experience that empowered authors to build complex layouts efficiently while preserving brand standards and performance.

Gigareef collaborated closely with Forbes Custom’s design team, translating detailed designs into a scalable, production-ready WordPress implementation.

Solution

Gigareef delivered a custom WordPress platform tailored to Forbes Custom’s editorial needs, with a focus on flexibility, usability, and design fidelity. Key elements included:

Custom Editor Experience

We built a layout-driven editing system that allowed authors to create visually rich articles using structured, reusable components, making it easy to feature content without custom development for each piece.

Design-to-Code Implementation

Working directly from designer-provided files, we translated Forbes Custom’s designs into clean, maintainable code, ensuring the live site matched the intended visual and editorial standards.

Flexible Content Components

Modular content blocks enabled consistent layouts while still giving authors creative freedom to showcase branded content in varied and engaging ways.

Performance and Stability

Hosted on Pantheon, the platform was built for reliability, scalability, and editorial efficiency, supporting Forbes Custom’s ongoing publishing demands.

Technology

WordPress

Pantheon

Outcomes

The Forbes Custom platform provided the editorial team with the flexibility they needed to produce high-impact branded content while maintaining consistency and control. By combining a custom editor experience with a design-driven WordPress implementation, Gigareef delivered a solution that streamlined publishing workflows and supported Forbes Custom’s evolving content strategy.

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