99.co Insider
99.co is one of Singapore's best-known property portals. We built the WordPress platform behind its Insider blog, then rebuilt it in 2022 when the editorial operation outgrew the original.
Chillybin built the 99.co Insider blog on WordPress, then rebuilt it on the Genesis Framework in 2022, giving the portal an editorial platform its own team runs day to day.
What we were solving
99.co is the property portal most Singaporeans reach for when they search for an HDB flat, a condo or a rental. The portal is a custom-engineered search product. Its growth engine is content: the 99.co Insider blog, publishing guides, market analysis and neighbourhood deep-dives that pull buyers in through search long before they are ready to enquire.
99.co needed Insider on a platform its editors could run without engineering support. We built the original blog on WordPress, with a Mailchimp integration for newsletter capture.
By 2022, the blog had outgrown that first build. Insider had its own SEO leads, an ad traffic manager, editors, writers and a Core Web Vitals specialist, and the platform underneath needed to match. 99.co brought us back to rebuild it. Success meant a faster, more flexible editorial platform that felt like part of 99.co, gave editors control of the front page, and migrated years of ranking content without losing a position.
How we tackled it
A blog that behaves like part of the portal
Insider had to feel like 99.co, not a WordPress site bolted on the side. We developed a custom Genesis Framework child theme with Tailwind CSS. A two-tiered header matches the main 99.co navigation on top and carries the blog’s own categories and search below, and the footer mirrors the live portal. 99.co’s in-house team created the design in Figma. Our job was to translate it faithfully into responsive templates across five breakpoints.
Editors run the front page, not developers
Custom post types and taxonomies handle categories, sub-categories, authors, tags and buying personas (the same reader segments 99.co uses commercially), each with its own landing page. Options panels let editors feature and recommend content across layouts without touching code. Persona tagging sits in WordPress’s Quick Edit screen, so classifying an article takes seconds. Because Insider carries advertising, AdSense placements were built into the templates rather than retrofitted, alongside the Mailchimp newsletter capture from the first build.
Migrate the rankings, not just the posts
Years of content and the organic traffic it earns were the whole point of the platform, so migration was treated as an SEO exercise. 99.co’s content lead mapped every URL; we managed the redirects while categories were restructured and consolidated. Launch went through staging with a UAT bug list worked jointly by both teams, and a rollback plan kept the old site on standby. The site went live at the end of June 2022, with hands-on training for the editorial team a fortnight later.
What we delivered
99.co now publishes Insider on the platform we built, four years after the rebuild. The portal’s own editors run the front page, the personas and the ad slots day to day, without a developer in the loop, and the content kept ranking after the switch. The relationship carried on well past launch: we were still handling Insider change requests and refinements for the 99.co team into 2025, three years after the rebuild shipped.
What we learned
Big-brand work is mostly about fitting in. 99.co has its own engineers, designers and SEO team. The value of an outside WordPress specialist is doing the one thing the in-house stack doesn’t cover, to their standards, and integrating with everything around it. Matching the portal’s header and footer pixel for pixel mattered more than any flourish we could have added.
A blog serving a high-traffic product is infrastructure, not marketing decoration. When a platform earns its keep through organic traffic, the migration plan is the project.
Ranking exceptionally well with organic traffic, the site is a foundation of the digital marketing platform implemented by 99.co and one that we are absolutely delighted with.
