Perform Europe WordPress Development: The Challenge
Perform Europe supports cross-border performing arts collaborations focused on fairer, greener and more inclusive touring. Its digital platform needed to serve several groups at once: organisations exploring the programme, professionals looking for project partners, applicants preparing complex funding proposals and administrators reviewing registrations and submissions.
Beyond an editable public website, the challenge was to connect account approvals, professional profiles, matchmaking requests and a detailed grant application process. The team also needed dependable email notifications, export and review tools, and reporting as platform activity increased.
Our WordPress and ACF Development Approach
Custom website templates and ACF content management
We developed a custom WordPress experience using ACF to manage structured page content and reusable elements. The work covered public information pages, Open Call content, news and stories, selected projects, resources and responsive content templates. Editors could update site information without rebuilding the underlying layouts. The website's visual direction was supplied by the design team; Stafflancer's contribution centered on implementation and technical functionality.
Stafflancer Lead Forms and the grant application engine
At the heart of the platform, we developed and customized the PE Forms system for registration and grant applications. It supported multi-step forms, validation, conditional fields and repeatable sections for project partners and artistic work. Applicants could work through eligibility, partnership information, the artistic proposal, fairness, communications, budgets and supporting material.
The application workflow also included file uploads, saving and resuming drafts, submission management, PDF and data export, and administrative review tools. These requirements went well beyond a standard contact form. The Perform Europe implementation was tailored to the programme; it should not be confused with every feature of Stafflancer's later standalone Lead Forms product.
Perform Europe WordPress Development: Matchmaking and Accounts
The project encompassed user registration, profile approval and the custom matchmaking experience. Approved performing arts professionals and organisations could publish profiles, search by relevant disciplines and interests, and identify potential cross-border collaborators.
Quick Match supported collaboration requests and notifications. When a request was accepted, participating users could access each other's contact details. Profile visibility controls and Open Call collaboration badges helped people find partners while managing their information. These user journeys were integrated with the WordPress account and approval processes.
CRM, notifications, analytics and administration
The work included integration with Pipedrive, email notifications and delivery troubleshooting, custom administrative tools, and reporting for matchmaking activity. We also worked on application record management, form submissions, approval states and exports, alongside analytics views for platform activity and partner connections.
Performance, Security and Ongoing Engineering
As usage increased, development extended into database-query investigations, directory caching, form reliability and recovery, user-permission checks, responsive refinements and regression testing. These were iterative engineering tasks, including investigations of slow queries and occasional server errors. We do not present them as proof that every production performance problem was permanently eliminated.
The Results: A Platform Used Across Europe
The Perform Europe WordPress development project supported an online programme combining content management, user accounts, matchmaking and digital grant applications. According to Perform Europe's official update dated 22 October 2026, its third Open Call received 685 proposals from 41 Creative Europe countries, and more than 5,160 professionals and organisations registered on the matchmaking platform. These figures show the scale of platform use, not an independently measured increase attributable solely to Stafflancer.
From the public ACF website to PE Forms and matchmaking, the project demonstrates how custom WordPress development can support complex administrative and collaborative workflows beyond a conventional marketing website.
Explore more Stafflancer development case studies, or discuss your WordPress or custom application project.
Platform usage figures: Perform Europe's official Open Call update, 22 October 2026.
