PlastSurgeon

PlastSurgeon – from WordPress to its own platform

PlastSurgeon is an international learning platform created by Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, German and Swiss plastic surgeons: a handbook, courses, MCQs and surgical cases to help patients around the world.

The challenge

The platform ran on WordPress, where courses, quizzes, membership and case upload were each a separate plugin – an LMS, a membership plugin and a form plugin. It worked, but every new idea had to be squeezed into what the plugins allowed, and each part had to be kept up to date on its own. At the same time, PlastSurgeon needed to work together with its sister sites JPBRS, PlastNurse and SurgAI, all part of Nordic Surgery Lab.

The solution

In 2026 I rebuilt the platform from scratch as a custom Next.js app and brought all the content across: the handbook with more than 450 topics, 79 courses, 235 quizzes and more than 2,500 multiple-choice questions – keeping the courses' structure of modules, lessons and quizzes.

• Handbook: A chapter tree with illustrated chapters across plastic and reconstructive surgery.
• Courses and MCQs: Self-paced courses with progress tracking, certificates and an interactive quiz with explanations, scored on the server.
• Cases: Step-by-step photo and video cases, plus submission of your own cases.
• Clinical tools: Free calculators and scores such as burn size, maximum local anaesthetic dose, Z-plasty, BSA and the Caprini score.
• Editorial tooling: Instructors edit the handbook and courses with drafts, version history and granular roles.
• Membership: Premium content for members, built for payment via Stripe.
• Many languages and a shared login: The site is available in a wide range of languages, and Plast ID gives the same login across PlastSurgeon, JPBRS and SurgAI.
• GDPR: Users can export their data and delete their account themselves.

The result

The old URLs were carried over with 394 redirects, so existing links and Google results still lead to the right place. In July–September 2026 – the period in which the switch happened – plastsurgeon.com received 4,901 clicks and almost 1 million impressions from Google. Brand-new pages are already pulling in traffic: the Spanish version of the burn size calculator got 96 clicks in the period.

Lighthouse on the front page, mobile, measured on 1 October 2026:

The old site was measured at its current staging address. The SEO score is left out because the staging address is deliberately closed to search engines.

My assessment of the biggest gain: there is no longer a layer of plugins that each have to be updated and secured separately. The features are built around how the editorial team actually works, the whole suite shares one login, and the client has full control over its data.

What the client says

Technology

Next.js and TypeScript with PostgreSQL and Drizzle, Better Auth for login, next-intl for language versions, Tiptap as the editor and Stripe for memberships. Structured data, hreflang and an enriched sitemap make the content discoverable in every language.