Client project
Diary of the Tsaritsa, WordPress Platform for a Women's Transformation Show
Tech stack
Services
- →WordPress site build, city-stage landing pages and participant profiles (custom post types)
- →Custom voting plugin with 5-layer fraud protection and audit log
- →Online registration with auto-confirmation and city attribution
- →SEO architecture, city-specific pages with event schema markup
- →Admin panel: real-time vote leaderboard and one-click tally export
Deliverables
- ✓WordPress platform with multi-city content management
- ✓Fraud-proof voting plugin (standalone, theme-agnostic)
- ✓Vote audit log with signed export
- ✓City-stage SEO landing pages with event schema
- ✓Participant profile system with shareable voting URLs
Client
Konstantin Anikeev's project studio. "Diary of the Tsaritsa" is a multi-stage women's transformation contest running in over 40 cities across Russia and CIS, covering self-development workshops, horseback riding, arts, and a Grand Final ceremony with a 150,000 ₽ prize. Participants aged 25, 75.
The Situation Before
- Registration was handled entirely by phone, with no form, no confirmation, no funnel
- Voting between stages was done informally in chat groups, results were disputed, hard to audit, and easy to manipulate
- No website indexed by search engines. The project existed only on social media and word of mouth
- City coordinators managed their stage independently with no shared system, creating inconsistent participant experience
- The Grand Final required coordinators to manually compile results from 40+ city stages
What the Client Needed
A platform that could accept and confirm registrations, run transparent voting across city stages and the Grand Final, and make the project discoverable through organic search, without requiring technical involvement from city coordinators.
Why WordPress
The team runs multiple event projects in parallel. A shared WordPress stack means any coordinator can update their city's event page, add participant profiles, and pull vote tallies without a developer in the loop. Alternatives considered:
- Tilda or website builder: rejected. No ability to manage custom post types for participant profiles or extend with server-side voting logic.
- Custom framework: rejected. Would require ongoing developer maintenance for content updates; unsuitable for a multi-city coordinator team.
- WordPress + custom plugin: chosen. Content is managed by the client; the voting plugin is standalone and survives theme updates or redesigns.
Voting Plugin: How It Works
Voting in a contest like this is an attack surface. Motivated participants can organise coordinated voting campaigns. We built a plugin with layered defenses:
| Layer | Method | Prevents |
|---|---|---|
| 1, Nonce | Single-use server token per page render | Raw POST automation |
| 2, Cookie | Signed per-participant cookie with expiry | Casual repeat voters |
| 3, Fingerprint | Browser fingerprint (canvas, UA, screen) | Cookie-clearing workaround |
| 4, IP rate limit | Sliding window per /24 subnet | VPN rotation, shared networks |
| 5, Velocity | Anomaly flag on spike above threshold/hour | Organised ballot stuffing |
Each participant has a custom post profile with a voting widget. Votes are stored server-side with a full audit log, timestamp, fingerprint hash, IP subnet, and outcome. The organiser can export a signed tally in one click from the admin panel at any point during a voting period.
SEO Architecture
The project targets women searching for self-development events, beauty pageants, and transformation contests in specific cities. We structured content around city-stage landing pages, each city has its own indexed page with an event schedule, participant profiles, and a registration form. This creates natural long-tail coverage across 40+ city-specific queries without duplicating content.
Schema markup was added for events (date, location, organiser) so Google can surface city stages directly in search results with rich snippets.
Before → After
Key Metrics
Site Preview
Hero, "Become the Tsaritsa of Our Time"
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