Our Work

Services Provided

Founded in 2008 by Howard Kroplick, Vanderbilt Cup Races is a highly regarded history website and vintage racing resource, with an extensive collection of information, photos, and statistics. The website is a veritable treasure trove for automotive history enthusiasts and vintage car lovers alike.

Hop Studios has supported the site through ongoing maintenance and several significant upgrades. In 2020, we moved the CMS from ExpressionEngine 2.7.3 to 5.3, updating all add-ons along the way and replacing tools that were outdated or no longer maintained. The project also included migrating hosting to Nexcess, transitioning from Mint Analytics to Google Analytics, and improving comment moderation. 

Several smaller changes were made to improve usability and content management, including:

• Letting registered users edit their own comments
• Simplifying the home page slideshow editing process
• Creating a method to conditionally relate content across the site
• Customizing the appearance of Google Custom Search results

Since the first upgrade in 2020, we’ve provided ongoing website management for the Vanderbilt site to ensure continued performance, functionality, and overall user experience.

In 2026, we tackled another major upgrade — moving from EE5 to EE7. To protect the live site throughout the process, we built a staging environment where we could test every change before it went live. As with prior updates, EE7 has rolled out advanced built-in functionality and editing tools to optimize site performance and usability for both site visitors and administrators

As part of the upgrade, we updated all ExpressionEngine add-ons to their latest versions, including Channel Polls, Freeform, Matrix, Playa, and some of our own Hop add-ons, Hop Deeploy Helper, Hop 404 Reporter, and Hop Introvert. We also replaced several with native EE7 features (Imagesizer, CE String, and CE Image) and removed any unused components to streamline the site and improve overall functionality and efficiency.

We’ve worked with this site through multiple upgrades since 2020 and continue to provide ongoing maintenance and support. If you’re curious about the history of the Vanderbilt Cup Races, we highly recommend visiting this unique, Webby-award winning website.