Editorial Guidelines & Content Standards of HQ GmbH

Since 1994, we have been designing, developing and scaling business-critical IT infrastructures and digital commerce platforms for upper mid-sized companies and corporations throughout the DACH region and, more recently, from Spain across Southern Europe as well. In enterprise IT and e-commerce, there is no room for half-knowledge – incorrect technical advice can lead to critical downtime, serious data loss or major revenue losses.

For this reason, we do not operate our specialist articles, e-commerce tips and case studies merely as a marketing tool, but as a well-founded extension of our daily, vendor-independent consulting services. Our goal is to make reliable, field-tested and technologically in-depth knowledge available to companies without restriction.

1. The “Who”: In-House Authorship & Certified Expertise

At HQ GmbH, there are no anonymous ghostwriters, external agencies or outsourced content farms.

  • Certified Specialists: Every technical guide, every code snippet and every strategic recommendation is written exclusively by our permanent in-house experts.
  • Genuine Practical Experience: Our authors – including Managing Director Mathias Goldhan, Head of Development Daniel Vogel and Senior Integration Architect Christopher Einenkel – work daily at the heart of complex IT projects. They write about technological challenges they have successfully solved in real customer environments.

2. The “How”: Our Multi-Stage Quality Assurance Process

Before an article, performance guide or architecture report is published on our website, it undergoes a strict quality review:

  • Fact-Checking & Code Validation: All included scripts, server configurations (e.g. for Redis, OPcache or Varnish) and system recommendations are tested in advance in our staging environments for currency, performance and security.
  • Four-Eyes Principle (Peer Review): No contribution is published without review. An article written by a developer is always approved for content and technical accuracy by a Lead Engineer or management. This reviewer is transparently identified through the “Reviewed by” attribute.

3. Transparency in the Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

As a technology company, we develop forward-looking systems for our customers, such as AI-based product advisors and intelligent assistants for product creation, merchandise handling or automated incoming-goods inspection. Naturally, we also use these modern technologies internally to make our processes efficient.

However, we use Natural Language Processing (NLP), Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI assistants exclusively as supporting tools – comparable to a typewriter for authors or a notebook for creating content in WordPress. We never blindly trust AI systems and at no time allow complete websites to be generated without review or purely automatically.

Our iron rule is: AI is a tool, not an author.

4. Currency & Continuous Audits

The digital economy and the e-commerce world evolve rapidly. A hosting setup or migration path that was best practice two years ago may already have been superseded by more efficient technologies today.

  • Regular Updates: We regularly audit our core articles and technical guides in order to adapt them to new software releases (e.g. Shopware updates) or changed security standards.
  • Transparent Dates: We openly display the original publication date as well as the date of the most recent content update in our metadata and frontend.

5. Technological Objectivity & 30 Years of System Experience

Although we are a certified Shopware partner, we maintain absolute technological objectivity in all our consulting. This vendor-independent perspective is the direct result of more than 30 years of market experience (see also our company history).

We master systems such as Magento / Adobe Commerce, Shopify, WooCommerce, OXID eSales, plentymarkets and many other leading shop systems down to core-code level. As early as 2001, we operated our own SaaS systems such as auction houses and web shops – long before the term “SaaS” was even coined (historical evidence: arimex.de in the Wayback Machine). At their respective peaks, we developed tailor-made enterprise shops, have accompanied Shopware from the very beginning, and thanks to this deep expertise are able to resolve critical software errors within a few hours during emergency assignments through our own programming.

This in-depth experience is not limited to e-commerce. In the content management systems field, we have also accompanied platforms such as WordPress, Joomla and TYPO3 from their beginnings. We have implemented complex TYPO3 projects since 2001 and have offered hosting optimized precisely for the specific requirements of this CMS since 2004 (historical evidence: best-webhoster.com & best-webhost.de). In addition, over the past decades we have rescued and cleaned up around 1,000 WordPress and Joomla installations affected by hacking attacks for our customers. At peak times, we developed our own scripts for this purpose, which cleaned affected sites in record time and protected our customers preventively.

Because we know the specific strengths, weaknesses and architectural limits of all these systems from decades of practical experience, we can advise you completely objectively. We do not publish sponsored contributions (paid content) from third parties. When we recommend a system, plugin or hosting architecture, we do so exclusively because it has passed our strict internal quality and load tests.

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