Web apps2023
Northbound Journal
A reading-first publishing platform with memberships for an independent outdoor quarterly.
- Client
- Northbound Journal, Edinburgh
- Role
- Full-stack developer, membership platform
- Year
- 2023
- Services
- Publishing platform
- Memberships
- Headless CMS
- Accessibility
- Stack
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- Payload CMS
- Stripe
- PostgreSQL
Overview
Northbound is an independent quarterly about walking, weather and the people who live with both. The team wanted to publish its long reads online without losing print subscribers, and to stop managing memberships in three different tools.
The challenge
Stories had to be quick to publish from the editors' existing workflow, comfortable to read on any screen and partly reserved for members, without a paywall that broke search engines, sharing or screen readers.
The approach
I built a reading-focused site on a headless CMS with a membership layer on Stripe, so print and digital subscribers share one account. Member stories are rendered on the server with a metered preview, which keeps them indexable and accessible, and editors publish straight from the CMS with live previews.
Outcome
The result
The platform launched alongside issue twenty-one. Digital memberships grew steadily through the following year, and the editors now spend their time on stories instead of spreadsheets.
- members in twelve months
- +58%
- average reading time per story
- 4 min
- account for print and digital readers
- 1
It feels like the magazine we always meant to make, online and in print. Readers tell us they slow down the moment they open a story.
