An online magazine website built around issues, not a feed

Issues or a continuous feed

Big publications publish continuously. Small ones usually do better by issue: a theme, a set date and a table of contents give readers a reason to come back and give contributors a deadline. A hybrid works too, with issues as the backbone and occasional pieces between them. Decide which before you design anything, because it changes what the home page leads with.

Two collections: issues and articles

In Anticode, use two CMS collections. The issues collection holds the number, theme, date and an editor's letter. The articles collection holds the headline, standfirst, author, section, the issue it belongs to, and the body. Each entry is served as its own page at /<collection>/<slug>, and each collection's page lists its entries, so every article has a stable address you can share and every issue has a contents page. Entries are edited in the dashboard, so editors can publish without touching the design.

Add an authors collection if you have regular contributors, with a short bio and links. Credit is part of what you can offer writers when you can't pay much.

An editorial design system

Anticode builds every site in one of seven design systems, each with one font family and one action colour. For a digital magazine website, Editorial (Geist) is the obvious starting point: it's built for long reading and clear hierarchy. Luxury (Jost) suits fashion and culture titles; Brutalist (Archivo) suits an online zine website with a louder, cut-and-paste voice; Swiss (Inter Tight) suits architecture and design writing.

• Comfortable line length. Long-form pieces need a narrow text column, not full-width paragraphs.
• A strong standfirst under each headline, which does double duty as the summary in lists.
• Pull quotes and section breaks to pace long pieces; ask for them in the build.
• Real photography or commissioned illustration. Upload it to the build; stock mood images from the curated Unsplash library work for section headers but not for reporting.

Taking pitches

An indie magazine website lives on its contributors. Publish clear guidelines: what you cover, what you don't, length, rates if any, and how long you take to reply. Then take pitches through a custom form tied to a site function, with fields such as name, email, the issue or theme, a working headline, a pitch of 150 words, and links to previous work, up to 30 plain-text fields. The thank-you page can tell writers when to expect an answer. Forms don't accept file uploads, so ask for links to drafts rather than attachments.

Send pitches to Notion or Airtable if your editors track commissions there, or to a Slack channel for a small team. A newsletter form, sending sign-ups to Mailchimp or Kit, is how readers hear a new issue is out.

Why there's no paywall

Published Anticode pages are public, and design-engine sites have no visitor accounts or member areas, so there's no paywall, metered access or subscriber-only articles. That's a partial fit for magazines that fund themselves through subscriptions. Options that do work:

• Free to read, supported by readers: a support or membership button pointing at a payment link from your own provider.
• Print or PDF issues for sale: buy buttons that open your account's one payment link, pointed at a product list on Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, Shopify or another provider.
• Sponsorship of an issue or section, with a clear label on the page.
• A dedicated membership platform for paid content, linked from your Anticode site.

Building it

Describe the title: "an online magazine website for a quarterly about food and memory, with issues and articles collections, an authors page, pitch guidelines and a pitch form". The Architect asks up to three questions where the answer changes the build and shows a plan. Version history keeps the most recent saves, up to a number set by your plan, which is useful when several editors work on an issue launch.

Limits

• No paywall, subscriber logins or member-only articles.
• No comments or RSS feed, and no scheduled publishing; publish entries on launch day.
• No embedded audio or video players, and no video on the pages. Link to the recording on another site.
• English only. The builder and the sites it makes are in English.

Questions people ask

Can several editors work on the site?

Yes, in a Team workspace. Members can edit content but can't delete projects or take sites down.

Can I sell a printed edition?

Yes, with a buy button pointing at your shop or payment provider. Stock and shipping are handled there.

Can I move to another platform later?

Projects export as HTML or a Next.js project, and the project file format is open. Check an export early if a move is likely.