Front Studio

Humans make the best homepages. Now you can make one for every reader.

The best homepage has always been the one an editor builds by hand. The problem was never quality — it was scale. What if you could keep the judgment, but remove the bottleneck?

Humans make the best homepages. Now you can make one for every reader.

Editors still make the best homepages

We believe this deeply: a good editor makes a better homepage than any algorithm.

They know when a story leads. They understand when it's time to break the pattern. They feel the rhythm of the day — what matters at 7 in the morning versus what matters at 3 in the afternoon. They carry years of instinct and reader knowledge that no model can replicate.

No algorithm understands your readers the way your editors do. This is your greatest competitive advantage and what sets you apart from social media.

The editorially curated homepage is, and always has been, the gold standard. It's the version you'd put in a time capsule to show what your newsroom cared about on a given day. It's also the campfire — the place where your entire audience gathers to find out what matters most, every single day.

The impossible wish list

Now imagine you could build the perfect homepage — not just one, but one for every reader who walks through the door.

A homepage for first-time visitors arriving at 1 PM
A different one for someone who was here 10 minutes ago
Another for the reader who checked in this morning but not since
One for subscribers who read everything about finance
One for readers who never click on sports
One for the person visiting your site for the very first time

Each of these readers has a completely different context. They need a different hierarchy, a different mix of fresh and important, a different balance of depth and breadth. The ideal homepage for each of them is genuinely different.

The problem has never been quality. It's that humans don't scale.

What happens when you can only build one

When the entire newsroom shares a single homepage, compromises are inevitable. And they always tilt the same direction.

The homepage ends up optimised for the readers who visit most often — the loyal, high-frequency audience. Stories rotate quickly to keep the click-through rate high for people who've already seen everything. New content gets pushed to the top every hour, sometimes every few minutes.

The unintended consequence

Consider what this means for a reader who visits your site for the first time at 1 PM.

The morning's most important stories — the ones that defined the day — are already gone from the top of the page. They've been pushed down or replaced by fresher, lighter content. The homepage no longer tells the story of the day. It tells the story of the last 30 minutes.

That first-time visitor sees a homepage that wasn't built for them. Because it wasn't.

This is the fundamental tension: the homepage can serve loyal readers or new readers well. It can't do both at the same time — not when there's only one version.

Front Studio: every variant, still your voice

Front Studio changes the equation. Instead of asking "which single homepage do we build?", the question becomes: "what are the rules — and who gets what?"

You still make all the editorial decisions. You decide what's important. You decide what leads. You set the priorities and the guardrails. But Front Studio takes those decisions and creates the right version for each reader — automatically.

Returning after 8 hours? The day's most important stories are still at the top — even if they were published this morning.
Back after 10 minutes? What you've already seen moves down. Fresh content and deeper reads move up.
First-time visitor? A broader, more accessible homepage that tells the story of the day — not just the last update cycle.
Subscriber who skips sports? Sports gets deprioritised. The content they actually engage with gets the prime position.

Think of it as having a thousand layout designers — each following your instructions exactly, but for a different reader.

You never lose control

This is the part that makes Front Studio fundamentally different from algorithmic feeds and recommendation engines. The editor doesn't hand over the keys — they get a bigger team.

Pin any story to the top — for everyone, or for specific segments
Breaking news? Override everything. Take full manual control instantly
See exactly why each story is placed where it is — full transparency
Define what the system optimises for: engagement, conversions, breadth — your call

The algorithm doesn't decide what matters. You do. Front Studio simply makes sure your decisions reach every reader in the most effective way possible.

What changes when every reader gets a homepage that fits

The effects are concrete and measurable:

First-time visitors see the story of the day — not leftovers
Loyal readers get fresh content, not stories they've already read
📈
Important journalism reaches more people, for longer
👥
Different audiences feel like the homepage was made for them

But perhaps the most important change is cultural. Editors stop compromising between reader groups. They stop asking "who are we building this for?" — because the answer is: everyone.

Humans make the best homepages.
Now you can make one for every reader.