A weekly news desk and newsletter for an award-winning Southend United podcast.
The Talking Shrimpers Podcast covers Southend United week in, week out, and won Silver for Best Non-League Club Podcast at the 2026 Non-League Bible Awards in its debut season. The show lived on YouTube and socials; it needed a home of its own that treats fan media like proper journalism.
A static-first Astro site in the club’s navy and gold: every episode in one place, fixtures, news, and long-form editorial set in a serif article layout built for reading, not skimming. The centrepiece is a full club-by-club National League season preview written and researched to a journalistic standard.
The site is fast, self-hosted fonts and all, and the contact form is guarded against bots with Cloudflare Turnstile. It carries a small "Powered by Foundry Studio" credit in the footer, which is the only advertising it needs to do.
The site has grown into a proper news desk. Since the summer it has published 47 articles: signings and loans, match previews, and match reports for the men’s team and for Southend United Ladies, each with a credited photograph.
Every Thursday since September a newsletter goes out from the site’s own mail domain: the latest episode, the week’s main stories, the next match, the Ladies’ news and the predictions. Anyone can sign up from the site, and it is protected against bots the same way the contact form is.
Around the articles sits a match centre: fixtures, results with goalscorers and links to the reports, league tables for both teams, and a predictions league where the presenters call every score of the season. Readers can comment on articles, with an automated safety check on every comment, and one search box covers every article and episode.
Want something built like this? Start a project.
