Building the next generation of media brands on Substack
Introducing new themes and search improvements for Substack publications
We’ve been working with The Bulwark team to understand what it takes to support a media brand as it scales. For years, they had split their site between Substack for subscriber-only content and a custom WordPress site for everything else. But as of today, the team has migrated their entire post archive to make Substack the single unified home for their work.
“We decided to do this because we wanted to take advantage of Substack’s network. We saw that Substack was improving customization options and realized it wasn’t worth it to keep maintaining the other website,” says
, who leads audience development for The Bulwark. The majority of The Bulwark’s new subscribers have an existing Substack account or saved credit card, and over 15% came directly through the Substack app or network (which includes subscriptions from recommendations, leaderboards, search, and notes).We’ve also increasingly heard the feedback that publishers—from brands like The Bulwark to writers starting out—want more flexibility to organize their content and make their website look unique. And today, we’re excited to introduce these features to the entire Substack community. We hope these options will support a wide range of high-volume publishers, multimedia creators, and writers organizing their work into different sections.
Improved publication search
We’ve upgraded publication search to make it easier and faster for readers to get value from your archives. Click the search icon on any Substack site, then type in a topic keyword or author name to instantly filter for relevant posts.
New theme and layout options
We’ve given your site design settings a refresh to lay the foundation for advanced customization.
There are three new hero options for publication homepages (Highlight, Feature Media, and Podcast). These enable additional visual customization on your Substack site.
These themes apply to section and podcast pages as well. You can also customize the header alignment, the post layout, and whether to show links to podcast players.
We also recently shipped advanced homepage layouts, which allow you to highlight your publication’s different content streams by adding a customizable subscribe banner, blocks for your tags/sections, or a sidebar module featuring your contributors or podcasts.
Learn more: How to change your homepage layout
The Bulwark is one of many Substack publications taking advantage of increased customization.
cited these ongoing theme improvements as a motive for his business publication ’s return to Substack last year. also migrated , his defensive-football think tank, late last year, and uses our updated themes for his articles, video clinics, and podcast. Cody tells us:“I moved MatchQuarters to Substack from WordPress because it allowed me to house my content in one spot, which gave me total control over my brand. In short, it created less friction and enabled me to move into this work full-time. The decision to shift platforms has exponentially increased my paid subscription base and visibility, with a 60% increase in revenue in just a few months.”
Whether you’re just starting your newsletter or thinking of migrating an existing project to Substack, we hope these features—and many more improvements down the line—will help your Substack site feel like your own.
Looking for tips on designing a standout brand? Check out this guide.
Want to start with the basics? Check out this article.
We’d love you to give these new options a whirl and then let us know in the comments what you think. What other customization options are you looking for?
Share this post