Q&A: 'The site was almost as old as the club itself' - changes at the Frontline website

The Frontline Club, the London-based media club that combines 'eating, drinking and thinking' has recently re-vamped its site and gone for a brand new look. Journalism.co.uk asked Graham Holliday, Frontline Club digital media editor, to tell us more.

Why did you feel the changes were necessary?
[GH] The old site was almost as old as the club itself and we needed something far more 'now'. A site we could integrate far more effectively into the wider web. Headshift helped us design the site and we chose to use Movable Type to run it on. So, now frontlineclub.com is basically a very big blog with all the flexibility, ease of use and web friendly features you'll find on most blogs.

It looks like you've now divided your blog posts from your news - is that right?
That's not quite the case, the titles - 'news', 'articles', 'blogs' - may be confusing and this is something we could well change.

This is very much an early build and we're still ironing out kinks. With so many bloggers on the site now, we wanted to keep an articles section for book reviews, longer features and op-ed pieces from the Club members.

The articles tend to appear monthly and are written by the club membership. Blog posts come in all the time and are written by members and non-members, however all are journalists or experienced bloggers and based in interesting places where they talk about interesting things - that's the whole premise of the blogs.

So, at the moment we have Onnik Krikorian, a great journalist blogging about life in Armenia; Salam Pax is back in Baghdad and blogging with us, Rob Crilly has been blogging live from Darfur during the Al-Bashir ICC indictment; and Guy Degen, a Bonn based freelance, has been blogging from a journalism training session he's delivering in Kano, Nigeria.

There's a great mix of people. Around 40-50 bloggers either already blogging or soon to start.

What are the main changes people should make use of?
We've just started the Frontline Club Associate Membership for those who are keen to join the club, attend the many events we run every week, the networking sessions and enjoy the great food in the restaurant at a discount.

That costs £100 plus a joining fee. When you join the club, you gain access to the online members area which we are developing. We integrate Twitter and Dopplr accounts into the members area and so you can find who to follow online from the club membership.

We have a lot of RSS feeds right across the site and if you can't attend a discussion event in person we stream them live onto the events page  - and on Ustream among other places.

On the news landing page the 'What we are reading' section is effectively a collaborative newswire. A group of us Frontline bloggers share links within Delicious which I then editorialise.

The resulting RSS feed is what winds up on the Frontline Club News page. I intend to build upon this further as we grow the site. Intelligent, editorialised, niche aggregation created collaboratively with fellow Frontline bloggers is very important to me and I hope a real benefit for visitors to frontlineclub.com.

In addition, anyone using Twitter can follow news about the club, breaking news from the world of journalism and foreign correspondents and topical links by following @frontlineblog and @frontlineclub on Twitter.

What did you learn from implementing the new design?
How big and diverse Frontline's activities have become over the years and how much content we now have online. Organising it and making the content accessible was a challenge. We're not there yet, but at least we now have the foundations of a site we can build upon in a user friendly manner.

I also learned how much goodwill and positivity there is towards the club, what it stands for and the story behind its origins. No-one I have approached about working with us on this needed their arm twisting.

The club is quite unique as far as media clubs go - combining eating, drinking and thinking with a strong emphasis on global news yet independent of mainstream media - we want to translate what we can of the physical experience of the club into the online experience.

With the help of people like Lee Bryant, and the team at Headshift, the club membership and all the bloggers we should be able to build something quite compelling for the world of journalism.

How does the design complement the editorial content?
I'm probably not the best person to ask this to, but it's a clear, no nonsense site, easily navigable. We don't want too many bells and whistles annoying visitors to the site. So we won't be adding any pop-up ads and flashing animations.

What's new in the restaurant, events and club sections?
We have a new menu with all the old favourites on, but which changes daily depending on what meat and vegetables the chef John Taylor selects from the Frontline farm in Norfolk. Around about 90 per cent of the produce on the menu comes from the farm of the Frontline Club founder, Vaughan Smith.

So let us into some secrets - are there other changes in the pipeline?
Some things I can't go on the record about yet unfortunately - but they're very exciting and involve the printed product.

There will be more bloggers, more livestreamed events, more podcasts. We're also talking to several individuals and organisations about collaborating with online events.

I regularly approach potential bloggers from the world of foreign correspondents who I think might be a good fit with Frontline. I get approached by a lot too. So, you'll be seeing new bloggers joining the site on a regular basis. In fact, I'm just setting up a blog for a photographer in Kashmir at the moment.

And your overall aims?
I hope Frontline will grow into a site where interesting people talk come to talk about interesting things.

Like I say, we're still ironing out some problems. We have to overhaul the booking systems - that's being done this week - but that's pretty much the final, important, brick for us to put in place so we can then start building the site.

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