I am absolutely thrilled to launch the new Kol Cambridge website at kolcambridge.com.
The site has gone through a few evolutions. I’ve always built it myself. Initially it was raw html code sitting on my free university webspace. It then evolved into a WordPress site. And when I joined Wix back in 2020, I moved it onto their platform. But a redesign was long overdue and once my employee discount ended, it didn’t make sense to stay on the Wix platform. So we’re back on WordPress, this time with a completely custom-built design and theme that I hope captures the spirit of the show: warm, music-first, a bit hand-made.
20+ years and 309 episodes
Some of you will remember the very early days on Cambridge University Radio back in 2005. Nearly twenty-two years later, and I can still hardly believe it. I’ll admit something: until I was putting this site together I had no idea exactly how many shows I’d actually done. I got an AI tool to finally count and number them all! The new episodes page lets you browse them all by year, going right back to Cambridge days. The grand total? 309. Not a bad corpus of work!
A tour of the new site
The homepage features the latest episode front and centre, with the monthly poster artwork that you’ll recognise from our Instagram. Below that you’ll find the full tracklist of the latest show, links to the most recent episodes, past guests and a gallery of photos from over the years — Tokyo hafla, the 20th anniversary bash at Capella, the BBC Radio award nomination, the lot.
Every episode now has its own page, with the tracklist, audio player, episode notes and links out to Apple Podcasts, the RSS feed and TLV1. If you’ve ever wanted to find that one song from that one show, the archive is fully searchable.
There’s a new Notebook section where I’ll be trying to write the occasional piece. Playlist deep-dives, dispatches from gigs, liner notes on things that catch my ear. First post is the one you’re reading now.
We’ve also got a proper Guests page listing artists who’ve stopped by the booth over the years and a nice gallery of photos.
The technical stuff
Practically speaking, the new site is faster, properly mobile-friendly and auto-updates with new episode information without me having to touch anything. This should help us appear higher in search and in AI chat queries and hopefully help grow the audience. A small thing, but it’s been on my list for years.
A huge thank you to everyone who’s made this possible: the patrons who keep the show alive, the listeners who keep tuning in and the friends who’ve supported this project from the very start. 309 episodes in, and I am still loving every minute.
Have a poke around, let me know what you think (the contact form works!) and don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Happy listening!
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