Zines

A zine is a numbered issue: "Issue 3", laid out like a magazine page rather than written as a post. It has its own cover and its own page on your site, and your readers find all of them on a Zines page, newest first.

Turning zines on

Open the Zines tab in Studio. Until zines are on, the tab offers to turn them on, which adds a Zines page to your site's navigation. After that, the tab lists your zines, two per row, drafts included.

Making an issue

Click "New zine" in the Zines tab. You can also open the Publish menu in the top bar and choose "New zine": the window then also asks which publication the zine is for, in a "Publish in..." select. The "Make a zine" window opens with a template to choose.

• Templates are cards with a small drawing of their layout, a name, a line about what they're for, and how many zines of that template you already have ("Not used yet", "Used once", "Used 3 times"). Click one to pick it.
• Search with "Search a template", or use the tabs: All, then what a zine is for (Grow, Showcase, Inform, Community), then one tab per profession a template suits.
• A feature it needs. Book club issue needs your book club: until it's on, its card is greyed out and says "Turn on Book club first".
• Enough content. When a template shows content you don't have much of yet, its card says so ("Best with 3 published articles"). You can still pick it.

Below the templates, "This issue" sets the number and the period on one line (see "Numbers and labels" and "Periods" below), and a Rubric select lets you file the zine under a rubric. "Continue" creates the zine: a draft that opens in its editor at once, already numbered and dated for you:

• The number is the next one after your last published issue.
• The period is the one after your last issue's. If you have none yet, it's last month during the first half of the month and this month from the 16th.

Both are suggestions you can change.

The templates

• Standard: a section to start from.
• Photo essay: a full image to open, series of photos, then the story behind them.
• Portfolio drop: your new work, how you made it, and where to get it.
• Monthly roundup: the month's highlights, your most read, and the best links from around the web.
• Front page: your top stories, a rubric of your choice, and your members-only pieces.
• Serial issue: where the story stands, this chapter, and what's coming next.
• Listening notes: an episode, its show notes, what's mentioned in it, and a few clips.
• Watch list: your film, its shorts, behind the scenes, and where else to watch.
• Field notes: your abstract, your findings, your sources, and the paper to download.
• Community digest: your top contributors, your people, what's coming up, and where to follow you.
• Book club issue: what the club is reading, what's next, and the books read together. Needs your book club.
• Travelogue: where you went, day by day, the places worth it, and the practical side.

Numbers and labels

The number sits right before the zine's name, shown the way readers will see it ("Issue 3"). Click it to type something else:

• a number alone ("10") jumps to that number
• a label with a number in it ("10 bis") shows as you typed it and is numbered 10, or the next free number if a published zine already has 10. Peakub asks you to confirm
• a label without a number ("Special edition") shows as you typed it and keeps its number

Drafts can share a number. Publishing settles it: if a published zine already holds the number, Peakub says so and proposes the next free one.

Periods

An issue can also say what stretch of time it covers, apart from its number: "September 2026", "Week 23, 2026", "Q3 2026" or "2026". Click "Add a period" next to the number. The panel has rows for weeks, months, quarters and years, starting a few before the current one, with the current one marked. The period after your last issue is offered first. You can also type your own words ("Summer special") instead. A period is saved as soon as you pick it.

The readers' page shows the number and the period together, like "Issue 2 · September 2026".

A new zine with its suggested number and the period panel.

Laying out the page

A zine is built from blocks, like a page, with a few more options than a page has: you can run blocks edge to edge, add section headers, and put annotations over the page. See Website & Pages for the blocks themselves.

Annotations

Annotations are things you place over the page rather than in its flow: text, stickers, emoji, a highlighter over the words that matter, arrows, icons, sticky notes, badges, a hand-drawn line, your publication's subscribe, tip or recommend button, or a narration, a round video or your voice talking readers through the page.

They're in the dock at the bottom of the zine editor. Click a tool to place its annotation on the most likely spot, or drag its tile onto the exact place you want. A short message tells you where it landed.

An annotation attaches to what it sits on, and not just to the page:

• on a Hero, to its image or to its title and text
• on a Gallery, to one photo or video
• on an Article or Zine block, to its cover or to its text

It stays on that part whatever the size of the reader's screen, so a sticker on a photo is still on that photo on a phone. If you remove a photo from a gallery, its annotations fall back to the whole block.

An annotation needs a block to sit on, so add one first. The dock also has arrows to jump to annotations that aren't attached to anything.

The annotation dock, with a sticker attached to a photo.

Text that goes around annotations

When you place an annotation over a block's text, the text goes around it instead of running underneath. This is on for every annotation: stickers, emoji, drawings, the highlighter, text annotations and the rest.

In the annotation's toolbar:

• "Make text go around it" / "Let text run under it" switches this on or off for that annotation, if you'd rather the text run beneath it
• "Space around it" cycles the gap between the annotation and the text: tight, normal (the default) or wide

For stickers, emoji and drawings the text follows the visible shape, not the box around it: the transparent parts aren't avoided. A picture hosted elsewhere that the browser can't read falls back to its box. In the editor the text re-wraps live while you drag an annotation, then settles precisely when you drop it.

Text goes around annotations in the hero (full and left), emphasized text, announcement, section header, media blurb caption, titled video, and generic and HTML text blurbs on the published page. A text annotation also wraps its own words around other annotations on it. Two exceptions: sticky annotations, the ones that stay in view while the reader scrolls, never push text, and an HTML blurb's text flows around them on the published page and in the preview, but not while you're typing in it in the editor.

On a phone, the full-width hero now grows to fit long text instead of cutting it off.

Rubrics

A zine can sit in a rubric, picked in the Rubric field of its editor or of its creation window. In that select, "New rubric" is the first choice: it makes a rubric on the spot and picks it.

Comments

Readers' comments sit under the zine's page, below its layout, as they do under an article. You don't add a comments block to the layout for that, and an older zine that still has one in its layout doesn't show the comments twice.

Publishing

Use "Publish" in the editor, or the publish button next to the zine's status in the Zines list. Once it's published, the editor closes and you're back on the Zines list. Published zines appear on your Zines page, from the newest number down. You can also pin a zine in a bar under your header.

The zine's newsletter

The publish window has a "Newsletter" switch, on by default. On, your subscribers get an email with a teaser of the zine: its cover, number, name, caption, rubric and what it holds, with a link to read it on the web. The email never carries the zine itself, and it's the same for every reader, whatever their access. Off, no email goes out: the zine reaches your readers only in their "For You" mailbox.