Soldier Magazine
Preserving Legacy, Unlocking Accessibility - A Digital Debut for the British Army's Soldier Magazine
Background
A bold digital transformation of the Army’s official magazine - preserving legacy, unlocking accessibility.
Soldier Magazine has been a central part of British Army life since 1945, but until 2023, it had never existed as a fully digital platform. Distributed in print and as downloadable PDFs, the magazine lacked discoverability and offered limited engagement, particularly for younger soldiers aged 18–30 who increasingly consume content on mobile.
To preserve the magazine’s legacy while making it more accessible, the Army needed to create a mobile-first, searchable experience that felt app-like, without the complexity or cost of developing a native app. The solution needed to honour legacy, empower a small internal team, and deliver modern functionality within a tight budget.
Solution
Cantarus partnered with the British Army to digitally reimagine Soldier Magazine using Umbraco CMS. Chosen for its flexibility, intuitive content management, and compatibility with the Army’s Microsoft Azure environment, Umbraco provided the foundation for a future-ready platform with minimal technical overhead. Its headless capabilities were critical to delivering an API-driven solution powered by a Next.JS front end.
The result is a Progressive Web App (PWA) experience that mirrors a native app, allowing users to save Soldier to their mobile home screens. A powerful archive search feature makes 80 years of content - previously locked in static PDFs, fully accessible and searchable for the first time.
Cantarus also supported full content migration, delivered CMS training to empower internal teams, and designed a front-end experience aligned with the magazine’s print identity. This was Cantarus’ first major deployment of Next.JS, showcasing the value of combining Umbraco with modern front-end technologies to drive performance at scale.
Impact
The new platform has transformed how readers discover and engage with Soldier, especially mobile-first users. In its first four months:
- 12,300+ unique visitors accessed the site
- Weekly search impressions reached nearly 50,000
- Archive content saw an average engagement time of 13 minutes
By unlocking discoverability and delivering a modern UX, the platform has extended the magazine’s reach while preserving its heritage. Editorial teams can now publish content more efficiently, and the scalable setup ensures the magazine evolves with user needs.
Cantarus continues to support the Army through optimisation sprints and ongoing enhancements, ensuring the platform continues to deliver value for years to come.
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“Launching a new and improved digital edition of Soldier when the magazine celebrates its 80th anniversary is the perfect ‘free gift’ for our loyal readers. Improving the online Soldier magazine offer also provides greater opportunity to inspire wider audiences, online, through its fascinating content. We’re excited to see how people find it. In the spirit of continuous improvement, we’ll use feedback and data to inform future developments.”
Jessica Jones, Head of Digital and Content at British Army
