A website for Français du Monde-ADFE UK: a civic association through an election year (francaisdumonde.co.uk)

Client

Français du Monde-ADFE Royaume-Uni — the UK branch of Français du Monde-ADFE, a public-interest association (reconnue d'utilité publique) for French citizens living abroad. It informs, defends rights and brings the community together: administrative news, consular representation, education, events.

Industry

Civic association — French citizens abroad

Services provided

• Website on Ghost® with managed hosting for Ghost
• Paid online membership
• Newsletter sent from the site
• Multi-author publishing
• Theme adjustments
• Separation of association content and election campaign content

Project objective

The association needed a site that does three things at once: publish (news, practical information, opinion pieces from several authors), recruit members with online payment, and write to its community through a newsletter.

In 2026 a fourth need appeared. Consular elections were coming, and the association wanted to publish campaign content — without that content taking over the site of an association whose purpose goes well beyond one election.

The challenge

• Running membership, payments and newsletter from one tool, without a pile of plug-ins
• Giving several volunteer authors their own byline
• Publishing election campaign content without it appearing on the home page or in the RSS feed of the association
• Doing it without breaking a single existing URL

Solutions implemented

Membership and payment, built in

The "Join" button leads to a membership page backed by Ghost's member system and Stripe: monthly or yearly membership, paid online, with members managing their own subscription. No external membership tool to maintain, no list to reconcile by hand.

We simplified the home page hero so that it carries one call to action only — "Join" — instead of two competing buttons.

A newsletter from the same place

Every post can go out by email to subscribers. Signing up, writing and sending all happen in the same interface, and the subscriber list belongs to the association.

Several voices, each with a byline

Posts are signed: each author has a profile page listing their articles. Readers can tell who is writing, and the association shows that it is a collective, not a single voice.

The editorial structure

The navigation reflects what members look for: who we are, "your consular councillors", categories, useful links, events — with a privacy and GDPR page and legal notices.

Keeping the campaign apart

This is the structural change of 2026. At the association's request, we reorganised the site's routing:

• the home page and the RSS feed exclude every post tagged as election campaign content;
• those posts live in a dedicated section, /campagne-electorale/, reachable from the main menu;
• every existing URL still works — nothing was moved, nothing returns a 404.

The association can therefore publish an election FAQ or a candidate's position without its regular readers finding them mixed with the rest of its work, and without newsletter subscribers who follow it for practical information feeling enlisted.

A step-by-step approach

1️⃣ Site, membership and newsletter set up on Ghost, with managed hosting.

2️⃣ Authors created, each with a profile page.

3️⃣ Theme adjusted: one "Join" call to action on the home page.

4️⃣ 2026 routing: campaign section separated from the home page and RSS feed, URLs preserved.

5️⃣ Ongoing maintenance: Ghost updates, backups, support for the volunteer team.

Results

The association has one tool to publish, recruit and write to its community. During the election year it was able to take part in the debate while keeping its own site readable for everyone who comes to it for something else — and without losing a single link.

Conclusion

A civic association's site is not a campaign site, but an election year can turn it into one by accident. A few lines of routing were enough to give the campaign its own space and keep the rest of the site as it was. It's the kind of change that is invisible when it is done properly — and that's exactly the point.

Do you run a civic association, or are you preparing a campaign?

Let's talk — or read about our election campaign websites and our websites for associations.