BacktoFrontShow” is one of those search terms that looks simple on the surface but actually points to several different things online, and untangling them matters if you want an accurate picture. At its core, the name traces back to a real, well-regarded podcast from the 2010s web industry, but over the past few years the same name and domain have also been picked up by newer blogs and content sites that have nothing to do with the original show. This article walks through what BacktoFrontShow actually was, who made it, what it covered, why it ended, and why you need to be careful about which “BacktoFrontShow” you’re actually looking at today.
Table of Contents
What Is BacktoFrontShow?
BacktoFrontShow, more formally “The Back to Front Show,” was a web industry podcast launched in 2013 by two British web professionals, Keir Whitaker and Kieran Masterton. The show was built around informal, conversational episodes about web design, front-end and back-end development, startups, remote work, and the day-to-day realities of running a small web business. It was recorded from the West Country in the UK and released irregularly rather than on a fixed weekly schedule, which became part of its identity — listeners knew not to expect clockwork releases, but they also knew that when an episode did land, it would be candid and often funny.
Over time, the show built up a back catalogue of 103 episodes, spanning from its first episode in early 2013 through to its final episode in December 2020. That run makes it a genuine artifact of web industry history — a nearly decade-long, if irregular, record of how small studios and independent web professionals talked about their work, their tools, and their industry as it changed around them.
Who Created BacktoFrontShow?
The show was the work of two hosts: Keir Whitaker and Kieran Masterton. Both were practising web professionals rather than media personalities, and that distinction shaped the tone of the whole podcast. Whitaker has described himself as one half of Viewport Industries, a small side business he ran with a partner that also published a book and organized web industry events, and he has referred to the Back to Front Show as a bi-monthly podcast he co-hosted with Masterton. Between them, the two hosts brought decades of combined experience in the web industry, and that lived experience — rather than a polished broadcasting background — was the show’s main selling point.
Because the hosts were working professionals first and podcasters second, the show had the feel of two colleagues catching up rather than a produced radio segment. Episodes often opened with personal updates before moving into whatever topic had caught the hosts’ attention that month, and the conversational, unscripted style is frequently cited as the thing longtime listeners remember most fondly.
What Topics Did the Show Cover?
In its earliest days, the Back to Front Show stuck close to its name and its hosts’ day jobs: web design, front-end and back-end development, and the practicalities of running small web studios. An early episode from February 2013, for example, focused on features coming in a then-upcoming WordPress release, alongside general industry chatter about performance and responsive design — snapshots of exactly what web developers were worrying about at that specific moment.
As the show matured, its scope widened considerably. Later episodes moved well beyond pure code and design topics into:
- Startups and small business realities
- Remote work and distributed teams
- Productivity and workflow habits
- General “life in the industry” commentary — the hosts have joked about topics as varied as beard grooming and dog-related technology finding their way into episodes
This broadening is fairly typical of long-running niche podcasts: what starts as a technical show for a specific professional audience often evolves into a lifestyle and culture show for that same audience, once the hosts and listeners have built up enough rapport that off-topic tangents become part of the appeal rather than a distraction from it.
The “Back Stories” Interview Series
Partway through its run, the podcast introduced a spin-off segment called “Back Stories,” a series of one-on-one interviews hosted primarily by Keir Whitaker. Rather than the usual two-host banter format, Back Stories episodes paired Whitaker with a single guest for a more focused conversation. Guests included figures from adjacent corners of the web and content industries — for instance, one Back Stories episode featured the founder of a web conference series discussing how to find speakers for events, the role of a good editor, and how to pitch to editors, while another featured the founder of an e-commerce agency who also hosted his own podcast and had written a book on e-commerce.
This interview format gave the show a second gear: instead of relying purely on the chemistry between its two regular hosts, Back Stories let the podcast tap into a wider network of web and content professionals, broadening its guest list and giving listeners exposure to perspectives beyond the two founders.
How the Show Was Produced and Distributed
The Back to Front Show ran with lightweight, independent production values typical of the podcasting scene in the early-to-mid 2010s. Episodes generally ran around 40 minutes, occasionally stretching closer to 45 minutes to an hour when the hosts had a lot to catch up on after a longer-than-usual gap between recordings. Episodes were self-hosted from a dedicated podcast feed and syndicated out to the major podcast platforms of the era, including Apple Podcasts and other podcast directories.
Because the show wasn’t tied to a media network or sponsorship-driven publishing schedule, its release cadence stayed genuinely irregular for its entire run. The final episode, released on December 17, 2020, leaned into this directly — the show notes for that episode joked that it had “almost given up hope” of ever recording it, and that it had taken a global pandemic, plus one host finally locating his microphone, to get the show back on the air one more time.
Why Did BacktoFrontShow End?
The Back to Front Show’s last publicly listed episode dates to December 2020, and no new episodes have been published since. There’s no dramatic story of a public falling-out or a formal announcement of cancellation on record — the show simply followed the well-worn path of many independent, hobbyist-adjacent podcasts, where gaps between episodes gradually lengthened until the gaps became permanent. Given that both hosts were running the show around demanding day jobs and other projects, and given the show’s already irregular release pattern even in its most active years, the transition from “on hiatus” to “ended” was a quiet one rather than a sudden stop.
By the time of that final episode, the show had already built a fairly complete arc — nearly eight years of episodes, more than a hundred installments, a dedicated interview spin-off, and a body of work that reflected genuine changes in the web industry from 2013 through 2020. In that sense, even though there was no formal farewell tour, the podcast’s ending reads less like an abandonment and more like a natural conclusion to a project that had run its course.
The Confusing Domain Situation: Two Different “BacktoFrontShow” Identities
Here’s where things get genuinely confusing for anyone researching this topic today. The original podcast’s home was the domain backtofrontshow.com. However, that domain no longer belongs to the original creators or the original podcast. It has since been repurposed, and today it — along with at least one related site, backtofrontshow.blog — hosts content that has nothing to do with Keir Whitaker, Kieran Masterton, or web development podcasting.
The newer sites using the BacktoFrontShow name describe themselves in different, somewhat generic terms depending on which version of the site you land on:
- One version presents itself as a blog “founded in 2022” that covers articles on businesses, their marketing, growth, productivity, and how-to-guides in the digital industry.
- Another version, hosted at backtofrontshow.blog, describes itself as a podcast or media outlet “flipping stories from back to front,” featuring interviews with creators and experts about the pivots and failures behind their results.
- Some third-party pages built around the same name go further still, publishing generic pricing-plan breakdowns and “guides” that read like standard content-marketing filler rather than firsthand reporting on any actual product or service.
None of this newer content appears to have any real connection to the original hosts or the original show’s back catalogue. If you’re searching for the actual web-development podcast — the one with 103 episodes, the WordPress deep-dives, and the Back Stories interviews — you’ll want to look for archived episode listings and podcast directories that specifically credit Keir Whitaker and Kieran Masterton, rather than the live backtofrontshow.com or backtofrontshow.blog domains as they exist today.
How to Tell the Two Apart
If you’re trying to work out which “BacktoFrontShow” you’ve landed on, a few quick signals help:
- Hosts named: If a page names Keir Whitaker and Kieran Masterton, or discusses web design, web development, and startups as its subject matter, you’re looking at material connected to the original podcast.
- Dates: References to episodes dated between 2013 and December 2020 point to the original show. Anything dated 2022 or later under the BacktoFrontShow name is almost certainly the newer, unrelated site.
- Subject matter: The original show is squarely about the web industry — code, design, freelancing, and remote work. The newer sites tend to cover broader digital marketing, business growth, and generic “creator economy” topics.
- Format specifics: Pricing plans, subscription tiers, or dashboard/analytics features associated with the name are a strong signal you’re on one of the newer, unrelated sites — the original podcast was a free, independently distributed audio show with no subscription tiers of its own.
Where to Find the Original Episodes Today
Because the podcast is no longer actively maintained on its original domain, tracking down the actual episodes takes a bit more effort than a simple search. Independent podcast archiving and directory services are generally your best bet, since many of them keep historical metadata and episode listings even for shows whose original websites have since changed hands. Public archive sites that host original audio files are another useful route, particularly for early-run episodes from 2013, where individual show notes and audio downloads have in some cases been preserved outside of the podcast’s own original hosting.
If you’re specifically hunting for a particular topic — say, the WordPress-focused episode from February 2013, or one of the Back Stories interviews — searching by episode title alongside the hosts’ names tends to surface archived listings more reliably than searching the bare keyword “BacktoFrontShow,” precisely because that keyword is now split across multiple unrelated web properties.
Why This Kind of Name Confusion Happens
The BacktoFrontShow situation is a fairly common pattern on the web: an independent creator lets a domain registration lapse, either because the project has ended or because renewal simply falls through the cracks, and someone else picks up the now-available name. Because the name still carries some residual search traffic and brand recognition from the original project, the new owner has an incentive to publish content under that same name rather than starting from scratch with an unfamiliar domain.
This is especially common with podcast and blog domains that built up a decade of backlinks and mentions before going quiet. Search engines and directories may still associate the domain with its original, more reputable content long after ownership and purpose have changed, which is exactly why searches for “BacktoFrontShow” today turn up a mix of genuine historical podcast information sitting alongside newer, unrelated marketing content. For anyone doing research, the practical lesson is to always check dates and cross-reference names or people rather than assuming a domain’s content history is consistent over time.
The Legacy of the Original Back to Front Show
Even though it’s no longer active, the original Back to Front Show holds a modest but real place in the history of independent web industry podcasting. It launched in 2013, during a period when podcasting was still a relatively niche medium for professional communities, and it stuck around — however irregularly — for close to eight years, tracking real shifts in web development practice, freelance and studio culture, and remote work along the way. Its Back Stories spin-off connected listeners to a wider network of web and content professionals, and its irreverent, unscripted tone gave it a personality that stood out from more heavily produced, sponsor-driven shows of the same era.
For long-time listeners in the UK web design and development community in particular, the show is remembered as a genuine, low-pressure record of “what it was actually like” to build websites and run small studios through the 2010s — warts, tangents, dog-related technology jokes, and all.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is BacktoFrontShow still active? No. The original podcast’s last publicly listed episode was published on December 17, 2020, and no new episodes have appeared since.
Who hosted BacktoFrontShow? The original show was created and hosted by Keir Whitaker and Kieran Masterton, both web industry professionals based in the UK.
How many episodes does BacktoFrontShow have? Podcast directories list 103 episodes in the original show’s archive, spanning from 2013 to December 2020.
Is backtofrontshow.com the original podcast’s website? Not anymore. The domain has changed hands and now hosts unrelated blog content rather than the original web-development podcast.
What was the show about? It began as a web design and development podcast and gradually broadened to cover startups, remote work, productivity, and general web industry culture, with an interview spin-off series called Back Stories.
Final Thoughts
“BacktoFrontShow” isn’t a single, simple entity — it’s a name with a real history attached to a specific, well-loved independent podcast from the web development community, and a separate, newer identity attached to unrelated blog and marketing content that now occupies the same domain. If you’re researching the term, the most useful thing you can do is anchor your search to concrete details: the hosts’ names, the 2013–2020 date range, and the web-development subject matter, all of which point reliably back to the original show rather than to whatever unrelated content currently occupies backtofrontshow.com.
