Popular v0.11.0

Added

• Every page says which generator built it, via <meta name="generator">
  (hugo.Generator on Hugo, Astro.generator on Astro). Astro does not inject
  this itself, and it is what the Astro theme catalogue's reviewers look for
  when verifying that a demo really is an Astro site.
• [module.hugoVersion] in the Hugo theme's hugo.toml, declaring the
  0.146.0 floor where themes.gohugo.io's build actually reads it. theme.toml's
  min_version is the older field, from the retired hugoThemes repo; both are
  kept in step. A site built with an older Hugo now says so, rather than the
  floor being a claim nothing checked.
• npm create popular-site@latest, a scaffolder for Astro sites (packaging
  phase 3). It writes a small project that depends on the theme rather than
  containing a copy of it, so the site updates with npm update instead of by
  diffing tags and re-copying files. Pick the neutral starter or any of the
  four demos as a fuller example to edit down.
  • The templates are collected from demos/* at pack time, so the demos stay
    the single source of truth and there is no committed copy to drift. The
    demo switcher bar is stripped on the way, and CI fails if it ever reaches
    a scaffolded site.
  • A project-page URL like https://you.github.io/my-community/ is split into
    Astro's site and base for you, the same split scripts/setup.py does.
  • Releases now publish two npm packages: astro-theme-popular and
    create-popular-site, versioned in lockstep so a scaffolded site always pins
    the theme release that shipped with it.

Changed

• A Popular deployment now loads nothing from a third party at all. The
  superfan demo was the last exception: it pulled Cinzel from Google Fonts
  through customCSS for its display face. It uses the bundled Quantico like
  the other demos now, so no page of the theme, its demos or its docs sends a
  visitor's IP anywhere. customCSS itself is unchanged and still takes any
  stylesheet URL you want, including a CDN.

• npm create popular-site@latest renders the same project templates the
  setup wizard does (scripts/templates/), instead of carrying its own copies
  of astro.config.mjs, package.json and content.config.ts. Two generators
  writing the same file two ways is how they drift, and one had already started:
  the wizard's template still defaulted to an older theme version.

• The release smoke-tests what it published: after both packages reach the
  registry it scaffolds a site from them and builds it. The scaffolder's own CI
  installs the theme from the checkout, which is right for a pull request but
  cannot catch a mismatch between two published versions. That gap is exactly
  what broke create-popular-site@0.10.0, whose templates needed a newer theme
  than it pinned; it is deprecated.

• The Astro README and the quick start lead with the scaffolder. The README
  still described npm run demo:aquarium as switching the active demo set into
  src/, which stopped being true when the demos became workspaces, and the
  quick start still told Astro users to use the repo as a template.

• The Astro demo deployment serves the neutral starter at its root, with the
  four flavored demos still at their subpaths and the gallery landing page moved
  to /demos/. The root used to be the gallery, a hand-written HTML page that is
  not an Astro build at all, so the URL people are given demonstrated nothing and
  could not be verified as an Astro site. It is now exactly what
  npm create popular-site@latest writes.

  • The gallery gets its icons and fonts from the deployment instead of cdnjs and
    Google Fonts, so the landing page stops being the one page that loads a third
    party.

• Astro: the demos are now real consumers of the npm package (packaging
  phase 3). The repo is an npm workspace, and each of the five demos is a
  project with its own package.json, astro.config.mjs, popular.config.ts,
  src/content/ and public/images/, installing the theme the way an adopter
  does. scripts/use-demo.mjs and the copy-a-demo-into-src/ step are gone;
  npm run dev --workspace demos/aquarium replaces activation.

  • The demo deployment and the image-alt job became integration tests.
    Both now build five real consumers against the packaged theme instead of
    one copied-together site, so a package regression fails CI rather than
    surfacing after publish.
  • Nothing changes for anyone using the theme. The template model (src/)
    keeps working until the cutover, and the Hugo side is untouched.

• Web fonts are served by the site itself, not fetched from
  fonts.googleapis.com. Inter and Quantico now ship in the theme
  (static/fonts/ ⇄ src/styles/fonts/), 716KB of woff2 under their SIL Open
  Font Licences. Nothing about the rendering changes: the vendored files are
  exactly the subsets and weight ranges Google was serving.

  • This removes a GDPR exposure. Embedding Google Fonts sends every
    visitor's IP address to Google, which a German court held to violate the
    GDPR (LG München I, 3 O 17493/20). A community site should not have to
    think about that.
  • It is also faster, not slower. The partitioned browser cache has meant no
    cross-site reuse since 2020, and the old @import added a DNS lookup, a
    TLS handshake and a round trip before any font could start downloading.
  • Every face keeps its unicode-range, so all seven Inter subsets ship but a
    latin-only page still downloads about 150KB of them. Greek, Cyrillic and
    Vietnamese sites now render in Inter instead of falling back.
  • Sites that prefer a CDN, or a different family entirely, override
    fonts.css the same way as before.

• Font Awesome is served by the site itself, not fetched from cdnjs. A
  Popular site now renders its icons offline, keeps working when a CDN has an
  outage or changes a URL, and no longer hands every visitor's IP address to a
  third party the community never chose. Font Awesome Free 7.3.1 ships in
  the theme (static/fontawesome/ ⇄ public/fontawesome/), about 364KB of
  woff2 and one stylesheet, under its own LICENSE.txt.

  • params.fontAwesome / SITE.fontAwesome is now optional: leave it
    unset for the bundled copy, or set it to a URL to use a CDN as before.
    Existing sites that set it keep working unchanged.
  • The version moves from 6.5.2 to 7.3.1. Every icon the theme and its demos
    use exists in 7.3.1 in the same style, but an adopter naming an icon that
    7.x removed would see a blank square, so check any icon you named yourself.
  • Sites generated by scripts/setup.py no longer pin the CDN URL in their
    config, so they follow the theme.

Fixed

• Astro package model: an adopter's SITE.fontAwesome now resolves against
  the base, so a site-relative path survives a subpath install. It was
  written to the page raw, unlike every other URL the theme emits. The subpath
  guard in CI could not see it because leaving the key unset renders no link at
  all; a smoke variant now sets it.
• The demo configs no longer pin fontAwesome to /fontawesome/…. That
  path is the template model's default and does not exist in the package model,
  which bundles the stylesheet instead, so every page of every demo requested a
  stylesheet that 404'd. Icons rendered anyway, from the bundled copy, which is
  why it went unnoticed. Leaving the key unset is and was the correct setting.

Popular v0.10.0

Added

• scripts/starter-content.py, the companion to the setup wizard: it copies
  the theme's starter content (a post, an event, an organizer, a speaker, a
  venue, the handbook and runbooks) into a new site, never overwriting anything
  that is already there.
• The wizard can write an Astro site that consumes the npm package, not only
  one that vendors this repo: --astro-model package writes
  popular.config.ts, a package.json pinned to the current release, a
  one-line src/content.config.ts, and an astro.config.mjs using the
  integration. The result is a small repo that updates with npm update rather
  than by re-copying files. --astro-model template (the default, and what an
  existing site detects as) is unchanged.
• The setup wizard asks for a brand colour, optionally. One hex is enough:
  the theme derives badges, tags, hovers and link states from it, so answering
  #fa023c writes [params.brand].primary (Hugo) or BRAND.primary (Astro)
  and the whole site follows. Skipping it writes nothing at all and leaves the
  default palette in place, which keeps a first run adoptable without --force.
  Answers are validated as #rgb or #rrggbb, a new color question type in
  the shared schema.
• A preview banner for generators (partials/preview-bar.html ⇄
  components/PreviewBar.astro). Set params.previewMode / SITE.previewMode
  and the page carries a fixed "this is a preview" bar, with an optional note
  for things like an expiry. It is meant for a tool that renders a site on
  someone's behalf and shows it in an iframe. Nothing the setup wizard writes
  into a real site's config sets the flag, and CI in both repos fails if the
  banner turns up in a build that did not ask for it.
• The setup wizard now writes everything a GitHub Pages deployment needs.
  Answer the site-URL question with a project-page URL
  (https://you.github.io/my-community/) and scripts/setup.py writes a site
  that works there:
  • Astro gains a generated astro.config.mjs carrying site and base.
    Astro needs the origin and the subpath as separate keys and nothing wrote
    base before, so a project-page site 404'd every internal link. They are
    derived from the single base_url answer, so the schema is unchanged and
    no one is asked the same thing twice.
  • Both frameworks gain .github/workflows/deploy.yml, a parameterless
    GitHub Pages workflow (everything that varies lives in the config the
    wizard already wrote). It is skipped when the site already has workflows
    of its own, so it never fights an existing deployment. Set Settings ->
    Pages -> Source: GitHub Actions once, and pushes to main publish.
• Astro: popular-markdown.mjs, the markdown hooks (lazy images, base-aware
  links) as a proper integration in the template model, matching what the npm
  package already does. Because an integration receives the resolved config,
  astro build --base /elsewhere/ now applies to markdown bodies too, where the
  old config-file hook silently kept the old base.

Changed

• The Astro demo deployment builds each demo with Astro's base instead of
  rewriting the built HTML with sed. The rewrite predated base support and
  could never reach the absolute URLs, so a deployed demo's canonical,
  og:image and JSON-LD all pointed at the site root. Both the Pages workflow
  and the Netlify preview build now run scripts/build-sites.mjs, so a preview
  cannot differ from production.
• The preview banner can be switched on from the environment, for a
  generator that owns the build but not the config: HUGO_PARAMS_PREVIEWMODE_NOTE
  (Hugo) or POPULAR_PREVIEW_NOTE (Astro). Setting either enables the banner and
  supplies its note.

Popular v0.9.1

Fixed

• The docs sidebar scrolls when it outgrows the window. On a long page the
  current entry nests every heading beneath it, which makes the sticky sidebar
  taller than the viewport, and a sticky element taller than the viewport
  cannot be scrolled: the entries below the fold, including the links to the
  other docs pages, were unreachable until you had scrolled through the whole
  article. The sidebar now stops at the bottom of the window and scrolls on its
  own, and the scroll-spy keeps the highlighted entry in view as you read.

Popular v0.9.0

Added

• Base-aware URL helpers, as public surface. Astro: withBase() and
  absoluteUrl() from src/lib/url.ts, exported by the package as
  astro-theme-popular/url. Hugo: rel-src.html (images and assets) and
  abs-url.html (absolute URLs) join the existing rel-href.html. Use them
  for any URL your own components, overrides or templates emit, and a subpath
  install keeps working. The Astro template repo's astro.config.mjs gained a
  base constant at the top: leave it '/' for a site at a domain root.

Fixed

• Sites served from a subpath now work in both themes. A site deployed to
  user.github.io/repo/ (Astro base, Hugo baseURL with a path) built and
  styled correctly but every internal link and image stayed at the server root
  and 404'd. Both frameworks rewrite the asset URLs they generate themselves,
  and neither touches the paths a template writes, so those had to be resolved
  explicitly.
  • Astro: new withBase() / absoluteUrl() helpers (lib/url.ts, exported
    from the package as astro-theme-popular/url) now resolve every URL the
    theme emits: navigation, cards, tags, pagination, the brand link, images
    from config and front matter, the shared behaviour scripts, and the
    absolute URLs in canonical, og:image, JSON-LD, RSS, llms.txt,
    robots.txt and the iCalendar feed. Markdown bodies are handled by a hook
    the integration registers on the active Markdown processor.
  • Hugo: rel-href.html now has a sibling, rel-src.html, for images and
    assets, plus abs-url.html for absolute URLs. Front matter written the
    Astro way (image = "/images/x.png") previously lost the subpath, because
    relURL/absURL treat a leading slash as the server root. Card, hero,
    logo, favicon, avatar and body images, the JSON-LD url/logo/image
    fields and og:image all go through them now.
  • Adopter configs and content need no changes: the helpers pass external
    URLs, mailto:, tel: and #fragment through untouched, and accept
    paths written with or without a leading slash.
  • Both repos build a subpath site in CI and fail on any internal href or
    src left at the root (PARITY.md, "Subpath deployments").
• Astro package: markdown images regained loading="lazy" decoding="async".
  Astro 7's default Markdown processor does not run rehype plugins, and a
  plugin added by an integration after config validation was dropped silently
  (Astro warned on every build). The theme's hooks are now registered on the
  active processor, in that processor's own plugin shape.

Popular v0.8.1

Changed

• The setup wizard now adopts an unedited starter file automatically. On a fresh
  site (copied from exampleSite or a demo, or the Astro template), it writes
  the config and Code of Conduct seed page without --force, because their bytes
  still match what the theme shipped. The moment you hand-edit either one, the
  wizard protects it again and asks for --force. First-time setup no longer
  needs a flag.

Popular v0.8.0

Added

• Setup wizard (scripts/setup.py): a stdlib, zero-dependency script that reads
  the shared question schema (setup-questions.json) and writes a site's config,
  a Code of Conduct seed page, a DECISIONS.md audit trail (what was decided,
  with handbook citations, and what is still open) and a .popular-setup.json
  answer record. Sugar, never a gate: skip every question and you get the clean
  starter config. Runs interactively or non-interactively (--answers file.json)
  for the agent and CI paths, detects Hugo vs Astro, and never overwrites an
  existing file without --force (--dry-run shows the diff). Works by
  placeholder substitution on templates, so it never parses or re-serializes
  your config.
• "Before you build" worksheet (/docs/before-you-build/): a docs page that
  renders the same question schema as a persistent checklist (decisions to
  settle first, then values to have ready), so the worksheet cannot drift from
  the wizard. The quick-start is rewritten around the wizard, and both repos'
  AGENTS.md gain a "Setting up a new site for a user" interview protocol.

Popular v0.7.0

Changed

• The footer shows the theme version (e.g. v0.7.0) next to the Popular
  credit, on the demos and the docs site.

Fixed

• The "no upcoming events" empty state no longer renders on event-less sites
  such as the docs site; it appears only on a community that has an events
  section but nothing upcoming.

Added

• Recaps toolkit: gallery + photo and pullquote shortcodes (Hugo) /
  Gallery + Photo and Pullquote components (Astro). The gallery is a
  CSS-grid figure list with no JavaScript and no lightbox (each photo links to
  its full-size image); alt is required and a missing one fails the build.
  A recap is a blog post tagged recap that uses both, with a worked example
  in the KDrama demo.
• llms.txt: a build-time plain-text summary for AI agents at /llms.txt,
  naming the next upcoming event, how to join, and links to the key pages and
  the calendar feed. Always generated on Astro; on Hugo the site adds LLMS
  to its home outputs (the demos, exampleSite, and docs site do).
• Docs: the deliberate non-features list (job board, member directory,
  comments, photo lightbox) and the stats strip as the social-proof pattern.

Added

• Talk archive. Events gain optional recording / slides (single-talk
  meetups) and a talks[] array (title required; speaker, recording,
  slides optional); when talks[] is present it wins over the event-level
  fields. The event page renders a Talks section (or inline links for the
  simple case), and past-event rows show a recording cue. An opt-in /talks/
  archive aggregates every talk newest-first, filterable by the parent event's
  tags: enable it with content/talks/_index.md (Hugo) or SITE.talks = true
  (Astro). New UI strings watchRecording, viewSlides, hasRecording,
  talks, talksLead.

Changed

• Speaker, organizer, and author profile pages no longer repeat the bio: the
  page hero is now a compact banner (eyebrow, name, back link) and the bio
  lives only in the persona card below it.

Added

• Community chat bridge and speaker pipeline. params.community.chat = { url, label } adds a "Join the chat" CTA to the home hero, the footer, and
  the no-events empty state (platform-agnostic: Discord, Slack, Matrix, Zulip).
  The starter ships a "Start here" first-timer page (/start/) and a "Speak
  with us" call-for-speakers page (/speak/). params.speakers.invite = true
  appends a "Your name here?" card to the speakers list (new strings
  speakerInviteTitle, speakerInviteBody), off by default.

Fixed

• Astro: the speakers and venues list pages (/speakers/, /venues/) were
  missing, so the "All speakers" / "All venues" back links on detail pages led
  to 404s. Both list pages now exist, mirroring the Hugo templates.

Added

• Notice banner and designed empty states. params.notice = { text, url? }
  renders a static, non-dismissible banner above the header (inline-markdown
  text, an optional link, no JavaScript). When there are no upcoming events,
  the home page and the events list now render a designed empty state (a
  message, the community chat CTA if configured, and the calendar-subscribe
  link) instead of a blank section. New UI strings learnMore, joinChat.

Added

• Venue access & logistics fields: wheelchair (a badge on the venue and on
  events held there), transit, parking, and a freeform access note,
  shown as a "Getting there & access" section. Inclusion as a data-model
  concern. Matching spreadsheet-importer columns. New UI strings
  gettingThere, wheelchairAccessible, transit, parking.

Added

• Calendar feed: an iCalendar (.ics) feed of events at
  /events/calendar.ics, so members subscribe once and every future meetup
  appears in their calendar app. Reuses the event time parsing (so the feed
  and the Event structured data agree), marks cancelled events, and adds a
  "Subscribe to calendar" link to the events list. scripts/check-ics.py
  validates it in CI. Hugo: add Calendar to the events section outputs.

Fixed

• Speaker, venue and organizer profile pages now show a back link to their
  list (matching blog posts and events); the organizer link follows the
  renamed team section. New UI strings allSpeakers, allVenues,
  allOrganizers.

Added

• Astro package: component overrides. popular({ overrides: { Header: './src/overrides/Header.astro' } }) replaces any of Header, Footer, Hero,
  EventRow, PostCard, OrganizerCard, AuthorBox, PageHero without forking the
  theme. (Hugo adopters already override via native template lookup.)

Popular v0.6.0

Search-engine optimisation: structured data, crawl plumbing, Core Web Vitals,
and an FAQ block. Zero client JavaScript added.

Added

• Structured data (JSON-LD, byte-identical across both frameworks):
  schema.org/Event on event pages (rich-result eligible, with best-effort
  time parsing; see PARITY.md for the contract), Organization on home
  pages, BlogPosting on blog posts, and FAQPage from FAQ blocks.
• New event fields: cancelled (a visible danger badge and the structured
  status, so they never disagree), online (virtual location), and
  price/currency/cost (paid-event offers).
• FAQ block: {{< faq >}}/{{< question >}} shortcodes (Astro <FAQ>/
  <FAQItem>), native <details> with zero JavaScript, answers in the DOM
  for indexing and AI answer engines. Gated FAQPage JSON-LD via
  seo.faqJsonLd (default true).
• Crawl plumbing: robots.txt advertising the sitemap, og:locale,
  og:image:alt (optional imageAlt field), and an opt-in noindex on
  taxonomy pages (seo.noindexTaxonomies). Astro adds @astrojs/sitemap.
• Core Web Vitals: markdown and card/list images lazy-load with async
  decoding (hero and event lead stay eager); a preconnect to the Font
  Awesome CDN when the default URL is used.
• New SEO and FAQ documentation pages; scripts/check-jsonld.py validates
  every built JSON-LD block in CI.

Popular v0.5.0

Added

• Computed home-page stats: @count:<section> (and @count:<section>:rounded)
  render a live entry count for any section, generalizing @pastEventCount.
  Factored into a reusable resolver (Hugo partials/stat-value.html, Astro
  src/lib/stats.ts).
• Organizer profile pages: each organizer entry renders a bio-card profile
  page (Hugo organizers/single.html, Astro organizers/[slug]), and
  organizer cards link to it. New eyebrowOrganizer UI string.
• Back link to the parent section on nested pages, labeled by the parent's
  optional shortTitle front-matter field or its title. Astro serves pages
  through a rest-param route to support nested page ids.
• Renameable content sections: [params.sections] (Hugo) / SECTIONS_MAP
  (Astro) point post-author bylines (authors) and the homepage team grid
  (team) at differently-named sections, for communities whose people are
  not "organizers" or whose blog is not written by "authors". No template
  overrides needed.

Fixed

• Post cards on date-less pages no longer render "Jan 0001" or a stray
  eyebrow separator (affects sections of static pages rendered through the
  default list).

Popular v0.4.0

Added

• Astro package: popular({ routes: { speakers: false, ... } }) disables
  any injected route group, the supported way to replace part of the
  content model or provide your own / or /rss.xml.
• Astro package: injected slug routes use rest params, so folder-organized
  content ids (2019-pycon-us/cooper-lees) build.

Changed

• Astro: theme pages tolerate undefined or empty collections, rendering no
  pages instead of failing the build.
• Theme-only CI workflows (deploys, releases, parity checks and reminders)
  no longer run in forks of either repo.