Changelog

Site updates

Notable fixes and changes to this site — accessibility, build tooling, and content governance. Not a full commit log.

• July 28, 2026

  Podcast archive wired up, dead-end pages linked forward, and stale-content signals

  A site-wide findability and content-freshness review found the podcast archive was still an empty shell despite eight recorded episodes, several pages ended in a dead end with nowhere to go next, and stale sections gave no signal about whether that staleness was expected.

  • The /podcast page rendered only a heading and one paragraph even though eight episodes already existed in the content source with full publishing records. Built out the episode list with pillar, date, host, duration, and platform for each entry, gated so a "Listen" link only appears once that episode’s source has been formally verified — today that is none of them, so each shows a plain "publishes once verified" note instead, matching the governance rule already written for this exact case.
  • The homepage’s Playbook section still said "coming soon" with no link to /playbook, even though four playbooks have been live since the previous release. Rewrote the copy to match reality and added a direct link.
  • The About page ended on a contact button with no path forward. Added a set of links to the essays, playbook, podcast, and newsletter directly below it.
  • About and Podcast were only reachable from the persistent top navigation — no other page pointed to them. Added a homepage link to About, an About-page link to Podcast, and a Podcast-page link to Playlist.
  • Newsletter and podcast content had gone 110 and 259 days respectively without a new entry, with nothing on either page indicating whether that gap was normal. Added a small note on each page stating the date of the latest entry and that updates are not on a fixed schedule, rather than asserting an unverified cadence.
  • The playlist page was reachable only from a footer row mixed in with external social links, despite being real on-site content. Split the footer into an "On this site" group (Playlist, Contact) separate from "Elsewhere" (external profiles) so internal content is not visually grouped with off-site links.
• July 28, 2026

  Mobile menu overlay fix and a visible keyboard focus ring

  Fixed a bug where the mobile navigation menu did not actually block the page behind it, and replaced a focus-ring color that had almost no contrast against the page background.

  • The mobile menu’s dimming layer sat inside the header, and the header’s blur effect was quietly changing how the browser measured that layer’s size — it was rendering at zero height, so buttons on the page behind the open menu could still be reached. Moved the dimming layer and the menu panel outside the header so they size against the full screen instead, and marked the page content behind the open menu as inert so it can’t be tabbed into or clicked while the menu is up.
  • The ring that appears around a link or button when you tab to it with a keyboard used a color with barely any contrast against the page background, so tabbing through the top navigation showed no visible focus at all. Switched it to the site’s teal accent color, which now clears the recommended contrast minimum for on-screen indicators.
  • Added two automated tests covering the menu fix so a future change can’t quietly reintroduce either issue.
• July 28, 2026

  Dynamic reading time, essay source citations, and playbook launch

  Merged the dynamic-route soft-404 fix, corrected reading-time labels across all six essays, added named external citations where a claim has a real supporting source, and published four operating playbooks that had been finished but held behind a coming-soon gate.

  • Reading time on each essay is now computed from the actual body word count at render time instead of a hand-typed number — several essays had drifted from their true length by several minutes.
  • Added a Sources section to the two essays that reference Google’s Rich Results Test by name, linking to Google Search Central’s structured-data documentation. The other four essays make no externally checkable claims, so no citation was added to them.
  • Published four playbooks — service-drive sourcing, Look-to-Book, digital trust audit, and AI search visibility quick-start — at their own /playbook routes. Each carries an internal evidence status, so the routes are live but held out of the sitemap until formally verified.
  • Re-audited all four playbooks’ step text against the no-universal-benchmark rule and rewrote a few lines that read like internal notes-to-self rather than customer-facing guidance.
  • Extended the content-governance script to check playbook detail routes against their own publishing records instead of a single hardcoded flag, so future playbook slugs follow the same record-gated pattern as essays.
• July 27, 2026

  Follow-up fixes: contact form redirect, layout shift, and playlist spacing

  A re-audit after the previous remediation pass found three items that still needed work: a redirect-handling edge case in the contact and waitlist forms, a layout shift caused by an unused loading state, and leftover excess spacing on the playlist page.

  • Contact and waitlist forms: switched fetch to follow redirects directly and read the final response URL, instead of manually reading a redirect header that browsers do not expose for cross-origin-style redirect responses. Also isolated the browser history update so it cannot downgrade an already-successful submission to an error state.
  • Removed an unused root-level loading state and a redundant server-rendered confirmation banner on the homepage and contact page. Both were forcing those routes into dynamic rendering and triggering a streaming shell swap that shifted the footer position after the page settled — removing them lets both routes render as static output with no shift.
  • Softened the footer’s top margin on small screens so shorter pages, including the playlist page, do not end with an oversized gap before the footer.
• July 27, 2026

  UX audit remediation: contrast, forms, CLS, and tap targets

  A UX/UI audit covering Fitts’s Law, contrast, Gestalt, keyboard focus, and form error states surfaced nine findings across the homepage, essay pages, contact form, footer, and playlist page. All nine are addressed below.

  • Hero photo caption on the homepage: strengthened the gradient overlay and added a solid backdrop chip behind the caption text so contrast stays well above the AA floor regardless of the underlying photo brightness.
  • Homepage CLS: gave the hero portrait panel an explicit aspect-ratio so layout does not shift as the image and footer settle.
  • Contact form and homepage waitlist form: added an inline success banner plus a button-label state change after a confirmed submit, and wired aria-invalid/aria-describedby so validation errors are announced to assistive technology instead of relying only on native browser tooltips.
  • The ← All essays back-link at the top of each essay page was expanded to a 44px-tall tap target (shared template, so it applies across all six essay routes).
  • Added tabindex="-1" to the main landmark so activating the skip link moves keyboard focus into the content, not just the scroll position.
  • Added visible required-field markers to the contact form and homepage waitlist form.
  • Widened the Spotify playlist embed column and increased its height so the gap before the footer on /playlist is largely closed, and the wider embed gives Spotify’s own widget more room for its title text.
  • Footer links (TikTok, Linktree, Playlist, Contact) now carry a 44px min-width floor in addition to the existing 44px height, so footer tap targets clear both dimensions.
  • Darkened the teal link/label color and the muted footer/meta text color slightly for a larger contrast safety margin above the AA floor.
• July 27, 2026

  Contact page and homepage tap targets

  A follow-up mobile sweep found two more spots with the same undersized tap-target pattern, missed by the earlier pass.

  • The mobile-only "All essays" link on the homepage was still a ~19px hit box.
  • The Contact page has its own separate email and social links (LinkedIn, YouTube, Linktree) that were not covered by the earlier footer fix — email link was ~24px tall, social links ~20px.
  • All expanded to a 44px minimum tap target using the same flex layout pattern as the earlier fixes.
• July 27, 2026

  Newsletter inline-link tap targets

  Expanded the "Read on LinkedIn" and "Related on this site" links on each newsletter edition to a full 44px tap target.

  • Both links were bare inline text with no vertical padding (roughly 20px tall) — hard to tap accurately on mobile.
  • Same fix pattern as the footer/logo update below: flex layout with a 44px minimum height, no change to visible text size.

  PR #16 →
• July 27, 2026

  Branch protection on main

  main now requires the site’s CI check (typecheck, lint, build, tests, and content governance) to pass before any merge, including for admins.

  • Prevents a repeat of the two governance-script bugs below from landing on main unnoticed.
  • Force-pushes and branch deletion are also blocked on main.
• July 27, 2026

  Footer and logo tap targets, plus two CI governance fixes

  Fixed real mobile tap-target issues found in a 375×812 layout sweep, and two unrelated pre-existing bugs in the content-governance CI checks that surfaced along the way.

  • Footer social links, Playlist, and Contact links expanded from a ~19px hit box to a full 44px target.
  • Header logo expanded from a ~28px tap target to 44px, matching the nav menu button’s existing sizing.
  • Fixed a content-governance false positive where a test fixture URL used only in tests was mistaken for a real unfinished link left in public content.
  • Fixed a second false positive where the public-claims checker read an internal code comment (JSDoc) as public-facing copy and flagged an absolute-sounding word in that comment as a risky claim.
  • Verified the governance-script fixes don’t weaken real detection — all existing test fixtures for both checks still pass exactly as before.

  PR #14 →PR #15 →