Changelog

One theme, two implementations: versions are tagged in lockstep in hugo-theme-popular and astro-theme-popular, and this file ships identically in both (PARITY.md Tier 1). Format follows Keep a Changelog; versions follow semver. During 0.x, minor versions may contain breaking changes; they will be called out here.

To hear about new releases: watch either repo on GitHub (Watch → Custom → Releases) or subscribe to the releases feed (https://github.com/Mariatta/hugo-theme-popular/releases.atom).

[Unreleased]

[0.7.0] - 2026-07-31

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.)

[0.6.0] - 2026-07-23

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.

[0.5.0] - 2026-07-21

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).

[0.4.0] - 2026-07-14

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.

[0.3.0] - 2026-07-09

Added

• Older/newer post navigation on blog posts, with the cross-framework ordering contract pinned in PARITY.md (date descending, then title, then slug; weight on posts is unsupported). New UI string keys: postNavigation, newerPost, olderPost.
• The Sessionize importer can store a site’s endpoint: --id <embed-id> shorthand, or persist it in popular-import.toml ([sessionize] with id or url) and run with just --site ..
• An updating guide at /docs/updating/: release discovery, per-install-method update steps, and which customization hooks survive updates.
• Astro: phase 1 of npm packaging (PACKAGING.md): the theme as an installable Astro integration under package/, with a smoke consumer built in CI. Experimental; the copy-this-repo model is unchanged and remains canonical.

[0.2.0] - 2026-07-08

Fixed

• Query-string URLs no longer double-escape (& became &, breaking links) in buttons, footer and header links, social icons, and markdown links. CI now fails on any double-escaped ampersand in built output.
• Markdown links no longer render a stray space before following punctuation.
• Astro: the RSS <link rel="alternate"> resolves against the configured site instead of hardcoding /rss.xml, fixing subpath deployments.

Changed

• The footer theme credit in demos and starters now links to the project site (mariatta.ca/hugo-theme-popular) instead of the author’s personal site. Adopters control their own credit via footer config.

Added

• g-btn--accent button variant, with an accentHover brand key (defaults to a darkened accent).
• --gold-100 (card image placeholder tint) now derives from brand.primary like its sibling tints, instead of staying champagne on re-branded sites.
• Hugo: a head-extra.html hook for analytics or any other head markup, overridable per site without replacing the whole head partial.
• Astro: optional SITE.rssTitle for the feed link title.

[0.1.0] - 2026-07-08

First public release.

Added

• The theme, in Hugo and Astro parity: events (upcoming/past, venues, speakers, check-in and arrival notes, RSVP, “venue wanted”), multi-author blog with tag filtering and pagination, organizers, sponsors, and a docs area with scroll-tracking TOC and persistent checklists.
• Config-first branding: one brand block recolors and retypes the whole site, dark palettes included, plus customCSS for anything further.
• Content importers (stdlib-only Python): Sessionize (sessionize-import.py) and spreadsheet (spreadsheet-import.py, with --make-sample starter workbook). Unicode-safe slugs, never overwrite, Hugo and Astro output.
• Four fictional demos (Rocky Cove Aquarium Club, Lucky Town Foodie Club, KDrama Fan Club, Truly Madly Riley) plus the neutral “Your Community” starter (Hugo exampleSite/, Astro demos/starter/).
• Accessibility groundwork: required alt text enforced in CI, keyboard navigable menus, checklist checkboxes announce state, skip link, WCAG link underlines.
• CI: helper-script tests, image-alt checks (Hugo 0.146 floor + latest), cross-repo parity check, base-path escape scan on deploys.
• Hugo Modules support (go.mod): import as github.com/Mariatta/hugo-theme-popular.