Three rounds of mockups came before any code: a home page in several styles, and a Chronicles landing in several more. The owner picked the Magazine home (“I like the Magazine for home most”) and kept the board as the Chronicles landing (“I really like the board design for the Project Chronicles landing page”). Those two choices set the shape of everything below.
What is on the page
A sidebar runs down the left on every page: Home, Chronicles, CV, Profile, and the owner’s links. The home page opens with a headline and the owner’s line about automation, then two door cards (the CV, marked soon, and the Chronicles with a live count of projects and entries), three featured projects, a pull quote from the newest entries, and the five latest developments across every project.
The featured three are chosen by two new fields on a project card, featured and an order, so the home page can change its selection without the Chronicles knowing. Cookbook, Clipper Overlord, and Kongomax are the first set. A profile page is up; the CV page says coming soon.
Type and themes
The owner’s one constraint on type was “Readability is important,” and two faces made the shortlist. The manager went with IBM Plex for its condensed display face and matching mono, one set for both themes. The fonts are served from the site itself rather than a font service, a manager decision taken for visitors’ privacy rather than anything the owner asked for.
Of the four colour schemes the Chronicles launched with, the owner named two, in the pull quote. Fieldnotes and Darkroom follow the operating system’s setting, with Darkroom as the fallback, and a toggle at the foot of the sidebar remembers a choice.
What is still old
The Chronicles pages under their own path look as they did on launch day, four-scheme picker included. The next slice restyles them into the wrapper and retires the picker in favour of the two themes.
Housekeeping
Entries written on the same day used to sort in whatever order the build found them, and a reviewer noticed the order changing between builds. Same-day entries now sort by project and slug, which is stable if not chronological. A time field in the front matter would give true order within a day; the historian has not needed one yet.