Changelog

What's shipped, when. Latest at top.

v0.1 — public preview 2026-04-19

Initial public preview. The reference implementation (austinspring.com) is publicly browseable and accepts new accounts + new posts. Soft launch ahead of the official May 1, 2026 launch.

Reconstruction milestones

• addWayback Machine deep-fetch of 4,029 (conf, thread) pairs across spring.com + spring.net
• add96 conferences discovered via CDX scan (88 with content, 77 wired into the live site)
• add3,711 archived thread pages rendered as static HTML
• add262,791 historical responses parsed from yapp HTML and re-rendered with modern CSS
• addSpan: 1996 → 2013 (Wayback's last meaningful capture; spring.net domain transition Sept 6, 2014)

Live BBS features

• addFlask app at /bbs/live/: signup, login, welcome page, post, reply, settings, search, members, recent feed
• addComment-on-archived-thread (the big modern unlock yapp couldn't do)
• add"+ NEW TOPIC" CTA on every conference page
• add"LIVE TOPICS (POSTED 2026+)" auto-injected block on static conference pages — Flask hook regenerates on every new topic + reply
• addWelcome page after signup with handle reveal + 4 next-step CTAs
• addReply notifications via Resend HTTPS API (DigitalOcean blocks SMTP) with per-user opt-out + one-click unsubscribe
• addPassword reset flow (forgot → email token → reset → auto-login)
• add"Remember me" 30-day persistent session option
• addPer-conference RSS feeds + global firehose RSS at /bbs/live/rss/<conf|all>.xml
• addMerged activity feed at /bbs/live/recent — new topics + replies + archive comments, newest first
• add"Last 50 / 100 / 333 / 500" pulse view via /recent?n=N (yapp's signature view convention)
• add/bbs/classics/ — top 20 most-discussed threads, newcomer doorway
• addPin Porch #1 ("let's introduce ourselves") on /bbs/porch/ + /about/
• addStats endpoint /bbs/live/stats.json — homepage live strip pulls from this

Discovery & SEO

• addOG / Twitter cards on 3,110 thread pages (preview image, title, snippet)
• addSchema.org DiscussionForumPosting JSON-LD on all 3,110 pages
• add71 per-conference sitemaps + bbs-sitemap.xml index + top-level sitemap.xml = 3,180+ URLs
• addrobots.txt with explicit allows + auth-route disallows + sitemap pointers

Cross-network

• addBidirectional cross-links: /bbs/drool/ ↔ firth.com network (5 sites — firth.com, colinfirth.com, colinfirth.org, firthfan.com, austenfirth.com)
• addBidirectional cross-links: /bbs/austen/ ↔ austen.com

Security

• secCSRF tokens (hand-rolled HMAC of session seed) on all 9 form templates
• secPer-IP sliding-window rate limiting on signup, login, post, reply, forgot, reset, settings
• secSoft-delete admin queue at /bbs/live/admin — moderate posts/comments/threads with reasons + undo
• secSECURE + HTTPONLY + SAMESITE=Lax cookies in production

Operations / resilience

• addSTATE.yaml manifest auto-regenerated nightly with live counts + critical-file MD5s + cron jobs
• addRECOVERY.md disaster-recovery guide (mirrored to droplet + B2 + local)
• addDaily integrity check cron — emails sysop via Resend if drift detected
• addNightly dated B2 snapshots at walhuswholetech-snapshots/, 30-day retention
• addHomepage rollback guard — locked .GOOD copy + cron sentinel restores within 2 min if live drops below locked size
• addterry@austinspring.com email (Resend send + ForwardEmail.net catch-all forward to inbox)

UI polish

• chgHomepage: top login bar + GET STARTED CTA + "Already a member" + "Browse all conferences" + Drool/Firth hero card + live stats strip
• chgLogout button — was dim gray, now bold amber-bordered
• chgPost-date color brightened across all 1,856+ thread pages (was dim olive, now phosphor green bold)
• chgYapp epigrams quoted on /about/, signup, welcome pages
• chg/about/ page rewritten with BBS story + takedown policy + member ownership

Outreach (this session)

• add26 batched outreach Gmail drafts: 13 main list (242 recipients) + 6 Drool list (109) + 7 Austen-active (~130)
• addSubject prefixes [B##/13] / [D##/06] / [A##/07] for ordered slow-release

Bugs fixed

• fix/bbs/porch/ thread links pointed at Wayback instead of local — patched build-conference-pages.py to prefer local rendered page when present (LOCAL_FIRST_PATCH)
• fixConference render gap: cache had threads but build script only used Oct 2000 index. Now synthesizes fresh index from cache when needed (austen 8→92, austenarchive 0→204, austentest 9→152, bronte 76→79)
• fixDate readability: .post-date color was dim olive; brightened to phosphor green bold across all 1,856+ thread pages
• fixCloudflare blocked default Python User-Agent on Resend API; added explicit Mozilla UA
• fixConference index regex was non-greedy and matched 0 conferences after a porch-page accidental overwrite — replaced with per-block iteration
• fixOutdated "30 of 85+" copy on /bbs/ replaced with accurate "All 77 Conferences (1996-2014)"

v0.0 — pre-history ~2026-03-15 → 2026-04-18

Built quietly across several sessions. Core reconstruction pipeline established. Wayback discovery + parse + render. Initial Flask app. Single-conference (porch) proof of concept. Then expansion to 33 conferences. Daily refinement.

This is when ATXbbs went from "wouldn't it be cool" to actually working.