Changelog

Editions

• Edition pages are now printable — Print / Save PDF button added to edition header
• Printed editions include a table-of-contents listing followed by each article in full, one article per page, with eyebrow, title, dek, byline, and complete body text
• Print header shows publication name, edition number, date, and article count; print footer shows the canonical URL

Public Domain Library

• The Age of Reason and Common Sense added to Featured Works — all five library works are now featured
• Library catalogue alphabetised A–Z by title (ignoring leading articles): The Age of Reason, Common Sense, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, On Liberty, Why I Am Not a Christian
• Word count and reading time now displayed on library chapter and short-text reading pages, between the title and the reader tools bar
• Back-to-top button now works on library reading pages — progress.js previously gated floats visibility on the article progress bar, which is absent from library layouts
• Reading percentage (% through) now shown on library reading pages alongside the back-to-top button
• Floating within-chapter TOC max-height reduced to prevent it overlapping the back-to-top button at the bottom-right of the screen

Site

• Features page added at /features/ — complete inventory of every site feature organised by category

Newsletter

• New /newsletter/ page — full landing page with signup form, what to expect, past issues link, and alternative follow options
• /newsletter/welcome/ — redirect destination after form submission; confirms subscription and sets expectations
• /newsletter/confirmed/ — redirect destination after clicking Buttondown's confirmation link; links to Start Here, Library, and Reading List
• subscribe.js now redirects to /newsletter/welcome/ on successful form submission instead of showing an inline message
• New .subscribe-form--stacked CSS modifier for the vertical form layout on the newsletter page — restores right border and adjusts border-radius correctly

Privacy & transparency

• Privacy policy updated: Buttondown section now accurately states open tracking and click tracking are disabled; UTM parameter use explained
• Public Umami analytics dashboard linked from the privacy policy Analytics section
• Analytics link added to footer bottom bar alongside Privacy, Corrections, Changelog, Sitemap, RSS — reordered with transparency items first
• All contact email addresses unified to hello@thefreethinkingtimes.com — corrected misspelled domain (freetimingtimes) in about.njk, submit.njk, and support.njk
• Privacy policy short-version subtitle updated

Site polish

• Text selection highlight colour changed from red accent to pansy purple (#6A1B9A light / #B87ACC dark) — new --color-selection and --color-selection-ink design tokens
• Pullquote share tooltip character limit raised from 400 to 600 — allows longer meaningful quotes to trigger the share button
• Hamburger nav drawer: added Newsletter and Start Here, removed duplicate Games entry (already present in primary nav above divider)
• Sitemap updated to include /library/, /library/subjects/, /library/authors/, all library work landing pages (collections.libraryWorks), and all library chapters (collections.libraryChapters)

Public Domain Library

• New /library/ section launched — curated public domain texts from the freethought tradition
• Five works published at launch: Common Sense (Paine), Why I Am Not a Christian (Russell), On Liberty (Mill), The Age of Reason (Paine), An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Hume)
• Work landing pages with chapter list, reading progress indicators, and Continue Reading detection
• Browse by Subject at /library/subjects/ — tag cloud and per-subject work listings
• Browse by Author at /library/authors/ — author biographies and collected works
• Library column added to site footer
• Library navbar dropdown — featured works, Browse by Subject, Browse by Author links

Library reader experience

• All eight article reader tools available on library reading pages: Save, Share, Listen (TTS), Focus, Reading settings, Download, Print, Cite
• Within-chapter floating table of contents on wide screens (≥1200px) — auto-populated from headings with scroll-spy highlighting
• Focus mode on library pages hides the site masthead, leaving the reading header as sole navigation chrome
• Sticky reading header with back link, chapter title, Bookmark and Panel toggle
• Reading panel with Contents (chapter list), Bookmarks, and Notes tabs
• Annotation toolbar for highlighting and note-taking on selected text
• Reading progress bar and back-to-top button
• Print CSS hides all reading chrome and renders clean text for PDF saving
• Mobile reading overrides: reduced padding, fixed annotation toolbar positioning

Library infrastructure

• JSON-LD Book and Chapter structured data on all library pages for schema.org compatibility
• Pagefind search indexing for library content with work title and author metadata
• scripts/split-gutenberg.js — CLI tool to strip Gutenberg boilerplate and split a plain-text source into numbered chapter Markdown files with frontmatter
• libraryChapters, libraryByWork, libraryWorks, and libraryFeatured Eleventy collections
• Computed data file (src/_data/library/subjects.js) for unique sorted subject list

Bug fixes & polish

• Library index.md files were appearing in chapter lists — Eleventy sets fileSlug to empty string for index files, defeating the prior regex filter; fixed by filtering on inputPath instead
• Enquiry section TOC showed duplicate numbers (chapterNumber + 'Section N:' in title) — stripped numeric prefix from all 12 section titles
• Library navbar dropdown appeared at far left — drawer.js keys array was missing 'library', so positionDropdown() was never called for it
• Library within-chapter TOC appeared even with no headings — CSS display:block overrides the browser's [hidden] attribute; fixed with :not([hidden]) selector
• Switched from Google Fonts to Bunny Fonts — same typefaces, privacy-friendly CDN, no tracking; moved from @import in CSS to <link> in <head>

Intellectual projects

• Four new project sections launched: The Freethought Glossary (/glossary/), The Thought Experiment Library (/thought-experiments/), The Freethinker's Bookshelf (/bookshelf/), The Trials of Thought (/trials/)
• 34 content files written: 11 glossary terms, 5 thought experiment essays, 11 annotated bookshelf entries, 7 trial essays
• Glossary terms include etymology, key figures, related terms, and A–Z browse sidebar
• Bookshelf entries include category, difficulty, best-for metadata, and annotated prose
• Trials timeline spans 399 BCE to present — integer year field (negative for BCE) drives chronological ordering

Article reader tools

• Word count displayed next to reading time in the article byline
• Download button — exports article as plain text (.txt) or Markdown (.md)
• Reading settings panel — font size slider (14–24 px) and font choice (Serif / Sans / OpenDyslexic); preferences persisted in localStorage
• OpenDyslexic font loaded on demand from CDN when selected
• Surprise Me button in masthead — redirects to a random article
• Article action buttons reorganised by purpose: Save → Share → Listen → Focus → Reading settings → Download → Print → Cite

Reader experience

• Reading time on every article, calculated from word count at build time; displayed on all article cards
• Reading time filter on section pages: All / Short reads (<5 min) / Long reads (>15 min)
• Reading progress bar on article pages; stops at end of article body
• Back to top button appears after scrolling 400 px
• Table of contents auto-generated from h2/h3 headings with scroll-spy highlighting
• Heading anchor links on h2/h3 — link icon on hover for deep-linking to any section
• Focus / reading mode — wider margins, larger type, sidebar hidden, persisted in localStorage
• Read aloud (Web Speech API): play/pause/stop, speed presets (0.75×–2×), voice selector
• Pullquote sharing — select any text in an article body, share via Web Share API or clipboard
• Related articles ranked by shared tags with section fallback
• Article series support with numbered parts and previous/next navigation

Publishing & editorial

• Share panel: X/Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Bluesky, Mastodon, copy link, email
• Cite this source modal — APA, MLA, and Chicago formats with one-click copy
• Reading list — browser-based bookmarking, no account required; accessible at /reading-list/
• Corrections log — articles carry corrections in front matter; aggregate view at /corrections/
• Annotation footnotes via shortcode — inline tooltip, no jump to page bottom
• Argument map — structured Claim → Evidence → Conclusion box for opinion pieces
• Inter-article response system — responseTo front matter links articles with banners on both
• Edition format — articles belong to numbered editions, browsable at /editions/
• Dates on articles and cards link to /archives/#YYYY-MM-DD
• Suggest a correction — mailto link on every article
• /start-here/ page — curated entry point for new readers
• /editorial/ handbook — public standards covering accuracy, sourcing, corrections, AI use, and complaints
• /documents/ section — primary source library for FOIA responses and public records
• Contributors / authors index at /contributors/ with bio cards and article links
• Per-author RSS feeds at /feeds/[author-slug].xml with link autodiscovery
• Site changelog at /changelog/, backed by src/_data/changelog.json

Site & infrastructure

• Full-site search via Pagefind with section filter bar
• Progressive Web App: web manifest, cache-first service worker, offline fallback at /offline.html
• JSON-LD NewsArticle structured data in every article — improves Google Top Stories eligibility
• Open Graph social card images auto-generated per article at build time
• Umami privacy-first analytics installed
• Pansy favicon: SVG at 16 px; pansy icon in footer and masthead page
• GTranslate floating widget — nine languages, dark mode corrected, publication nameplate protected
• Comments section (Cusdis) — dark mode synced, card-style layout
• Games section at /games/ — Fifteen Puzzle, Freethinking Trivia, Word Scramble, Crossy Road variant
• Footer restructured into four columns: Sections, About, Transparency, Reader Tools
• Print CSS suppresses nav, sidebar, interactive elements, and all non-essential chrome
• Header and footer span full viewport width; masthead converted from absolute to flex layout
• Mobile navigation: section nav collapses on small screens, subscribe form stacks correctly
• Site URL corrected to https://thefreethinkingtimes.com — fixes canonical links, OG images, RSS

SEO & discoverability

• XML sitemap at /sitemap.xml — all articles and key static pages with lastmod dates
• Google News sitemap at /news-sitemap.xml — news:news namespace with publication, language, date, title
• robots.txt — allows all crawlers including Googlebot-News; declares both sitemaps
• OG article meta tags: article:published_time, article:modified_time, article:author, article:section, article:tag
• news_keywords meta tag on article pages — comma-separated tags
• Sitemap link added to footer Reader Tools column
• Backlinks — each article shows other articles that link to it, discovered at build time

Bug fixes & polish

• Header scroll stutter resolved — dual watermark hysteresis: 10 px down to compact, 30 px up to restore
• slugify filter hardened against undefined input — resolves build crash on tag pages
• Article header given stacking context so dropdown panels float above article body
• All article action buttons given explicit background and appearance: none to eliminate cross-browser rendering differences
• All dropdown panels harmonised to the same background token
• Section badge links fixed — Science & Technology and Arts & Culture now resolve correctly
• Freethinkers Map removed; Submit button removed from masthead