8 posts
hreflang is the tag that tells Google every page also exists in another language — but it only counts if both sides point back at each other. Here, 350 of those links pointed at addresses that never existed. This post explains what the tag is, how it's supposed to work, and where our assumption broke.
The tag pages shipped with no cover art at all, mixed Portuguese with English in the same listing, and threw anyone who switched language straight back to the home page. Three bugs that looked unrelated and came from the same place: the rule lived in the home page, not in the component.
The post was hidden, its route returned 404, the feed didn't mention it. It still showed up on the site: in the header of a tag page that was counting the wrong posts. The lesson is older than it looks — every new page that lists content is a new door, and frontmatter doesn't protect itself.
An accessibility audit on LifeLog turned into a hunt for four contrast traps: code comments at 3.9:1, project badges failing in 4 of 6 palettes, a theme selector that Astro scoping silently broke, and the alpha that axe-core refuses to compose. The result: 14 routes x themes with zero serious/critical violations.
Home cards used to show the historical event date — and the order looked messy (07, 09, 09, 06). The change: show the publish date (pubDate). The story of a detail that changes how the blog is perceived.
158 commits, 50 bilingual posts, 4 theme engines, 59 AI covers, and a decision that changed everything: killing the bot that wrote posts on its own.
TagCloud, shared PostLayout, Fuse.js-powered FilterBar, and theme fixes — a full day of housekeeping on the blog's foundation.
Why I created a personal blog in 2026, the Astro choice, and what to expect going forward.