Maintenance and upgrades

Keep the theme, runtime pins, content and published documentation current.

Treat theme upgrades as reviewed application changes. They can affect templates, generated URLs, accessibility, search records and screenshots even when content is unchanged.

Upgrade a consuming site#

Read the release notes and compare configuration examples.

Update the pinned Hugo Module version:

hugo mod get github.com/projectious-work/brand-theme-hugo-vanilla@vX.Y.Z
hugo mod tidy

Update locked Node dependencies with npm install when the release changes package.json.
Compare local template overrides with their new upstream versions.
Build with the production baseURL, run link and browser checks, and review visual changes in every supported language.
Commit go.mod, go.sum, package lockfiles and required configuration changes together.

Check for a new release#

Copy scripts/check-theme-update.sh from the theme release into the consuming site’s scripts/ directory and make it executable. It reads the installed version from Hugo’s module graph and compares it with upstream SemVer tags:

chmod +x scripts/check-theme-update.sh
./scripts/check-theme-update.sh

It is check-only by default and exits with status 10 when an update is available, which makes it suitable for a scheduled local task. After reading the release notes and committing or stashing site changes, apply the update explicitly:

./scripts/check-theme-update.sh --update

The update mode runs hugo mod get and hugo mod tidy; it deliberately does not rewrite configuration, overwrite local templates or publish. Review the resulting go.mod/go.sum, compare configuration examples, then run the consuming site’s build, link, accessibility and visual tests.

Routine checks#

Run npm audit and review direct dependency updates.
Test the minimum and current supported Hugo versions.
Check external links and the Edit-this-page prefix.
Verify search, version and language menus after adding or moving pages.
Review translated pages whenever English structure changes.
Confirm CDN pins still exist and self-hosted mirrors match them.
Re-run accessibility checks after CSS, navigation or component changes.

Maintain versioned documentation#

Publish a version URL before adding it to params.versions. Keep canonical current documentation at the stable root. When removing an old version, remove its selector entry and configure redirects where links may remain in the wild.

Repository release chain#

This repository uses local scripts rather than GitHub workflows. From a clean, synchronized main after review:

./scripts/release.sh vX.Y.Z

The script verifies deterministic output and browser baselines, packages the theme, creates the annotated tag and GitHub release, then deploys that tagged commit to GitHub Pages. Never deploy an unreviewed working tree.

Recovery and support#

Published tags and GitHub release archives are immutable recovery points. Report security issues through SECURITY.md; use GitHub issues for reproducible defects and discussions for usage questions when enabled.