ft8af.app

Marketing/help site for FT8AF — FT8/FT4/FT2 for Android.

The site is generated from templates + per-language message catalogs into static HTML under public/, localized into 16 languages. English builds to the site root (so existing URLs are unchanged); every other locale builds under /<locale>/.

Develop

node build.mjs          # generate public/ (all locales) + sitemap.xml
python dev-server.py 8000   # serve public/ at http://127.0.0.1:8000 (clean URLs)

The /store page needs FOURTHWALL_STOREFRONT_TOKEN at build time (public, read-only token; see .env.example). Without it the site still builds and the store page falls back to a plain link to the Fourthwall shop.

Open / for English, /es, /ja, /ar (right-to-left), etc. Re-run node build.mjs after editing any template or catalog.

Where things live

src/
  pages/*.mjs        # one template per route; structure/markup only
  pages/_registry.mjs# build/sitemap order
  partials/…         # (nav, footer, head, language switcher live in build.mjs)
  i18n/<locale>.json # translatable copy — en.json is the source of truth
  data/site.mjs      # locale registry (native names, og-locale, dir, font flag)
build.mjs            # the generator
public/assets/       # committed static assets (CSS, JS, fonts, screenshots)
public/**/*.html     # GENERATED — git-ignored, do not edit by hand

Editing copy

• Edit English in src/i18n/en.json, then mirror the change into the other catalogs.
• Any key missing from a locale catalog falls back to English, so a partial translation still renders a complete page.
• Check coverage with npm run check:i18n (also runs in CI). It compares every catalog to en.json and fails on structural drift — keys a locale has that en.json doesn't, or string-vs-object shape mismatches — while only warning about missing/verbatim strings (those fall back to English). Add --strict (or --min <pct>) to also gate on translation coverage.
• Values may contain inline HTML (<a>, <strong>, <code>); they are emitted raw, so keep them valid HTML fragments.
• Internal links are written English-style (/features) in templates and rewritten to the active locale (/es/features) at build time — don't hard-code locale prefixes.

Do not translate

Brand FT8AF; callsigns (K1AF, N0RC, BG7YOZ, N0BOY); mode names FT8/FT4/FT2; ham jargon (POTA, DXCC, QSO, CAT, SWR, ALC, PSKReporter, QRZ, Cloudlog, Wavelog, "73"); prices; the app screenshots and the inline UI mockups; shell commands and the GitHub issue template.

Language routing

middleware.js is Vercel Routing Middleware that runs only on /, before the cache:

1. If the visitor has a locale cookie (set client-side in public/assets/ft8af.js whenever they view a page or use the picker), it's honored.
2. Otherwise their Accept-Language is matched to the closest built locale.
3. English is served in place at /; a non-English match gets a 307 to /<locale>.

Deep links (/features, /es, …) are never redirected. The redirect is per-visitor (Cache-Control: no-store, Vary: Accept-Language, Cookie), so the static / and /<locale> pages stay fully cacheable. The picker always wins — choosing English at / sets locale=en and stops the redirect — so there's an escape hatch from any auto-detected language. The middleware derives its locale list from src/data/site.mjs, so there's nothing to keep in sync.

Deploy

Vercel runs node build.mjs (buildCommand in vercel.json) and serves public/. The Vercel project's Root Directory is the repo root (not public/) so the build command runs at the root. middleware.js deploys automatically. CI (.github/workflows/ci.yml) builds first, then validates JSON, links and HTML5.