Changelog

Major speed improvements: every page now loads only the code and text it actually needs, fonts and images are leaner, and the main content appears almost immediately. Mobile load performance improved substantially.

Refined homepage motion: the headline and each section now ease into view as you arrive, with subtle hover effects on cards and navigation links.

Accessibility: all motion now respects your device's "reduce motion" setting, showing content instantly when you prefer less movement, and navigation links gained a clear keyboard-focus underline.

New essay: "How to Get the Best Output from Claude": a prompt-engineering playbook with ready-to-copy prompts, available in every supported language.

Added a short intro video on the About page, with a transcript that follows along line by line as it plays.

Hardened the contact, subscribe, and data-deletion flows with stronger abuse protection, single-use deletion links, and input limits.

Accessibility and mobile polish: larger, easier-to-tap controls (44px targets), tidier navbar spacing on small screens, and a repositioned floating contact button.

Faster loads: hero, portrait, and blog images now serve as WebP, roughly halving their size.

Introduced a documented data-retention policy: unconfirmed sign-ups and aged form submissions are purged automatically, while one-click deletion still erases everything on request.

Published two new case studies — Verified Bidirectional Account Linking and a personalized, human-in-the-loop job-application platform — bringing the library to four, each with an animated, theme-aware architecture diagram.

Added a Known Issues page and a Report a Bug form under Updates, so you can see what is being worked on and flag anything you run into.

New visitors are now offered the site in their own language, based on browser and region, with a clear note that those translations are machine-generated.

The language switcher now shows the current flag and code (for example, GB / EN) and sits next to the light and dark toggle; every language lists its flag.

Fixed a navigation error that could interrupt browsing after switching a page into another language.

Added privacy-first, cookieless analytics and monitoring — Vercel Web Analytics, Speed Insights (real page-load performance) and Sentry error tracking — which load only after you choose "Accept All" on the cookie banner.

Added automated uptime monitoring that checks the site and its services on a schedule and alerts by email if anything goes down, plus a public /api/health status endpoint.

Updated the Cookie and Privacy policies to describe the new cookieless analytics and monitoring, and to confirm the site does not use Google Analytics.

Added a live Website Health page with real-time API and service status, including the translation service, reachable from a new Updates section in the footer.

Added three more languages — Swedish, Norwegian and Portuguese (Portugal) — bringing the site to 17, with a flag shown for each and correct rendering on Windows.

Published the Buy Now Pay Later platform case study, with an animated architecture diagram and cover image.

Contact, newsletter (double opt-in) and data-deletion requests now run on a real backend, with a clear message if you reach the rate limit.

Added reCAPTCHA spam protection and rate limiting to every form, with server-side validation as a second line of defense.

Self-hosted every font and removed all third-party font loading, so no font requests leave the site.

Abuse detection now uses only a salted, one-way hash of your IP address, never the raw address itself.

Reorganized the header controls and slimmed the footer to three focused columns.

Fixed a rare loading error that could appear right after a new release; the site now recovers on its own.

Redesigned blog cards to match the case-study layout — hero thumbnail, year and read time, and a clear "Read Article" call to action.

Reworked the About page with a horizontal, step-by-step journey timeline and a recognition strip.

Added a "Delete My Data" self-service page — clear your browser data instantly or request deletion of any personal data we hold.

Added site-wide search so you can jump to any page or article quickly.

Added breadcrumb navigation across pages for clearer orientation.

Added a site-wide WhatsApp support button for quick questions.

Redesigned the 404 page with helpful navigation back into the site.

Unified the domain — www now redirects to the canonical buildwithshardul.com.

Added a full security-header suite: Content Security Policy, HSTS, and clickjacking and MIME-sniffing protection across the site.

Blog content is now sanitized before rendering, preventing script injection.

Contact and data-deletion forms hardened against automated spam.

Cookie consent now genuinely gates non-essential cookies — "Essential Only" is enforced, and analytics can run only with your explicit consent.

Cookie Policy rewritten for accuracy: it now clearly marks which cookies are active today versus planned for future features.