We had a written guide for how a HexClad site should be designed, built, verified, and audited. It was a reference our team could consult. As of this release it is the standard, and the build tools enforce the parts that can be enforced.
We also had two such guides in circulation with nothing saying which one won. That is now settled: there is one, and the older document is marked as superseded. Two standards with no precedence is a coin flip on every build, and it was ours to fix rather than yours to notice.
Here is what the standard commits us to.
Dark or light is declared, never guessed
Every build states which of our two house variants it is, and the build refuses to assume. This is not a matter of taste. A site once shipped in a direction nobody asked for, and the only correction we needed was "use the template." Guessing is now impossible rather than discouraged.
Copy rules
Binding on everything we generate:
- No emojis in your site copy.
- No em dashes. They are the clearest tell that a page was written by a machine.
- No fake "online" status dots. A green dot should mean something is being monitored. If it is decoration, it is a lie about your business.
The footer is a deliverable, not a leftover
Your copyright bar carries your company name and the year, not a placeholder, and it carries a credit line for who built the site. Both had a trap where the obvious fix silently did nothing, which is exactly how a placeholder survives to launch.
A build is not done until it is verified
Finishing a build now requires observing that the change actually took effect: the new styling present, and the old value gone. A page that returns successfully proves nothing, because stylesheets here compile lazily and can fail without saying so. "It loaded" is not evidence.
A form with nowhere to send submissions is a broken site
A contact form that looks perfect and quietly drops every enquiry is worse than no form at all, because you trust it. A real recipient address is now required before a build can be called finished. It is one of only two things the build refuses to pick a default for, and both are on this list for the same reason: they produce a site that looks completely finished.
Honest audit results
The post-launch audit reports one of four verdicts: pass, fail, partial, or needs you. The rule attached to it is that the two soft verdicts are never rounded up to a pass. A partial is a partial, and "needs you" means we are waiting on something only you can provide.
What this release did not change
No new pricing, no new plan limits, and nothing you need to do. This is us narrowing what we are allowed to get wrong.