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docs: the website and its docs describe each page to search engines - #1336

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vdmkenny merged 1 commit into
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Oct 25, 2026
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vdmkenny merged 1 commit into
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  • Titles name StarLancer: the landing page is "OpenReliant: play StarLancer on Windows, macOS and Linux", and the docs' home "OpenReliant docs: install, play and mod StarLancer". The landing page's description is cut to fit a search result.
  • Each docs page gets its own description, the start of its text (website/docs_hooks.py), in place of one description for all 82 pages.
  • Canonical addresses, Open Graph and Twitter tags on every page, with OpenReliant's icon as the preview picture.
  • schema.org data on the landing page: a free game application for Windows, macOS and Linux, about StarLancer.
  • The docs' sitemap dates each page by its last commit, so search engines can tell what changed. Before, every page carried the build's date. The Pages workflow fetches the whole history for it, without the old files' contents.
  • website/sitemap.xml lists the landing and contribute pages.
  • The hero picture gives its size, so the page doesn't shift as it loads.

Goes with OpenReliant/openreliant.github.io#1, robots.txt naming the sitemaps, and OpenReliant/openreliant-mods#79, the same for the mods' site.

Checked by building the docs locally with MkDocs 1.6: the 82 descriptions are all different, 80 to 159 characters, and the sitemap's dates match git.

Search engines and link previews had little to go on: the landing page's title was just
"OpenReliant", without StarLancer in it, every docs page shared one description, the landing and
contribute pages gave no canonical address, and no one pointed search engines at a sitemap. Each
page now has its own title and description, a canonical address and Open Graph tags, and the
landing page says what OpenReliant is in schema.org's terms. The docs' sitemap dates each page by
its last commit, where it gave every page the build's date, and a sitemap of the website's own
pages joins it. robots.txt at the root of openreliant.github.io names both.
@vdmkenny
vdmkenny merged commit b88666c into main Oct 25, 2026
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vdmkenny deleted the docs/website-seo branch October 25, 2026 23:33
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