EI-6.4 — Navigation & Discovery Refinement
Status: COMPLETE
Date: 2026-08-08
Objective
Reduce masthead density and make the site’s curated discovery surfaces render reliably without reintroducing the retired Blog model or uncontrolled categories.
Navigation decision
The primary masthead is intentionally JavaScript-free and reduced to five destinations:
- About
- Teaching
- Writing
- PTIR
- CV
The paco.org site name remains the direct Home link. Contact, History, Archive, Subjects, and policy pages remain available in the footer and contextual discovery surfaces. The active primary destination receives aria-current="page" when applicable.
This avoids a hamburger menu while materially reducing narrow-screen navigation density.
Discovery rendering defect
The Subjects screenshot exposed a Jekyll/Liquid rendering problem: Markdown list syntax emitted from inside Liquid loops could reach the final page as literal Markdown text instead of rendered list markup.
/categories/ was repaired first. EI-6.4 then audited the other generated discovery surfaces and found the same risky pattern in:
/writing//featured//history//loudmouth//ptir/
Those generated lists now use explicit semantic HTML (<ul>, <li>, and <a>) inside Liquid loops rather than depending on a second Markdown-processing pass.
The Archive page already generated its loop output as HTML and did not require the same repair.
Information architecture preserved
- Writing remains the authored-work hub; Blog is not restored.
- PTIR remains a distinct publication.
- The Loudmouth remains a historical collection.
- Subjects remain the four canonical subjects rather than legacy accumulated categories.
- History remains curated discovery rather than a synonym for Archive.
- Featured remains an editorial promotion state rather than taxonomy.
Result
EI-6.4 is complete. The primary navigation is simpler, secondary destinations remain discoverable, and the generated discovery indexes no longer depend on fragile Liquid-generated Markdown list rendering.
Next sprint: EI-6.5 — Media, Evidence & Portfolio Presentation.