* Centralize filesystem paths in a single module
Add paths.py, which resolves the repo root once and derives the cache,
accounts DB, logs, templates, frontend and bundled-city-data locations
from it. Replace the 13 per-module `dirname(__file__)/..` anchors with
references to it, so a module's location no longer determines where the
app reads its data. Env overrides (accounts DB, VAPID, IndexNow) are
unchanged; every resolved path is byte-identical to before.
Groundwork for moving modules into packages without re-pointing paths.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01XXxmNFy9cZ6Gh8Y9thZn62
* Split the backend into domain packages
Group the flat backend modules into packages that mirror their concerns:
data/ climate, grading, scoring, grid, places, cities,
city_events, store
web/ app, views, homepage, content, schemas
notifications/ notify, digest, push, mailer, discord,
discord_interactions, discord_link
accounts/ models, users, api_accounts, db
core/ metrics, singleton, audit
Intra-project imports are rewritten to the package-qualified form. The
entry scripts (indexnow, warm_cities, migrate, gen_cities, gen_flavor)
and paths.py stay at the backend/ root, and backend/app.py becomes a
shim re-exporting web.app:app so the launch target stays `app:app` —
run.sh, the systemd units, and CI need no change.
Verified: full suite (318) passes, `uvicorn app:app` boots and serves
the home/SEO/static/API surfaces, and every root script imports clean.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01XXxmNFy9cZ6Gh8Y9thZn62
Search Console's first 48 hours showed city-month pages drawing impressions at
positions 44-77 and converting almost none of them: the title template spent its
width on region and country ("Average weather in London, England, United Kingdom
in July"), so Google cut it before the month a searcher was looking for.
Titles now lead with the bare city name and put the subject next, which keeps
both inside the first ~40 characters:
London in July: normal weather & records
London climate: daily normals, records & how unusual it is now
London weather records: hottest & coldest days since 1980
Add cities.title_name() for the short form. 968 of the 1000 cities have a unique
name and render bare; the 32 that don't are qualified with their country code
("London, GB"). Five names — Columbus, Arlington, Aurora, Glendale, Gorakhpur —
recur *within* one country, where the country code collides too and would hand
two different pages the same title, so those fall back to admin1 ("Columbus,
Ohio"). A test asserts every rendered title is unique across the set.
Meta descriptions now lead with the page's actual numbers rather than restating
the template ("London averages highs of 73°F in July and lows of 38°F in
January."), capped at the ~155 characters a SERP shows.
The records title derives its year from the loaded history rather than a fixed
date, so it can't contradict the page. H1s, URLs, breadcrumbs and JSON-LD are
unchanged; og:title and og:description follow <title>/<meta> automatically
through base.html.j2.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_013dRZmX9D3JEntfMKWMTWZ8
Add a search box to /climate that filters to a flat, alphabetical list of matching
cities (by city or country name), shown with their country; clearing it restores the
collapsible directory. The index is built from the already-crawlable links, so it's
a pure progressive enhancement (no SEO impact). Also sort cities alphabetically
within each country in the directory (were population-ordered).
Drop the open-by-default on the first three countries (every <details> starts
collapsed) and order the country sections alphabetically instead of by largest
city's population.
Add unique editorial content so the programmatic pages don't read as templated:
- gen_flavor.py seeds backend/cities_flavor.json with a short descriptive blurb per
city from Wikipedia's free REST summary API (no key), validating each match by
comparing article coordinates to the city's lat/lon so the wrong 'Springfield'
never attaches. Retries + modest concurrency; ~700/750 cities get a blurb, the
rest render without one. Text is CC BY-SA, attributed with a 'via Wikipedia' link.
- City pages show the blurb under the intro and a travel callout that deep-links to
the compare page with the city pre-loaded (/compare#loc=lat,lon) — the visitor
just adds their own city. Month pages get the same seasonal 'visiting in {month}?'
compare link. Both add unique per-page text and internal links.
- cities.py gains flavor(slug); tests cover the blurb + attribution + compare CTA.
* SEO: generate curated city set for crawlable climate pages
gen_cities.py reuses the GeoNames index places.py already parses to select the top
~500 metros by population, assigns each a stable URL-safe slug (dropping admin1 when
it repeats the city name), and writes committed backend/cities.json. cities.py loads
it lazily with slug lookup, all_slugs(), display_name(), and by_country() grouping
for the upcoming hub + sitemap.
* SEO: rendering core, robots.txt, sitemap.xml, and metadata hygiene
- content.py: Jinja2 environment + HTML responder (ETag/304), dynamic /robots.txt
(disallows /api and /alerts, points at the sitemap) and /sitemap.xml (enumerates
the home/static pages plus every city, month, and records URL from cities.py).
Registered on the app before the StaticFiles mount so the routes win.
- templates/base.html.j2: shared layout with unique title/description, self-
referential canonical, Open Graph, favicon/manifest, header nav (adds a Climate
link) and a footer link graph.
- Give each existing page a unique <meta description> (were 5x identical) and a
self-referential <link rel=canonical>; add WebApplication JSON-LD to the home page.
- Pin jinja2.
* SEO: server-rendered per-city climate page (/climate/{slug})
The keystone crawlable page: for a city it snaps to the grid cell, loads the
archive (fetching once if missing, self-healing), and renders as real HTML — a
'how today compares' block (grade + percentile per metric from grade_day, tinted
by tier), a monthly normals table (climatology at each month's 15th, shown in °F
and °C), all-time records (new grading.all_time_records helper), a breadcrumb,
Dataset+Place+BreadcrumbList JSON-LD, self-referential canonical, and links into
the interactive tool + month/records pages. Content-page CSS added to style.css
(renamed the table class to avoid colliding with the app's .normals flex row).
* SEO: month (/climate/{slug}/{month}) and records (/climate/{slug}/records) pages
Month pages render the exact-month long-tail ('average weather in {city} in
{month}') with that month's average high/low, typical p10-p90 range, month-specific
records, and prev/next month links. Records pages show all-time record highs/lows
per metric with dates (grading.all_time_records). Shared _resolve_city helper; the
literal /records route is registered before the {month} param and month names are
validated (unknown month -> 404).
* SEO: climate hub, weather glossary, and about/methodology pages
- /climate: crawlable directory of all ~500 cities grouped by country — the
internal-link graph that lets search engines discover every city page.
- /glossary + /glossary/{term}: plain-language definitions (climate normal,
percentile, temperature anomaly, feels-like, heat index, wind chill, humidity,
reanalysis) with DefinedTerm JSON-LD and cross-links into the tool.
- /about: methodology page (ERA5 data source, 45-year baseline, +/-7-day window,
percentile grading) for E-E-A-T. All linked from the shared footer.
* SEO: archive warmer, content-page tests, and deploy docs
- warm_cities.py: paced, idempotent offline warmer that pre-fetches each city
cell's archive so /climate pages serve from cache and a crawl can't burst the
archive quota (pages self-heal if hit before warming).
- tests/test_content.py: city-set slug uniqueness/lookup, robots.txt, sitemap
enumerating city/month/records URLs, and that a rendered city page carries the
stats + canonical + Dataset JSON-LD in the HTML; plus month/records/hub/glossary/
about routing and 404s.
- DEPLOY.md: document the content pages, the warm step, and submitting the sitemap.
