Site History

Version 4.8.02 (Feb 2026)

  • Improvement: Added Masonry.js to make the index page look better.
  • 48 sites

Version 4.9.01 (July 2025)

  • Fix: Updated to reflect changes in the ActivityPub plugin methods
  • 41 sites

Version 4.9.00 (July 2025)

  • Added New Feature: Top 10 posts page template (example)
  • 41 sites

Version 4.8.01 (Jan 2025)

  • Fix: Added media-targeted CSS to account for the brillBox on small screens.
  • 34 sites
Why Brill?

We’re working towards a brill space for sharing the love. This whyBrill pattern was added in 4.8.

Version 4.8.00 (September 2024)

  • Added New Feature: Brill Patterns for common brill bits
  • 32 sites

Version 4.7.00 (September 2024)

  • Added New Feature: Fediverse follows now count as agreements
  • Tweak: Fediverse follows with 404 icons fallback to a default
  • Added New Feature: Front page site index now gives count via brillcount shortcode.
  • Tweak: I agree button text is “more brill” and clearer.
  • 31 sites
  • Version history reordered to newest first.

Version 4.6.01 (August 2024)

  • Minor tweak to make code slightly more efficient
  • isPants.com now runs the same code and theme
  • 26 sites

Version 4.6.00 (August 2024)

  • Added New Feature: Member registration is now open available through the front end.
  • Added New Feature: Members can now add themselves to brills that they agree are examples of something that isBrill.com. This facepile can be customised per brill via CSS.
  • Added New Feature: The mother page now has a news feed and a section for a focus post for really great brills
  • 23 sites

Version 4.5.00 (July 2024)

  • Changes to .htaccess to stop ActivityPub JSON caching as HTML by mistake
  • CSS tweaks – solved the bug where some brill boxes had two outlines
  • User self-registration is now open
  • 20 sites

Version 4.4.44 (December 2023)

  • Improvements for larger screens
  • The Brill-Roll background image appears next to the brill-roll if the screen is large enough.
  • Tweaked the brill-box ratio for better video containment
  • All thumbnails will need to be rebuilt.
  • 17 sites

There is a (weak) case to make that the unfinished upgrade isPants.com.

Version 4.3 (December 2023)

  • The brill box can now take oEmbeds via custom fields.
  • Videos can go where they should be again! (in the brill box)
  • Various under-the-hood optimisations
  • 16 sites

Version 4.2.03 (November 2023)

  • Should look better on smaller screens
  • screens 600 and under now work as intended.
  • (re)fixed layout for under 600px and 601px to 1000px
  • ActivityPub fully enabled at the firewall level
  • 15 sites

Version 4.1.33 (November 2023)

This version recognises that the header is very poor on mobile but has yet to do anything about it. There was some pretty extensive application of the :not() CSS selector to make this all work. There were 32 incremental CSS changes applied.

  • Improves the visual appearance of quotes.
  • fixes all the bugs with sidebar widgets this created.
  • Makes comments and mentions its own visually isolated block.
  • groups now get the widget treatment so they are nicely bordered too.
  • Fixed the many bugs that doing this applied to the sidebar (again).
  • Tweaked custom CSS for non-standard brills that this broke. Sigh…
  • This phase added in ActivtyPub support using the ActivityPub WordPress plugin

Version 4.1

This set of upgrades addresses a number of practical features that are clearly missing. It also takes care of a bunch of faff that I used to have to do manually per site.

  • Added Canonical page support
  • Added Twitter card support
  • Added Open Graph support
  • Now sets up default isBrill pages
  • Supports isBrill and isPants from one theme
  • Enables additional sister sites if wanted
  • Minor bug fixes
  • CSS file split to allow per-domain swapping of design elements

Version 4

  • User account registration.
  • In-built commenting.
  • Finally mobile friendly
  • Theme redesign from the ground up
  • All sorts of new stuff in the pipeworks

Version 4 – Phase II

A ground-up full redesign with a database-driven CMS with full per-site customisation.

  • Indie Web features
  • Actual functioning front page
  • In dire need of a user-centric UI

Version 3 (Engine 2.5)

The same again but with an admin area and site editing. This was cut short by a big server move which somehow included me letting the domain expire.

  • Starting to be something
  • Still not mobile-friendly
  • Third-party commenting
  • 12 sites

Version 2 (Engine 2)

While maintaining v1 sites, this version was based on XML with an XML data file defining each site. Commenting via a copy-and-paste code system was added.

  • More sophisticated
  • Still not mobile-friendly
  • RSS reader ready
  • Third-party commenting
  • 9 sites

Version 1

A proof of concept site engine with all content across all domains expressed as a single huge array. A good example of how not to do it.

  • Not mobile friendly
  • Not well written
  • Not all that clever
  • 4 sites