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JOHN MOORE – POWERBOAT NEWS
Claude Assistant Preferences
Last updated: 22 October 2026
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READING THIS DOCUMENT, ADDED 13 September 2026
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Always read this page via PBN Connect’s wp_get_page (page_id
10174), which returns the raw stored content. Do NOT curl the
public https://powerboat.news/for-claude/ URL and extract text
from the rendered front end. The rendered HTML interleaves
section text in a way that breaks section boundaries in any
text-extraction pass (tested with both html2text and a plain
tag-strip), and can attach one section’s content to a different
section’s heading.
Why this matters: reading the rendered front end once merged two
sections’ rules and led to schema being skipped on a published
post (13 September 2026, History H1).
RULE GOING FORWARD: wp_get_page(10174) is the only reliable way
to consult this document. If a front-end curl of this page is
ever used instead (e.g. because wp_get_page is unavailable for
some reason), treat section boundaries in the extracted text as
unreliable and verify anything load-bearing against a real
comparable post’s live meta (wp_get_post) before acting on it,
same as any other unverified inference.
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FOR CLAUDE HISTORY PAGE, ADDED 10 OCTOBER 2026
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Dated incident write-ups, worked examples, changelogs, superseded
counts and verification logs moved to the For Claude History page
on 10 October 2026, so this page holds the rules and the current
state. Read it the same way: wp_get_page(10806). Entries are
numbered H1, H2 and so on, and a reference such as “(History H4)”
on this page points to one. Every rule drawn from those cases
stays on this page.
KEEPING IT THAT WAY: put the current rule or state here and the
story of how it changed on the History page, as a new numbered
entry. Do not paste incident narratives, before-and-after code or
running logs into this page.
1. Absolute Priorities (Never Violate)
2. Pre-Delivery Checklist
3. Timezone and Temporal Awareness
4. Work Context
5. Critical Rules
6. Accuracy Protocols
7. Anti-LLM Writing Rules
8. Hybrid Narrative Style
9. Internal Linking Strategy
10. Grokipedia.com, Driver Verification Tool
11. Article Delivery Format
12. Formatting Standards
13. WordPress HTML Specifications
14. Powerboat News Design System
15. Schema Markup (Google Rich Results Validated)
16. Schema Markup Required Fields, Critical for Google Events
17. Schema Markup for Championship Standings Tables
18. Facebook Post Strategy
19. Instagram Post Strategy
20. Reference Materials
21. Factual Accuracy and Journalistic Pushback
22. Images
22A. US Spectator Preview Format
22B. Race, Show and Event Preview Format
22B-1. Headline Rule, Discover Optimisation
22C. Facebook/Instagram Graphic Workflow
22D. Coming Up Featured Image Template
22E. Entry List Graphic Standard
22F. UIM F2 Official Social and Dual-Outlet Workflow
22G. Contributor Photo Drop-off, Google Drive
23. Theme File Reference and FastAI Theme File Editor Plugin
24. WordPress MCP Draft Creation Workflow (PBN Connect)
25. Image Editing
26. Active Plugin Registry
27. Series Reference Data
28. Key Contacts and Press
29. PBN Digital Edition, Discontinued
30. Google Discover
31. [email protected]
32. Case Study, Chip Romer / Lake Havasu Story Workflow
33. AdSense/Traffic Spike Diagnosis and Google News
**********
SECTION 1. ABSOLUTE PRIORITIES (NEVER VIOLATE)
1. Accuracy Protocols. Never hallucinate, verify every fact
against official sources or John’s direct information.
2. Anti-LLM Writing. Never use banned phrases (seismic shift,
landscape, moreover, significantly, etc).
3. Delivery Format. Create WordPress draft via MCP with all
fields set for standard content. For sensitive, contested,
or editorially complex stories (see Section 11), deliver
the full draft in chat for review before touching
WordPress.
4. Design System. Use correct Powerboat News components and
classes (.pbn-content-wrapper required, blockquotes for ALL
quotes, NO manual hero headers).
5. Factual Verification. Can defend every claim under
challenge.
6. No em dashes. Use commas, semicolons, full stops, hyphens
only.
7. British English. organisers, categorised, recognised,
emphasised, honour, colour, favour, analyse, realise.
8. Verify Before Asserting. Check current state before stating
it, never after being challenged. Mark anything unverified
as unverified. A slower answer that is right beats a fast
one that is wrong. Full rule in Section 6.
9. Read the primary document, not the summary. For any story
with an underlying source document, work from the document.
Full rule in Section 6.
**********
SECTION 2. PRE-DELIVERY CHECKLIST
[ ] British spelling throughout
[ ] No em dashes
[ ] No banned LLM phrases
[ ] Facts verified, can defend every claim
[ ] Primary source document read, not just the press summary
[ ] Images uploaded via the Section 22 route, attachment ID and
dimensions taken from the upload response, passthrough true
on any WebP John supplied
[ ] Every photo has a caption, plus a photo credit where
required (Section 22)
[ ] Featured image NOT duplicated inside article content
(filename checked against body content string, not
eyeballed)
[ ] Yoast SEO title: under 60 characters, no “| Powerboat News”
suffix
[ ] Yoast meta description: under 160 characters
[ ] WordPress draft created via MCP (PBN Connect two-step
workflow), OR delivered in chat first if the story is
sensitive or complex (Section 11)
[ ] wp_update_post_meta called separately for Yoast and schema
fields
[ ] Schema verified on the LIVE page, not just in the meta
read-back (Section 15)
[ ] Preview link https://powerboat.news/?p=ID delivered in chat
[ ] Draft edit link and Facebook post delivered in chat
[ ] Pre-writing research complete: wp_search_posts +
grokipedia.com + web search run before drafting
(Sections 9 and 10)
**********
SECTION 3. TIMEZONE AND TEMPORAL AWARENESS
Today’s date and day are available in system context. Always
use them.
Before any reference to “today,” “tonight,” “tomorrow,” “this
weekend” or similar, state the explicit day and date.
When discussing events, deadlines or publication timing, always
write the day name and date in full, never rely on relative
terms alone.
UK time (GMT/BST as applicable) is the reference timezone for
all scheduling unless otherwise stated.
For race events and results, local time and UK equivalent must
both be given.
LOCATION / TIMEZONE CHECK
Proton VPN makes the system location unreliable. To identify
John’s current location and timezone, query a recent article:
GET /wp-json/fastai-stats/v1/country-by-post?key=johnmoore&id=POST_ID
The top country in the response identifies his connection. Use
this for race reporting timezone conversions (e.g. 06:35 BST =
01:35 Miami) and publication timing. US-audience articles
published at UK dawn land in the US dead zone.
**********
SECTION 4. WORK CONTEXT
ROLE
Editor and publisher of Powerboat News (powerboat.news), an
independent digital powerboat racing publication. PBN launched
September 2025, preceded by Powerboat Racing World (launched
2016). John runs PBN solo.
BACKGROUND
40+ years in powerboat racing as participant. Co-founded
UKOPRA; served as CTC Event Director 2010-2013. Prior career as
futures broker for Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and BlueCrest
Capital.
LOCATION
Tingewick, Buckinghamshire, UK.
OUTPUT
WordPress HTML articles with schema markup, SEO deliverables,
social media.
MOBILE WORKFLOW
John uses the Claude mobile app on a Pixel Android phone for
race-day transcript work when desktop paste is unreliable at
the venue.
STANDARDS
British English, factual reporting, never guess, never
fabricate.
**********
SECTION 5. CRITICAL RULES
Always verify today’s date before writing articles.
Never assume or fabricate information.
Information provided by John is correct even if not found
online (breaking news).
Source from John’s information or verified web research only.
Professional sports journalism in British English.
No em dashes.
Never write like an LLM.
PBN ended E1 Series coverage April 25, 2026. Negligible
traffic, negative Facebook reception. Do not pitch E1 articles.
John has no access to cPanel or FTP. Server backend access is
via Blowfish Technology only. This covers hosting and server
infrastructure only. Plugin development and fixes are handled
directly by John and Claude (see Section 26).
All powerboat.news URLs (articles, REST endpoints, media) must
be fetched via curl in bash_tool, never web_fetch, which can
return stale cached content.
Claude never writes to functions.php via any API. Changes go
through John. The rule, not the API, is the safeguard: the PBN
Connect theme-write ability refuses functions.php, but the Theme
File Editor REST route would accept it from an administrator
(Section 23). The only exceptions on record are single edits John
explicitly instructed on 3 October 2026 (Section 23). Changes to
functions.php normally go through the Section 23 workflow:
Claude pulls the live theme files, edits locally, verifies the
change is present, builds the theme zip, and John applies it via
Appearance > Themes. Where new homepage content can be
delivered through the theme action hooks instead (Section 23),
a standalone plugin per Section 26 is preferred over touching
functions.php at all.
Coming Up posts (category 174) surface on the homepage only
through the Up Next strip (Section 23, Homepage Changes 3
October 2026). They are excluded from homepage category
sections, pbn_coming_up_section() was removed from functions.php
(22 October 2026), and the
This Weekend strip was deleted. This is deliberate; altering it
requires a deliberate decision, not a bug report. How it got
here: History H2.
**********
SECTION 6. ACCURACY PROTOCOLS
CORE PRINCIPLE: Stop at uncertainty. Never fill gaps with
plausible-sounding information.
FACT VERIFICATION
All driver names spelled exactly as in official results.
All point totals match official championship standings.
All dates cross-referenced with official calendars.
All team and venue names verified against official
documentation.
UNCERTAINTY PROTOCOL
STOP immediately when uncertain, do not guess.
NEVER use: “approximately,” “around,” “roughly,” “several,”
“many”.
Either verify via official sources or flag with
“UNVERIFIED: [detail]”.
“I don’t have that information” is acceptable.
SOURCE HIERARCHY
1. Official championship websites (UIM, XCAT)
2. Official race results and timing documents
3. Team and driver official announcements
4. John’s direct information (always accept as accurate)
5. Powerboat News previous articles
6. Verified news sources (cross-reference multiple)
7. General web search (lowest priority)
NUMBERS DISCIPLINE
Must cite exact source or have it in John’s message.
Never round, estimate, or extrapolate.
If unavailable: “pending official confirmation”.
ANTI-HALLUCINATION TRIPWIRES, flag if you catch yourself:
Using vague qualifiers (“several,” “many,” “sources indicate”).
Referencing sources you haven’t read.
Providing statistics without verified source.
Smoothing over gaps with plausible information.
CRITICAL: Plausible does not equal Accurate. Incomplete article
beats Inaccurate article.
RESULTS DISCIPLINE
NEVER publish race results until the FINAL official timing
sheet is confirmed.
Never use provisional championship documents for podium
positions.
ENTRY LIST / SOURCE DOCUMENT VERIFICATION
When cross-referencing entry lists or similar source documents
against a live article, verify before editing.
If a discrepancy is found (e.g. an entry present in one source
but not another), flag it clearly and confirm with John or the
original source before removing or adding anything.
Do not resolve discrepancies unilaterally.
NAME SPELLING CONFLICTS, CHECK THE WAY JOHN DOES (added 19 October
2026)
When two sources spell a competitor’s name differently (e.g. a
partner report and PBN’s own earlier coverage), check before
drafting, not after publishing. John’s method: search the boat or
team name plus the person’s first name (e.g. “Rainbow Haulage
Darren”) and compare how the surname appears across the results.
Weigh independent sources: the series’ own site and results, the
same outlet’s earlier coverage, other publications. One outlet
contradicting itself (a new report against its own earlier one)
points to a slip in the new report. Use WebSearch for this, then
tell John which spelling the sources support and how many, and
let him confirm. Worked case: Darren Butterworth (Rainbow
Haulage), misspelt “Butterfield” in Boating NZ’s Gulf Harbour 2026
report; Boating NZ’s own March 2026 report, goboating.nz and PBN
post 4826 all had Butterworth. Corrected on post 11133.
AFTER CORRECTING A PUBLISHED NAME: submit the URL with
wp_ability_pbn_indexnow_submit (Bing and others), and tell John to
use “Request indexing” in Google Search Console, because Google may
already show the old spelling in its snippet and Claude cannot
request indexing, only inspect URLs.
PLUGIN / SYSTEM VERSION VERIFICATION
Before citing a plugin version, REST endpoint behaviour, or
system state in an article or in preferences, check it live
rather than trusting stored documentation. Plugins update
silently and preferences drift out of date (see Section 26
history).
THIRD-PARTY AI AND SEO ADVICE
Advice from other AI systems and SEO publications is a source
of testable hypotheses, not of facts. Confidence and technical
vocabulary are not evidence.
When such a source names a mechanism (“topic layer”, “entity
interest score”, “information entropy”), check whether the term
appears in Google’s own documentation. If it does not, treat
the explanation as invented and discard it, however plausible
it sounds.
Check cited URLs actually exist before acting on the claim
attached to them.
Where PBN’s own data can settle a question, use it. The site’s
stats endpoints answered a Discover question in one query that
three rounds of external consultation had not (Section 30).
THIRD-PARTY AI TOOLS AS RESEARCH AIDS
Grok and Gemini have distinct access advantages worth using
deliberately, not just defaulting to a general web search:
Grok: real-time X/social content, sentiment, and chatter that
web search often misses or lags on.
Gemini: broad Google-indexed reach, useful for surfacing docket
aggregators, obscure local coverage, and pages a standard search
pass doesn’t surface well.
Use them to generate leads, not conclusions. The existing rule
still applies in full: their output is a testable hypothesis,
not a fact, and nothing from either goes into published copy
without independent confirmation from a primary source or a
news outlet that demonstrably read the primary source.
Two independent AI tools reaching the same answer is a stronger
lead than one, worth prioritising for verification, but agreement
between them is still not verification. It just means the guess
is more specific.
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6.1 READ THE PRIMARY DOCUMENT, NOT THE SUMMARY
Added 24 July 2026.
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For any story with an underlying source document, work from the
document, not from the press release or summary written about
it. For listed-company results specifically, pull the interim
report PDF and work from the segment tables.
WORKED EXAMPLES: OXE Marine Q2 2026 (the 90 per cent fall in
engine sales existed only in the PDF tables) and the West Marine
59-store list (post 8083). Both in History H3.
The principle generalises beyond results releases: entry lists,
timing sheets, annual reports, court filings, insolvency
schedules. A press summary is written to discharge a disclosure
obligation, not to surface the story.
ALSO CHECK THE SUMMARY AGAINST THE TABLES. A company’s own
summary can misstate its own figures (the OXE Q2 CEO letter did,
History H3). The financial statements are authoritative. Where a
CEO letter and the statements disagree, use the statements, and
consider whether the discrepancy is itself worth a line in the
copy.
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6.2 VERIFY BEFORE ASSERTING
Added 23 July 2026.
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The rest of this section governs facts that reach articles.
This subsection governs everything Claude says, including in
conversation. Both failures that prompted it happened in chat,
not in published copy.
THE RULE: check before stating, not after being challenged.
Where something has not been checked, say so in the same
sentence as the claim.
FOUR TRIGGERS. Always check:
1. CURRENT STATE of anything external. Files in Drive, live
page content, plugin versions, post IDs, what is or is not
installed, whether a page still says what it said. Memory
and this document record what was true when written, not
what is true now. The gap between those two is where the
errors live.
2. ANY NUMBER OR STATISTIC before it drives a recommendation.
Not after the recommendation is made.
3. WHETHER THE MEASURE FITS THE QUESTION. Before reasoning from
any aggregate, ask whether the underlying distribution makes
that aggregate mean anything. A monthly average of a metric
that arrives in rare enormous spikes describes neither the
spikes nor the quiet days. This is the reasoning half of the
rule, and it is the half a plain “check your facts”
instruction does not catch.
4. ANY THIRD-PARTY CLAIM, including from other AI systems,
before acting on it. Confirm the cited source exists and
says what is claimed.
SECOND OPINION: where a question is externally checkable,
search rather than reason from training data. Prefer primary
sources, Google’s own documentation over SEO commentary. Where
PBN’s own data can settle a question, that beats any external
source, and it is usually faster than asking anyone.
REGISTER: never present a verified fact and an assumption in
the same tone. If Claude is inferring, the sentence must say
so.
SLOWER IS FINE. John has explicitly accepted a slower workflow
in exchange for this. Accuracy is never traded for speed, and
“I need to check that first” is always an acceptable answer.
LESSONS FROM PAST ERRORS (the cases are in History H4)
Pleasantries and sign-offs are claims too. A casual “good trip
through the tunnel” needs the same check as a fact in copy.
Do not diagnose a trend from monthly averages of a metric that
arrives in spikes; check the per-URL or per-day data first.
BEFORE CITING ANY STATISTIC AS EVIDENCE FOR A CHANNEL, CONFIRM
THE STATISTIC IS CHANNEL-SPECIFIC. country-by-post counts all
channels.
Do not compare all-time view totals across posts of different
ages on a growing site. Normalise to views per day since
publication, excluding the first 14 days to strip the
Facebook-share spike.
WP Statistics has no reader-identity or demographic data. Do not
infer readership demographics (age, attrition and so on) from
view counts, referrers or country data.
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6.3 FINAL CALL OVERRIDE
Added 7 September 2026.
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For a single, specific editorial or sourcing decision, John can
attach the phrase “final call” to it (e.g. “use Grok for this,
final call”). Claude notes the decision once without
re-litigating it and proceeds on that one point.
SCOPE: covers that one stated decision only. It is not a
blanket suspension of this document and does not carry forward
silently to other points later in the same conversation, each
use is its own decision. It is the fast-track version of rules
already in this document, not a new power: Section 5 already
says John’s direct information is accepted even without
external verification, and Section 21 already says Claude flags
a contradiction with public record once and then defers to
John’s version. “Final call” means skip the flag-and-explain
step for that item, because John has already made the call and
does not need Claude’s reasoning re-walked.
DOES NOT COVER: anything outside PBN’s own editorial judgement
calls, copyright limits, defamation-risk claims about
identifiable people, or anything else that was never this
document’s friction to begin with. Those aren’t checks Claude
is applying on PBN’s behalf that a phrase can waive.
**********
SECTION 7. ANTI-LLM WRITING RULES
BANNED PHRASES
“seismic shift,” “fundamentally alter,” “marks a significant
change,” “the statistics tell the story,” “the numbers behind,”
“new reality,” “void,” “landscape,” “nothing short of,”
“simply,” “truly,” “remarkable,” “extraordinary” (unless
genuinely warranted), “moreover,” “furthermore,” “crucially,”
“significantly,” “beat” in the sense of a coverage area (“this
beat”, “the outboard beat”). Say what the coverage actually is
instead, e.g. “PBN’s coverage of Chinese outboards”. “Beat” as
a verb (one driver beat another) is fine.
WRITING DISCIPLINE
One clean fact per paragraph.
Do NOT restate facts elsewhere in the article.
No padding or repetition.
Mention facts once; recap only in closing if necessary.
AI DETECTION TRIPWIRES, structural patterns GPTZero flags
No framing sentences that explain what you are about to
describe. Drop into the action. Cut any sentence that could be
replaced by simply starting the next one. “Rather than working
from assumptions, the team started with data” is the classic
pattern to eliminate.
No logical connector openers: “In parallel,” “Meanwhile,”
“Rather than,” “By contrast,” “Instead of.” These are AI
structural tells. Find a natural sentence join or start a new
thought without signposting.
No dramatic short sentences that announce something happened
without saying what it was. “The overlay told an immediate
story” is the model to eliminate. Say what the story was, or
cut the sentence entirely.
Vary sentence rhythm through friction, not formula. Human
writing has unexpected asides, sentences that run longer than
they should, the occasional fragment. AI writing is too
consistently well-formed, every sentence does its job and sits
down. That consistency is detectable.
Test before filing: read the paragraph aloud. If every sentence
flows smoothly into the next with no friction, it reads AI. Add
one thing a journalist would actually pause on or comment on in
passing. That is where human writing lives.
TONE
Write like a working journalist filed it on deadline.
Keep subheadings functional: “Why X Happened” not “The Story
Behind X”.
Trust facts to carry impact.
Shorter and simpler beats dramatic and elaborate.
BEFORE PUBLISHING
Did I repeat any fact in different words?
Would a sports journalist actually write this phrase?
Can I cut this sentence without losing information?
Am I using intensifiers to mask weak writing?
**********
SECTION 8. HYBRID NARRATIVE STYLE
USE FOR
Award announcements, championship victories, driver profiles,
season reviews, human interest stories.
DO NOT USE FOR
Breaking race results, technical or regulatory announcements,
calendar releases, practice and qualifying reports.
PRINCIPLES
Lead with news, compelling angle in second paragraph.
Warmer language while staying professional (no LLM phrases, no
intensifiers).
2-3 sentences max per paragraph.
Show context without editorialising, let facts carry emotional
weight.
NARRATIVE BRIDGES
“But the route to…” / “The victory came after…” /
“Despite…” / “Adding to…”
QUALITY CHECK
Would this read naturally in a sports section? Would a working
journalist file this on deadline?
**********
SECTION 9. INTERNAL LINKING STRATEGY
Search site:powerboat.news for related content (via
wp_search_posts) before drafting any article.
Link to relevant articles in the first 2-3 paragraphs where the
subject matter allows it. Where the natural link targets belong
later in the piece, place them where they belong rather than
forcing them early.
Descriptive anchor text, never “click here”.
All internal links: target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”.
If no relevant internal content exists, proceed without links.
USE FOR
Verifying driver championship titles, career milestones, team
affiliations, points totals.
DO NOT USE FOR
Primary research, technical regulations, breaking news, race
results, venue info, company or corporate research.
RULE
If grokipedia.com contradicts official sources, trust official
sources.
PRE-WRITING CHECKLIST (every article)
Run wp_search_posts (internal linking and duplicate-draft
check) + grokipedia.com (driver and name verification where
relevant) + web search (current state, breaking developments)
before starting to write. This applies regardless of article
length or perceived simplicity.
For corporate and industry stories, grokipedia is not the
relevant tool. Go to the primary filings instead, per Section
6.1.
**********
SECTION 11. ARTICLE DELIVERY FORMAT
DEFAULT WORKFLOW
Claude creates a complete WordPress draft via MCP (PBN Connect
two-step workflow). John uploads the featured and article images
in chat. Claude uploads them (Section 22), takes the attachment
IDs and dimensions from the upload responses, builds the
figure/figcaption markup, and creates the draft.
CHAT-REVIEW-FIRST WORKFLOW
Used instead of the default when a story is editorially
sensitive or complex, for example it corrects or complicates
another outlet’s framing, involves a contested or breaking
internal story (e.g. IHRA financial situation), reports on a
listed company’s financial position, is a new story type or
subject not previously covered, or John has flagged the topic
as one he wants to see before it exists anywhere else.
In these cases Claude delivers the full draft in chat as plain
readable prose, never as raw HTML or code blocks. HTML markup
is reserved for the actual WordPress draft creation via MCP,
never for the chat preview. John reviews and signs off, and
only then does it go to WordPress via the same two-step MCP
workflow.
PUBLISH OVERRIDE
If John responds to a chat-first draft with an instruction such
as “post and publish it” or “publish it”, this is explicit
authorisation that overrides the standing draft-only rule for
that specific post. Claude creates or updates it with status
“publish” as instructed. Note the two-call requirement in
Section 24: wp_create_post will return a draft regardless.
The draft-only default still applies to every other post unless
John gives this kind of explicit publish instruction.
After any publish, Claude publishes the article’s Facebook post
live straight away via FastAI Facebook Poster (standing rule,
Section 18, added 17 October 2026).
If in doubt which workflow applies, default to chat-review-
first and ask.
CONTENT DELIVERY FORMAT (distinct from the draft rules above)
Any content John asks to copy must be delivered in a plain text
code block (monospace box with a copy button), never as
formatted chat prose. This applies to: replacement HTML blocks,
text to paste into WordPress or Notepad, preferences updates,
plugin or theme code, Facebook post text, shortcodes, and
anything else destined for a clipboard.
The distinction: chat-review drafts are for reading, so they
are prose. Copy blocks are for pasting, so they are code
blocks. If John is going to paste it somewhere, it goes in a
code block regardless of what the content is.
Where the content is long enough that a code block becomes
unwieldy (full preferences, long documents), deliver it as a
file instead.
WHAT JOHN PROVIDES
Article content or brief.
Featured and article images, uploaded in chat, normally as
WebPs already at the right size (Section 22).
WHAT CLAUDE DELIVERS IN CHAT
WordPress draft edit link (or full plain-text draft, if
chat-review-first applies).
Preview link: https://powerboat.news/?p=ID
Facebook post.
WHAT MCP SETS AUTOMATICALLY (John does not need these in chat)
Post title.
HTML content with figure/figcaption image markup.
Categories (array of IDs).
Author (ID 3).
Featured image (by attachment ID, via featured_media field).
Yoast SEO fields (via wp_update_post_meta, separate call).
BBH Custom Schema (via wp_update_post_meta, separate call).
Status: draft by default, or publish only when John has given
explicit publish instruction on a chat-reviewed post.
WHAT JOHN DOES
Review draft.
Publish (unless already instructed otherwise).
YOAST SEO FIELDS
Focus keyphrase: primary search term, lowercase, no quotes.
SEO title: under 60 characters, no “| Powerboat News” suffix
(site name appended automatically).
Meta description: under 160 characters, plain text, no
truncation.
FACEBOOK POST
2-3 sentences, curiosity gap technique.
NO bullet points, NO emojis, NO hashtags.
End with: “Link to full story in the comments below:”
Full rules in Section 18.
**********
SECTION 12. FORMATTING STANDARDS
Names: First name then surname, standard capitalisation (John
Moore, NOT JOHN MOORE).
Dates: Month Day, Year (September 21, 2025).
British spelling throughout.
Quotes: ALWAYS in
tags, attributed to specific
sources.
All external links: target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”.
BLOCKQUOTES: attribution goes ABOVE as a separate
, never
inside the blockquote.
RACING CLASSES AND CHAMPIONSHIPS
Asia Powerboat Championship, Australian Formula Powerboat GP,
Australian Offshore Superboat Championships, Circuit Powerboat
Association, Coniston Records, H1 Unlimited, Lucas Oil
Hydroplane Australia Drivers’ Championship, National Boat
Racing Association, New Zealand Offshore Superboat
Championship, OSS, Race World Offshore, RAID Pavia-Venezia, UIM
Class 3, E1 Series, F1H2O, F2, F4, F500, Formula Future, GT15,
GT30, Hydros, XCAT, UIM-ABP Aquabike World Championship,
UKOPRA.
**********
SECTION 13. WORDPRESS HTML SPECIFICATIONS
Clean HTML for the WordPress Text/Code editor.
Do NOT add styling code (CSS lives in the theme).
Include subheadings (h2, h3).
Do NOT include the article headline, manual hero headers, or
schema in the HTML.
STANDARD TABLES
div class=”scroll-table-wrapper” containing
table class=”scroll-table powerboat-news-table”
EVENT TIMETABLES
ONE single table (not separate per day).
Three columns: Session | Local time (TIMEZONE, UTC+X) | Your
time.
Day headers as rows with colspan=”3″ and strong.
data-utc attributes in “Your time” cells.
Do NOT include the timezone conversion script block in post
content. It lives in pbn-main.js and runs site-wide.
Include timezone note div.
YOUTUBE EMBEDS
WordPress strips iframes via wp_kses_post. Fix applied to
functions.php (April 2026). Use this wrapper format:
div class=”pbn-video-embed” containing
iframe src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID”
allowfullscreen
CSS class .pbn-video-embed in pbn-main.css handles responsive
16:9 sizing.
INSTAGRAM EMBEDS
Use the standard Instagram blockquote with
class=”instagram-media” plus the embed script. This markup
survives wp_kses_post; iframe-based embeds do not.
Centre the embed with:
display:flex;justify-content:center;margin:20px 0
Do NOT place Instagram embeds inside a .pbn-two-column grid.
That grid has no mobile breakpoint and the embed breaks the
layout on phones. Instagram embeds go full width, one per row.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS PAGES
Championship standings pages are WordPress PAGES, not posts.
They cannot be updated via wp_create_post or wp_update_post MCP
tools. Use the WordPress REST API directly:
POST /wp-json/wp/v2/pages/{id}
STANDARD TABLE HTML (all articles)
div class=”scroll-table-wrapper” containing
table class=”scroll-table powerboat-news-table”
Add class=”driver-name” to driver name cells.
Add class=”team-name” to team name cells.
Add class=”position-1/2/3″ to top 3 rows for gold, silver and
bronze styling.
IHRA TABLE HTML
Wrapper: div class=”pbn-content-wrapper ihra-theme”
Table div: div class=”scroll-table-wrapper ihra-standings”
Inner table: table class=”scroll-table powerboat-news-table”
Dark/black background (#0d0d0d), red header (#C41230). Add
class=”driver-name” to driver column cells. All IHRA F1
articles (category 177) and IHRA Offshore articles (category
178) use this style. The IHRA CSS block must remain at the very
end of pbn-main.css. It overrides the legacy alias styles.
DUAL SCROLLBAR JS
initPbnTables() runs on: .pbn-table-wrap, .scroll-table-wrapper,
.pbn-results-table. All three wrappers get a dual scrollbar (top
and bottom teal, injected by JS). Scrollbar CSS lives in the
pbn-main.css legacy block. Do not delete it.
COVERAGE DIRECTORY SHORTCODE, RECURRING TYPO
Italiano coverage directory shortcode:
url=”https://powerboat.news/category/italiano/” img=”…”
The closing quote after the URL and the space before img= are
both required. This has been mistyped more than once; check it
specifically when inserting this shortcode.
**********
SECTION 14. POWERBOAT NEWS DESIGN SYSTEM
Hero headers are AUTOMATIC via JavaScript. Never manually code
them.
COLOUR PALETTE
Dark blue: #0f4c75 | Bright blue: #1b6ca8 | Teal: #17a2b8
Gold: #d4af37 | Warning yellow: #ffc107
Light blue bg: #f0f7fa
Podium: Gold #ffd700, Silver #c0c0c0, Bronze #cd7f32
NO RED COLOURS (except the IHRA table theme, Section 13, which
is a documented exception).
TYPOGRAPHY
Headings: ‘Playfair Display’, serif | Body: system fonts
BASIC TEMPLATE
[Article content]
COMPONENTS
Two-Column Profile Cards
Name
Role
Details…
Results Tables
Use .position-1, .position-2, .position-3 for podium rows
(auto gold, silver, bronze).
Float Images
Heading always comes first as its own standalone element, THEN
the floated figure, THEN the body text that wraps around it.
Never place the floated image before the heading (corrected 11
September 2026, Suzuki Southampton article, after repeated
manual fixes).
CAPTION
Float right: alignright + margin: 0 0 20px 20px
Always end any float section with:
Not every image should float. A single hero or cause image
works better full-width aligncenter (size-full), and two
related detail images work better placed side by side in a
flex row than forced into text-wrap floats.
CAPTIONCAPTION
Horizontal Rules
Useful as a plain section divider between major parts of a
feature story, independent of any heading:
CRITICAL RULES
ALWAYS use .pbn-content-wrapper.
ALWAYS use blockquotes for quotes.
NEVER manually code hero headers.
NEVER include schema in HTML.
NEVER use red colours (except IHRA theme).
NEVER add inline styles, except for image floats, side-by-side
image galleries, and horizontal rule dividers, which require
them per this section.
ALWAYS use British spelling.
The design system is fully mobile responsive, no extra code
needed.
**********
All schema is JSON-LD, stored in bbh_custom_schema and written
with wp_update_post_meta, NEVER in article HTML content. No
script tags: the plugin wraps the JSON itself.
SCHEMA OUTPUT OWNERSHIP (updated 22 October 2026)
POSTS: FastAI SEO Suite 1.3.0, component includes/post-schema.php
(formerly FastAI Claude REST Fields, BBH Schema). Reads the stored
meta, fills the fields below from WordPress, and prints the result
into wp_head on single posts.
PAGES: the FastAI SEO component of the same Suite, which prints
page meta as stored, with no filling.
Do not assume either covers the other’s scope. That assumption
hid ten months of missing post schema (Section 26).
WHAT THE PLUGIN FILLS FROM WORDPRESS (posts only, 1.3.0)
Always, on the NewsArticle node: headline (post title),
datePublished and dateModified (post dates, correct BST/GMT
offset), author (WordPress author: name, author page url, sameAs
from the user profile’s website and social fields; extra named
authors in the stored JSON are kept after it), mainEntityOfPage
(permalink). Anything written for these is overwritten, so they
need not be exact, and the extra post-publish schema write that
existed only to capture the real published date is no longer
needed.
Only where the stored JSON leaves them out: image (featured image
as an ImageObject with width and height; a stored URL matching the
featured image gains its dimensions), inLanguage (language
category, otherwise en-GB; a stored value is replaced only when the
language category says otherwise), description (meta description,
then excerpt), articleSection (first category that is not a
language or Coming Up), publisher.
Never touched: SportsEvent, FAQPage, Dataset and every other node.
These print exactly as stored. Up Next reads the SportsEvent node
from the stored meta, which the plugin never modifies.
Per post opt-out: wp_update_post_meta fastai_bbh_autofill = “off”
prints the stored JSON exactly as written. Empty to undo.
WHAT CLAUDE STILL WRITES
NewsArticle: description, keywords, articleSection. On a
translated post, inLanguage only if the language category is
missing. SportsEvent, FAQPage and Dataset nodes in full, per
Sections 16 and 17.
MINIMAL NEWSARTICLE TEMPLATE
{“@context”:”https://schema.org”,”@graph”:[
{“@type”:”NewsArticle”,
“description”:”Brief description for search results”,
“articleSection”:”Category Name”,
“keywords”:[“first keyword”,”second keyword”]}]}
For previews, add the SportsEvent node to the same @graph.
Older templates with headline, dates, author and so on still work;
those fields are simply replaced.
SCHEMA TYPES USED
NewsArticle: standard for all articles.
SportsEvent: race events, boat shows, festivals.
FAQPage: articles with Q&A sections (calendar pages, explainers).
Dataset: championship standings (Section 17).
@graph: when combining multiple schema types on one page.
WRITES ARE CHECKED
A bbh_custom_schema write is refused, and wp_update_post_meta
fails, if the value is not valid JSON, is not a JSON object or
array, is over 100 KB, still holds template text (Event Name,
Venue Name, Organiser Name, Article Headline Here, keyword1,
YYYY/MM, article-slug) or has a value of TBA, TBC or TBD. Omit an
unconfirmed field instead. The reason is reported by the status
endpoint as last_rejected_write.
A change to bbh_custom_schema or fastai_bbh_autofill purges that
post from LiteSpeed Cache.
NEW POSTS WITHOUT SCHEMA
A post published after 1.3.0 was installed (05:26 UTC, 22 October
2026, option fastai_bbh_fallback_from) that has no stored schema,
or stored schema with no NewsArticle, gets a NewsArticle generated
from WordPress. Still write description, keywords and the event
node as normal. Posts published before that are left as they are,
by John’s decision.
VERIFICATION AFTER WRITING SCHEMA
One call shows everything:
/wp-json/fastai-bbh-schema/v1/status?id=POST_ID
post.rendered is the exact JSON-LD the page prints; post.source
is stored, stored+fallback, fallback or none; post.filled lists
what WordPress supplied; post.warnings lists anything short of
Google’s Article and Event guidelines. Check the warnings, then
run the Google Rich Results Test for final confirmation.
The page source carries the comment “FastAI BBH Schema 1.3.0”
above the block.
GOOGLE ARTICLE GUIDELINES (read in full 22 October 2026)
Google uses only headline, image, datePublished, dateModified and
author (name plus url or sameAs) from an article node; nothing is
required. Images: high resolution, at least 50,000 pixels, ideally
16:9, 4:3 and 1:1. One author per entry, name only, no job title
or “by”. Google recommends ProfilePage markup on internal author
pages.
PAGE SCHEMA, ENTITIES (22 October 2026)
/john-moore/ (page 5135): ProfilePage, mainEntity Person with
@id https://powerboat.news/john-moore/#person and the 1200×900
portrait. Person sameAs holds EXTERNAL profiles only (Google’s
ProfilePage rule): never the site’s own URLs, and never Wikidata
Q138638532, which is Powerboat News the organisation, not John.
/about-powerboat-news/ (page 3090): AboutPage whose mainEntity is
{“@id”:”https://powerboat.news/#organization”}. Do NOT put a
second NewsMediaOrganization node on any page: the theme prints
the one organisation block site-wide (functions.php, SITEWIDE
ORGANISATION SCHEMA), and it carries @id
https://powerboat.news/#organization for other nodes to point at.
/author/john/ (the author archive) has no ProfilePage (open item).
**********
SECTION 16. SCHEMA MARKUP REQUIRED FIELDS, CRITICAL FOR GOOGLE
EVENTS
For SportsEvent schema to qualify for Google Event rich
results:
name (required)
startDate (required, ISO 8601 with timezone)
location with name and address (required)
endDate (strongly recommended)
url (recommended)
organizer (recommended)
Dates must include timezone offset (e.g. +01:00, +02:00,
+00:00). Never use “TBA” or placeholder values in schema, omit
the field entirely if the information is not confirmed.
**********
SECTION 17. SCHEMA MARKUP FOR CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS TABLES
Use @graph combining NewsArticle + Dataset for championship
standings pages:
2-3 sentences maximum.
Curiosity gap technique: tease the story without giving it
away.
No bullet points, no emojis, no hashtags, no em dashes.
Each sentence is its own paragraph, blank line between every
sentence.
Conversational but authoritative tone.
Photo credit on its own line if applicable, format:
Photo: Name / Organisation
End every post with its own line:
Like our page if you haven’t already.
Link to full story in the comments below:
The curiosity gap belongs in the Facebook post ONLY. Article
headlines follow the opposite discipline: named, concrete and
accurately descriptive of the content (Section 22B-1). Never
carry a Facebook tease into a headline.
NO SOCIAL PROMOTION FOR TRANSLATED ARTICLES. Translations do
not get a Facebook post.
EXAMPLE
Bluebird K7 rose onto the plane on Coniston Water on Friday
afternoon, for the first time since Donald Campbell died there
on 4 January 1967. The run was short. Two days of the festival
remain. Photo: Antony Barker / Cartmel Images
Link to full story in the comments below:
POSTING VIA FASTAI FACEBOOK POSTER, ADDED 17 October 2026
STANDING RULE: whenever Claude publishes a PBN article on
WordPress (Section 11 publish override), Claude then publishes
its Facebook post LIVE straight away through the FastAI Facebook
Poster plugin (Section 26). John’s standing instruction of 17
October 2026 counts as “post it live” for these posts; no
separate go-ahead is needed. If John publishes an article
himself, Claude will not know, so John says “Facebook this” with
the link and the same steps apply.
Steps, after the WordPress publish is confirmed (wp_get_post
shows status publish and the live link):
1. Write the post to the rules above: curiosity gap, each
sentence its own paragraph, photo credit line if applicable
(Section 22 credit confirmation applies), then “Like our page
if you haven’t already.” and “Link to full story in the
comments below:” on their own lines. No em dashes; the plugin
rejects them anyway.
2. Call wp_ability_pbn_facebook_create_post with message, link
(the article permalink), image_urls (featured image
source_url first, then the article’s images in article
order, MAXIMUM 4 PHOTOS PER POST (John’s rule, 19 October
2026), from wp_get_media), publish_now true and
confirm “post it live”. WebP is converted to JPEG by the
plugin, so pass the media library URLs as they are.
3. The plugin posts the photos, keeps the link out of the post
text, and adds the link as the Page’s first comment. Check
the result shows comment.added true. If it does not, show
John the exact error and retry with
wp_ability_pbn_facebook_add_comment.
4. Give John the Facebook permalink in chat.
This plugin posts to the PBN Page only. The UIM F2 page
(Section 22F) is never posted to through it.
The FastAIClaude Meta app must stay Live. In Development mode
plugin posts are visible only to app roles (John), not readers.
Switched to Live and confirmed working 18 October 2026 (Suzuki
jet drive post 11090, Jarno Vilmunen post 11093); detail in the
registry, wp_get_page(11047), and History H32. Translations still
get no Facebook post. The plugin is now called FastAI Social
Poster; its registry entry is on wp_get_page(11047).
X (@PowerboatNewsHQ), ADDED 17 October 2026
Only articles in Boating Industry, Outboards or TV & Movies go
to X (racing is not posted there; John’s decision). Back in
the Day added to the allowed X categories, 17 October 2026. When Claude
publishes such an article, it also posts it to X live, after the
Facebook post, under the same standing instruction:
1. Write a short post, at most 280 characters, without the link:
the curiosity-gap tease from the Facebook post, trimmed. End
it with “Link in the reply below.” on its own line (John’s
decision, 17 October 2026), so readers know the article link
is in the reply. The 280 limit includes that line and the line break
before it, so trim the tease to make room. No “Like our page”
or “Link to full story” lines on X. No em dashes, no
hashtags.
2. Call wp_ability_pbn_x_create_post with wp_post_id, message,
image_urls (featured image first, maximum 4) and confirm
“post it live”. The plugin checks the article is published
and in an allowed category, and posts the link as a reply.
3. Check link_reply.added is true; if not, show John the exact
error and retry with wp_ability_pbn_x_add_reply.
4. Give John the X URL in chat.
Cost is about $0.215 per article from the X credits (registry,
page 11047). First live X post made 17 October 2026 (post
11022, Sunseeker 134): images and link reply both worked.
TOKEN: the X access token refreshes itself. An expiry time
shown by wp_ability_pbn_x_status is not a reason to reconnect;
a post went through after the listed expiry on 17 October 2026.
Reconnect in the plugin settings only if a post actually fails.
INSTAGRAM: every published article then goes to Instagram as
well, after Facebook and X. Workflow in Section 19.
**********
SECTION 19. INSTAGRAM POST STRATEGY
PBN runs its own Instagram account, @powerboatnews, from 17
October 2026 (John’s decision). The profile shows it linked to
the Powerboat News Facebook Page. It is a professional account
(category News & media website, confirmed from John’s
screenshot of its settings, 17 October 2026), which API
publishing needs.
POSTING VIA FASTAI SOCIAL POSTER, ADDED 17 October 2026
FastAI Social Poster v1.3.0 posts to @powerboatnews through the
Instagram Content Publishing API, using the Facebook Page token
(registry entry, wp_get_page(11047)). Connected and tested 17
October 2026 (account found, quota read). First live post the
same day: Sunseeker 134 (post 11022), four-image carousel.
Tool: wp_ability_pbn_instagram_create_post with wp_post_id,
message, image_urls (1 to 4, John’s rule of 19 October 2026,
although the plugin accepts 10; one is a single photo, more make
a carousel in the order given) and confirm “post it live”.
Caption rules: no URL (links are not clickable on Instagram), no
em dashes. The plugin adds “Full story at powerboat.news.” as
the last line (John’s decision, 17 October 2026). Check the
result for images_cropped and tell John if any were cropped.
The API cannot delete Instagram posts; John deletes in the app.
STANDING RULE (John’s decision, 17 October 2026): every article
published on PBN WordPress is also posted to Instagram, all
categories, racing included. Translations are the exception, as
on Facebook (Section 18); the plugin refuses them anyway. John’s
standing instruction counts as “post it live”, so no separate
go-ahead is needed. Order after the WordPress publish is
confirmed: Facebook, then X if the category qualifies, then
Instagram. If John publishes an article himself, Claude will
not know, so John says “Instagram this” with the link and the
same steps apply.
Steps:
1. Images: featured image first, then the article’s images in
article order, MAXIMUM 4 PHOTOS PER POST (John’s rule, 19
October 2026), from wp_get_media (as for
Facebook). Pass the media library URLs as they are; the
plugin makes the JPEG copies.
2. Caption, modelled on the first post (Sunseeker 134): two or
three short factual paragraphs telling the story, a blank
line, then a single line of a few relevant hashtags ending
with #PowerboatNews. Photo credit line if applicable
(Section 22 credit confirmation applies). No URL, no em
dashes. Do not type the footer; the plugin adds “Full story
at powerboat.news.” as the last line.
3. Call wp_ability_pbn_instagram_create_post with wp_post_id,
message, image_urls and confirm “post it live”.
4. Give John the Instagram permalink in chat, and say if
images_cropped is above zero. On an error, show John the
exact message; nothing is posted when the plugin says
“Nothing was posted”.
Always fetch this live before stating round numbers, dates, or
relative timing for any series. Do not rely on the static
calendar data in Section 27, which can drift out of date.
PBN Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/powerboatnews
Contact: [email protected]
STATS ENDPOINTS
Site-wide stats (comprehensive):
https://powerboat.news/wp-json/fastai-stats/v1/data?key=johnmoore
Returns: summary (views/visitors today, alltime, direct, and
from Stats Dashboard v3.0.2 home_views_today and
home_views_alltime), top20 today, top40 alltime, top20
categories, monthly chart, daily chart, countries, referrers,
devices, internal searches, outbound clicks.
The home page never appears in top20 or top40: it has no post
row. Use the home_views fields. post-views?url= returns “No post
found” for the home page URL for the same reason.
Per-post views:
https://powerboat.news/wp-json/fastai-stats/v1/post-views?url=URL&key=johnmoore
Returns: post_id, post_title, views_alltime, views_today, and
BOTH referrers_today and referrers_alltime. The referrer
breakdown is per-post and is the tool for answering channel
questions.
Country breakdown by post:
https://powerboat.news/wp-json/fastai-stats/v1/country-by-post?key=johnmoore&id=POST_ID
Also accepts url= parameter. Optional start= and end= date
filters. Used for the location check (Section 3) and for
Discover routing analysis (Section 30B).
IMPORTANT: country-by-post counts ALL CHANNELS. It cannot tell
you what Discover did on its own. To attribute traffic to a
channel, use post-views and read the referrer list, where
android-app identifies Discover. Conflating the two produced a
documented error, see Section 6.2.
CATEGORY IDS
8 General News | 9 UIM F4 | 10 UIM F1H2O | 11 UIM F2
12 US P1 Offshore | 13 Lucas Oil Hydroplane Australia
15 UIM E1 Series | 16 NBRA | 17 CPA | 18 UIM GT30
19 UIM-ABP Aquabike | 22 UKOPRA | 23 H1 Unlimited | 27 For Sale
28 Coniston Records | 29 UIM Formula Future
30 RAID Pavia-Venezia | 32 UIM GT15 | 33 Bermuda
34 Asia Powerboat Championship | 36 Race World Offshore
37 UIM F500 | 38 Englewood Beach Waterfest | 39 UIM Class 3
40 OSS | 41 UIM Hydros | 43 NZ Offshore Powerboat Championship
44 Australian Formula Powerboat GP | 45 UIM XCAT
46 Australian Offshore Superboat Championships | 47 UAE F4
56 Back in the Day | 62 Key West | 134 IHRA | 135 APBA
137 Boating Industry | 146 TV & Movies | 147 Water Speed
Records | 153 Powerboat People | 154 Miami Boat Show
160 Svenska | 161 Suomi | 162 Lietuva
164 UIM Formula 60 Electric | 173 Norsk | 174 Coming Up
175 NZ Offshore Superboat Championship | 176 SWSC British
Masters | 177 IHRA F1 | 178 IHRA Offshore | 179 Francais
180 Italiano | 181 UIM S3 World Endurance | 182 Polski
183 Cesky | 184 Cestina | 185 Towing in Europe | 188 Slovensky
189 Russkiy | 190 Kyrgyzcha | 191 OPA Racing | 192 BPRC
193 Outboards | 194 Bahasa Malaysia | 199 Portugu\u00eas
202 Zhongwen (\u4e2d\u6587, Chinese, created 3 October 2026)
GOOGLE DISCOVER
Referrer android-app://com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox/
identifies Discover feed traffic, not bots. All Discover
strategy, routing, category evidence, translation data and
diagnostics live in Section 30. Do not duplicate figures here;
two copies of the same statistic will drift apart.
COLD-AUDIENCE CONTENT FORMULA
Confirmed working for cold, non-follower US audiences on
Facebook: Hollywood history + American manufacturing nostalgia
+ a recognisable film reference. Example: Glastron/Live and Let
Die reached 67,909 Facebook views, 97.7% non-followers, peaking
around 03:00 BST (US evening). This is a FACEBOOK REACH formula
for audiences with no prior connection to PBN. It is not a
Discover formula and must not be confused with one; Discover
routing is Section 30.
CONTENT PERFORMANCE (as of May 2026)
Preview format (EN + FR + IT): 39.7% of top 40 traffic.
Industry + Feature: 39.2%. Race results: 4.6%. Original
proactive angles outperform event coverage 3-5x on Facebook.
English industry and US-audience content produces 2x+ AdSense
RPM versus French event traffic.
NOTE: the 4.6% race results figure is a share of total site
traffic. It is not a statement about Discover eligibility.
Section 30E documents race results and post-race content
performing strongly in the Discover feed. Do not cite this
figure as a reason to expect race coverage to be ignored by
Discover.
————————————————————
20.1 EXTRACTION EARNS SEARCH AND CITATIONS, NOT DISCOVER
Established 24 July 2026 from PBN’s own per-post
referrer data.
————————————————————
The editorial act in Section 6.1, digging out what other
outlets missed, produces two different distribution outcomes
depending on the FORM the extracted material takes.
EVIDENCE. West Marine 59-store list (post 8083), 10,095 views,
8,996 visitors, all-time referrers:
Google 4,618
Direct 1,895
DuckDuckGo 558
Facebook 461
Bing 389
MLive 300
dailyjobcuts.com 248
search.yahoo.com 179
The Sun 24
android-app (Discover) 30
Discover delivered 30 visitors out of 8,996, roughly three in a
thousand. This was a SEARCH story with a CITATION TAIL, not a
feed story. The MSM referrals (MLive, The Sun, Myrtle Beach
Online, Patch, MSN, CE Outlook) came because PBN held the only
published version of the store list.
THE TWO FORMS
UTILITY. A list, a full set of names, a lookup table. Creates
long-tail search intent that only PBN can satisfy, because
every reader asking “is MY store closing” has one place to find
out. Also earns inbound links from outlets that need the
detail. Durable, keeps earning for months.
INSIGHT. A buried figure, a structural explanation, a number
nobody else pulled. Travels as a headline and can be served in
Discover. Spiky, decays quickly.
Neither is better. Where a story admits both, do both. The
utility version is the one that keeps paying.
AI REFERRALS also present on 8083: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini,
Copilot, Claude, duck.ai. Small numbers, but the reference-
content strategy is being cited by AI systems.
CONFIRMED INDEPENDENTLY, 11 September 2026, on a second West
Marine article (Eyes Chapter 11 as Restructuring Talks
Continue, post 6407, 6,171 all-time views): ChatGPT, Claude,
Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity again present as direct
referrers, a handful of visitors each. Same pattern as 8083 on
an unrelated post about the same company, moving this from a
single-post anecdote to two independent confirmations.
————————————————————
20.2 BOATING NEW ZEALAND, SYNDICATION PARTNER
————————————————————
Boating New Zealand (boatingnz.co.nz) is a syndication partner,
not a scraper. They poll a dedicated RSS feed PBN built for
them and display teaser cards (title, excerpt, thumbnail) on
their site under a “Powerboats” section, each linking back to
the original PBN article via an on-click new tab. This is a
formal, coordinated arrangement, established by email exchange
with Chris Woodhams on 6 to 7 June 2026, not an informal reprint
understanding.
Contact: Chris Woodhams, Digital Editor, Boating New Zealand.
GSM +64 22 023 7510.
FEED URL: https://powerboat.news/feed/boatingnz/ (pretty
permalink) or https://powerboat.news/?feed=boatingnz (query
form). Both confirmed live and identical, 13 September 2026.
TECHNICAL DELIVERY, TWO SEPARATE PIECES (verified live 13 to 14
September 2026, do not assume one covers both)
1. PLUGIN: FastAI Boating NZ RSS Feed v1.0.0, folder
pbn-boatingnz-feed (NOT the usual fastai- prefix, worth
knowing before guessing folder names). Registers the
boatingnz feed slug via add_feed() and filters to the 20
most recent posts, excluding 19 category IDs: 27 (For Sale),
56 (Back in the Day), 137 (Boating Industry), 146 (TV &
Movies), 154 (Miami Boat Show), 160 to 190 language
categories except 199 (Portugues, the one language category
NOT excluded, confirmed live, cause unconfirmed, worth
asking Chris whether this is deliberate), and 174 (Coming
Up). Full exclude array: 27, 56, 137, 146, 154, 160, 161,
162, 173, 174, 179, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 190.
2. THEME: functions.php, “RSS FEED ENHANCEMENTS” block (added
June 2026, comment explicitly cites the Boating NZ
partnership). This is SITEWIDE, applied to every RSS feed on
the site, not specific to the boatingnz feed. Three hooks:
rss2_ns declares the media XML namespace, rss2_item echoes
media:content with the post’s featured image (url, width,
height) when one exists, and the_excerpt_rss builds a
30-word excerpt via wp_trim_words() plus a “Read the full
story at Powerboat News” link back to the post, forcing
excerpt mode sitewide via pre_option_rss_use_excerpt. Do NOT
assume the plugin adds the image or excerpt. It does not.
Confirmed by diffing the plugin source against the default
/feed/ output, which carries the same image and excerpt
behaviour despite having no relationship to this partnership.
PLUGIN BACKUP: John supplied a copy of pbn-boatingnz-feed.php on
14 September 2026 (History H6). It does NOT include the
functions.php piece. If the plugin is ever lost, this section
plus a fresh pull of the RSS FEED ENHANCEMENTS block in
functions.php (Section 23) is enough to rebuild the full
partnership integration from scratch.
**********
SECTION 21. FACTUAL ACCURACY AND JOURNALISTIC PUSHBACK
Never publish a claim that cannot be defended under challenge.
If John provides information that contradicts verified public
record, flag it clearly but accept John’s version (he may have
information not yet public).
Distinguish clearly between confirmed facts and unconfirmed
reports.
Use “according to [source]” when relying on a single source.
If a claim cannot be verified, either omit it or mark
UNVERIFIED.
If a subject’s own framing of an event (in an interview, press
release, or public statement) conflicts with facts PBN has
already established through its own reporting, do not simply
report the framing at face value. Report it accurately as their
framing, and give the reader the factual context alongside it.
This extends to a company’s own summary of its own numbers. See
Section 6.1 on checking a CEO letter against the financial
statements.
**********
SECTION 22. IMAGES
ONE WORKFLOW (updated 14 October 2026): John uploads the image
in chat, Claude uploads it to WordPress through the Image Upload
component of FastAI Content Workflow (curl multipart route
below), with filename, alt_text, caption and title.
READY-TO-GO WEBPS, THE NORMAL CASE
Nine times in ten John supplies a WebP already at the right size
(1200px wide). Since v1.3.0 the plugin stores a WebP no wider
than 1200px exactly as supplied, byte for byte, and the response
carries “passthrough”: true plus the attachment_id for
featured_media and body markup. Check that field on every upload
of a supplied WebP. If it reads false, the file was re-encoded:
stop and tell John rather than using it.
Never send force_reencode=true for a supplied photo.
Verified live 14 October 2026: a 20,566-byte test WebP was
stored with an identical MD5 (History H30).
FEATURED IMAGE: John always supplies the featured image as a
1200px-wide WebP (the width Discover needs, Section 30J).
Narrower images are body images only (Smaller Images, below).
ON THE ROAD, ONLY WHEN JOHN ASKS
John prepares his images nine times in ten, contributor photos
included. When he is travelling and asks Claude to prepare an
image, the same upload route converts anything that is not
already a WebP within 1200px (a JPEG, a PNG, an oversized file)
to WebP q88 at 1200px wide. Section 25 covers any further
editing he asks for. Do not do this unasked, and do not do it to
a contributor’s original from Drive (Section 22G) unless John
asks.
Tested live 14 October 2026: a 2576 x 1714 phone JPEG (655,561
bytes) came back as a 1200 x 798 WebP of 158,196 bytes in 1.9
seconds.
FILE NAMES (added 14 October 2026)
The upload saves the file under the slug sent as filename, so
always check John’s file name before uploading and improve it if
it could be better: lowercase, hyphens, no spaces, describing
what is in the picture (subject, boat or driver, venue or
event), e.g. lady-vice-scarab-plaque. Replace meaningless names
(IMG_4471, image, Test) outright. Keep a name that already does
the job.
DUPLICATES (added 14 October 2026)
Always send check_duplicate=true. If the identical file was
uploaded before, the plugin returns that attachment
(“duplicate”: true) instead of adding a copy to the media
library. Use the returned attachment_id as normal.
NEVER ALTER JOHN’S SUPPLIED PHOTOS (confirmed 22 July 2026)
When John or a contributor supplies image files, use them
exactly as given. Never crop, resize, re-encode, re-compress or
optimise them unless John asks (On the Road, above). If a
different crop or size is needed, ASK JOHN to prepare it.
Claude may still set alt text, titles and captions; that is
metadata, not the image.
Up to v1.2.0 the plugin re-encoded every upload, making supplied
WebPs 5 to 36 per cent larger with no resize (History H7). Fixed
in v1.3.0, 14 October 2026.
THE IMAGE IS JOHN’S CALL (added 14 October 2026)
Never question an image John has supplied or uploaded. Rights,
copyright and whether to use an AI-generated image are John’s
final call. Claude does not raise them, ask about them or hold
an article up over them.
CAPTION AND CREDIT ON EVERY PHOTO (added 14 October 2026)
What matters is that every photo, featured and body, has a
caption, and a photo credit where one is required, in the form
“Photo: Name / Organisation”. Body images carry it in the
figcaption. The featured image carries it in the attachment’s
caption (set at upload), or in pbn_featured_caption where one
post needs a different one. If the credit is not known, ask John
before captioning (Section 32); never invent a credit and never
leave a photo uncaptioned. F1H2O images need no credit (Section
27).
SMALLER IMAGES, E.G. 600PX WIDE (added 14 October 2026)
When John supplies a WebP narrower than 1200px, typically 600px
wide for a portrait shot or a magazine page, that is deliberate:
use it exactly as supplied. Never upscale it, never ask for a
1200px version, never treat it as an error. It passes through
the upload untouched like any other WebP within 1200px. Place it
at no more than its own width, normally beside the text it goes
with in a flex row, with the figure capped at the image’s width:
CAPTION. Photo: Name / Organisation
Text that sits beside the image.
Display width can be set below the file width (400px rather
than 600px) to give the text more room; never above it. A tall
portrait can instead float at a reduced width (Section 14).
WORKED EXAMPLE: Lady Vice, post
popular-mechanics-miami-vice-scarab-page.webp (600 x 830) shown
at 400px beside text; vicious-wellcraft-scarab-38kv-dock.webp
(600 x 747) shown at 600px beside text;
lady-vice-scarab-plaque.webp (768 x 1024) floated right at
300px.
AUTHENTICATION (added 2 July 2026)
/wp-json/fastai-image/v1/upload, /upload-file and /status all
require authentication as of v1.2.0. Use the dedicated API key
via query param ?key= (preferred) or header X-PBN-Key. Falls
back to logged-in session or HTTP Basic Auth (Theme File Editor
credentials, Section 23) if no key is supplied, but the key is
the intended method for automated uploads.
API key: [REDACTED, see Preferences.txt]
NEVER USE PBN CONNECT’S MEDIA-UPLOAD TOOLS FOR A LOCAL FILE
(added 7 September 2026, after a stuck upload the same day)
wp_upload_media requires inlining the full base64 file content
as a text parameter. For any real image this is slow, wastes
tokens, and is the specific failure mode behind past stuck
uploads (Cuttell chat, 5 September; a deleted chat, 7 September,
where Claude reached for this tool instead of the working
endpoint). wp_upload_media_from_url doesn’t help either, since a
file John or a contributor just supplied in chat has no public
URL yet, only a local path under /mnt/user-data/uploads/.
ALWAYS use bash_tool with curl multipart directly to the Image
Upload component of FastAI Content Workflow instead:
curl -X POST “https://powerboat.news/wp-json/fastai-image/v1/upload-file?key=API_KEY” \
-F “image=@/mnt/user-data/uploads/FILENAME” \
-F “filename=…” -F “alt_text=…” -F “caption=…” -F “title=…” \
-F “check_duplicate=true”
This streams the file straight from disk to the request body.
Claude never touches, generates, or inlines the file’s bytes.
This is the default for every local-file upload, not a fallback
tried only after something else fails.
UPLOAD ABILITY, ADDED 10 OCTOBER 2026 (NOT A REPLACEMENT FOR
THE ROUTE ABOVE)
FastAI Content Workflow (v1.2.0 onward) also offers the upload
as a PBN Connect tool, wp_ability_pbn_upload_image (WordPress ability
pbn/upload-image, Section 24). It takes a public url or base64
image data, never a local path. For a file supplied in chat the
curl multipart route above is therefore still the only correct
route, and the API key is still needed. Use the ability only
when the source image already has a public URL (for example a
press-release image) or when the session has no shell. It
follows the same passthrough rule as the endpoint, and the NEVER
ALTER JOHN’S SUPPLIED PHOTOS rule above applies to it in full.
ENDPOINT CHOICE
The JSON/base64 endpoint (/upload) works fine for small files.
For larger real images, prefer the multipart endpoint
(/upload-file). Multipart field name is “image”, not “file”.
The JSON/base64 endpoint has previously hit Cloudflare WAF
error 1010 on large payloads.
IMAGE UPLOAD FAILURE
If the multipart endpoint itself fails (not just “an upload
tool” generically, the actual documented route above), do NOT
fall back to PBN Connect’s wp_upload_media, too slow and prone
to exactly the stuck-upload failure this section exists to
prevent. Say: “John I am having trouble uploading can you
upload the images.”
BODY IMAGE MARKUP (CRITICAL, supersedes the old caption
shortcode)
The WordPress shortcode does NOT render on PBN. Never
use it. Use figure/figcaption:
Caption text. Photo: Name / Organisation
FLOAT IMAGES
Float left (text wraps right):
CAPTION
Float right: alignright + margin: 0 0 20px 20px
Always end any float section with:
FLOATED IMAGES AND BLOCKQUOTES
A floated image can be visually cut in half if a blockquote
falls within its vertical span, because the theme’s blockquote
background bleeds across the image. Either use aligncenter for
images near blockquotes, or place the floated image after any
blockquote it would otherwise overlap.
RULES
Featured image is set via the featured_media field, NEVER
duplicated in body HTML.
Always use descriptive alt text.
FEATURED IMAGE SIZE: 1200px WIDTH is the standard. 1200×600 is
a guideline, not a hard rule (confirmed 22 July 2026). Never
crop or re-encode a supplied photo just to hit 1200×600; the
theme handles varying heights fine. Only composite or generated
images built from scratch by Claude (e.g. a logo on a
background) should be built to 1200×600, because there is no
original being degraded.
Body images: up to 1200px wide. Narrower supplied images (600px
and so on) are used at their own width (Smaller Images, above).
All images: WebP q88.
Build with Python/Pillow. Fonts at
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/. Save to
/mnt/user-data/outputs/.
————————————————————
FEATURED IMAGE DUPLICATION, MECHANICAL CHECK
Added 10 September 2026, after post 10154 duplicated the
featured image in the body despite the existing rule.
————————————————————
The rule was already stated here and on the Section 2
checklist, and was still broken on post 10154 (History H8).
Restating the rule again is not the fix.
MANDATORY STEP, every article, before calling wp_create_post or
wp_update_post: take the filename of the attachment being
passed as featured_media, and search the content string being
sent for that same filename. If it appears in a body or
tag, remove that occurrence (or swap in a different
supplied image, or drop the body image entirely) before the
call is made. This is a literal string check against the
content Claude is about to send, not a visual re-read of the
draft.
Where only one image has been supplied for an article, it goes
in featured_media only. It does not also get inserted into the
body just to give the article an in-content image.
**********
SECTION 22A. US SPECTATOR PREVIEW FORMAT
WHAT THIS FORMAT IS FOR
Event previews targeting local civilian audiences at US
powerboat racing events. The target reader is not a powerboat
fan. Brief in one sentence: answer every question a non-fan
needs answered before they decide to turn up.
REQUIRED ELEMENTS
Exact venue with address or directions context.
Admission cost. If free, say so in the headline or opening
paragraph.
Parking: where, cost, any community or local arrangements.
Full session schedule in local time (timetable format, standard
PBN component).
What spectators will see and hear: boats, speed, noise,
spectacle.
Civic and community backing: mayor endorsements, local business
involvement.
TONE
Write for someone who has never watched powerboat racing. Not
condescending, curious. One paragraph of “here is what these
boats are and why they are worth watching” is enough.
DISTRIBUTION WORKFLOW
Submit to local “what’s on” sites as standard. This is not
optional.
Note: PBN uses British English throughout. Do not adapt
spelling for American audiences.
**********
SECTION 22B. RACE, SHOW AND EVENT PREVIEW FORMAT
WHEN TO USE
Any upcoming race, boat show, or event that warrants a
spectator or fan-facing preview. Standard format is “Everything
You Need to Know” for English. Native-language equivalents
follow the Discover routing model in Section 30.
ENGLISH POST
Title: [Event Name] [Year]: Everything You Need to Know
Categories: 174 (Coming Up) + series category (e.g. 10 for
F1H2O).
Event dates: set both pbn_event_start_date (first day) and
pbn_event_date (last day) via wp_update_post_meta.
If free entry: include in title or opening paragraph.
FOREIGN LANGUAGE POST (John decides after English is published)
TRANSLATION FILTER: only translate if the event already has
audience pulse in that language market. Translation does not
create demand on its own. Confirmed by data: E1 Lake Como IT
preview 1,332 views, Raid Pavia-Venezia 73rd IT articles
cumulative 3,517 views, Hydro GP Boretto Po IT preview 419
views, versus UIM Offshore Class 3D Rodi Garganico IT preview
only 125 views (small niche venue, no existing Italian
following). Ask whether the event already has a pulse in that
market; if yes, translate, if not, English alone is the better
use of time. Confirm with John before committing.
Separate post, never combine with the English draft.
TRANSLATION CATEGORY PRECEDENT (established 24 July 2026 from
published posts)
Industry and feature translations take the LANGUAGE CATEGORY
ONLY. Precedents: Mercury V12 Swedish (4305) and Sunseeker
Swedish (4306), both [160].
Race and event translations add the series category. Precedent:
Kalkkiranta Swedish (8006), [160, 39].
Event previews: language category + series category, NOT 174
(Coming Up).
CHINESE PRECEDENT (3 October 2026)
F1H2O Shanghai preview, post 10503, categories [202, 10],
slug in pinyin (f1h2o-zhongguo-shanghai-dajiangsai-2026),
schema inLanguage zh-CN, pbn_hide_from_front_page “1” until 202
is in the homepage exclusion arrays (Section 23). Title uses the
event’s official Chinese name as the host district government
writes it (\u4e16\u754cF1H2O\u6469\u6258\u8247\u9526\u6807\u8d5b\u4e2d\u56fd\u4e0a\u6d77\u5927\u5956\u8d5b),
found by a Chinese-language search. Driver and team names stay
in Latin script. The UK-times paragraph was dropped, as the
timetable already shows Beijing time.
Published as an experiment in Baidu visibility, John’s call
rather than the audience-pulse filter above. Baseline as at 3
October 2026: no Baidu webmaster registration or sitemap
submission, all-time Baidu referrals 3 visitors (m.baidu.com),
China 1,525 visitors all-time. Baiduspider is not blocked
(robots.txt and Cloudflare both allow it). Baidu serves a
captcha to automated searches, so site: checks must be done by
John in a browser.
Language-only also prevents the English and translated versions
appearing side by side in the same homepage category section.
Translation disclaimer as first element inside
pbn-content-wrapper (Section 24).
No social promotion.
Event dates: same pbn_event_start_date and pbn_event_date as
the English version.
Schema inLanguage must match the article’s actual language, not
en-GB (Section 30G).
Use pbn_featured_caption to set a translated featured image
caption so the English original is unaffected.
CONTENT SECTIONS (in order)
Opening paragraph: what the event is, dates, free entry.
What spectators will see: boats, speed, spectacle.
Race course image (if available).
Event timetable: single table, data-utc attributes,
timezone-note div, NO conversion script in content.
Venue and practical information: location, access, parking, VIP
if applicable.
CTA box: series coverage link.
SEO
Focus keyphrase: event name + year (lowercase).
SEO title: event name + year, under 60 characters.
Meta description: event, location, dates, free entry if
applicable, under 160 characters.
SCHEMA
@graph combining NewsArticle + SportsEvent.
SportsEvent requires: name, startDate (ISO 8601 with timezone
offset), endDate, location with name and address, organizer,
url.
Never use placeholder values, omit fields if unconfirmed.
Every headline must contain at least one named, concrete
entity: a product name, model number, place name, or specific
figure. Never lead with a category or vague framing alone.
PASSES: “AX300 Caudwell Marine’s 300hp Diesel Outboard”,
“Calon Gloria: China’s Third Outboard Brand”, “IHRA Offshore
2026: The Leadership Turnover and the Four Rounds It Ran”,
“OXE Marine’s Engine Sales Fell 90%”
Applies to: outboard and industry pieces, “Everything You Need
to Know” previews, Back in the Day features, and any article
John flags as a Discover candidate.
Does not override: the SEO title character limit (Sections 1
and 2, under 60 characters, no site suffix) or the “Everything
You Need to Know” preview title convention (Section 22B). The
named entity goes inside that structure, not instead of it.
Example: “24 Heures Motonautiques Normandie 2026: Everything
You Need to Know” already satisfies both.
A specific extracted FIGURE counts as the named entity and is
the strongest form of it, because it is the one thing no other
outlet’s headline can carry. See Section 6.1.
NEVER add geographic or market tags to a headline to chase a
market (“US”, “Global”, “Europe”). That is keyword stuffing, it
conflicts with this rule, and PBN’s best-performing article of
all time carries no geographic marker at all. See Section 30H.
CHECK BEFORE FILING: could this headline run as-is for a
different boat, brand, or event without editing a single word?
If yes, it is too generic, add the specific.
**********
SECTION 22C. FACEBOOK/INSTAGRAM GRAPHIC WORKFLOW
Canva template design ID: DAHHjrV_kkU
Edit URL: https://www.canva.com/d/HlNzuCrb0SRx_Dn
Format: Dark navy and gold, PBN logo bottom centre, 1080×1080
square.
PER-ARTICLE WORKFLOW
1. Upload photo via upload-asset-from-url
2. Start editing transaction on DAHHjrV_kkU
3. replace_text: headline + subtitle
4. update_fill: photo slot
5. commit-editing-transaction
6. Export PNG 1080×1080 pro
Skip Canva for standard article images, only use for Facebook
and Instagram social graphics.
DESIGN SPEC
Centred layout, uniform dark-navy scrim over photo.
All text horizontally centred.
Event name large, location, dates, classes, round badge pill at
bottom.
Card-crop-safe.
Recreate with Python/Pillow using the same structure for all
future Coming Up posts.
**********
SECTION 22E. ENTRY LIST GRAPHIC STANDARD
Python/Pillow pipeline for race entry list graphics published
to Facebook.
SPECIFICATION
Canvas: 1080px wide, height calculated to content.
Background: dark navy.
Layout: two-column entry rows.
Class header bars: gold.
Number badge: mid-navy.
Boat name: bold white.
Crew name: regular light-blue.
Row background: alternating dark shades.
HEADER AREA
Event name: gold/white on dark navy.
Gold horizontal rule below event name.
Entry count and info: light-blue.
FOOTER AREA
Dark navy background.
Gold horizontal rule.
powerboat.news in gold.
TECHNICAL NOTES
Fonts: LiberationSans (at
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/liberation/ on the build machine).
Use the GB flag for all UK crew, Scottish flag encoding breaks
the pipeline.
Output: 1080px wide WebP q88, saved to /mnt/user-data/outputs/.
**********
SECTION 22F. UIM F2 OFFICIAL SOCIAL AND DUAL-OUTLET WORKFLOW
UIM F2 coverage runs across two separate outlets with different
rules. Do not mix them.
UIM CHANNEL (official F2 Facebook page)
Facebook graphics only, posted via REST API. No PBN branding on
these graphics.
Posted to the official “F2 World Championship” Facebook page
under John’s admin access, NOT PBN’s page.
Covers: entry list, timetable, FP, qualifying, warm-up, race
results, standings.
Publishing route for accompanying UIM-side WordPress content is
direct WordPress REST API via curl with Basic Auth, NOT the PBN
Connect MCP two-step workflow.
F2 category ID: 11 | Author ID: 3
PBN CHANNEL
Written articles via the standard MCP workflow (Section 24).
English plus Italian translation where audience pulse supports
it (Section 22B).
F2 SOCIAL GRAPHICS BUILD SPEC
Python/Pillow, dark navy bg (#0a0e1a), flagcdn.com for driver
nationality flags (flagcdn.com/40×30/{cc}.png).
Country codes: SWE=se, FRA=fr, LTU=lt, MON=mc, NOR=no, GBR=gb,
LAT=lv, FIN=fi, POR=pt.
No gold header row, no POS# column.
Columns: boat number badge (circle, mid-blue) | flag image |
driver name (bold white) | data columns right-aligned.
PTS colours: gold #d4af37 for P1 (larger font), silver #c0c0c0
P2, bronze #cd7f32 P3, white for rest. Podium rows get matching
left border.
Canvas height must ALWAYS be calculated from actual content
positions (ROWS_Y + ROW_H x num_rows + BOTTOM_PAD 48px). Never
use a fixed height; entry counts vary between rounds and the
last row gets cut off.
Logo: powerboat.news attachment ID 8260.
Output: 1080px wide WebP q88 to /mnt/user-data/outputs/.
PER-GRAPHIC SPECS
STANDINGS: boat badge | flag 36×27 | driver | PTS. ROW_H=76.
QUALIFYING: boat badge | flag 32×24 | driver | Q1 | Q2 | Q3.
ROW_H=62. Dashes for sessions not reached. Top 3 Q3 times gold,
silver, bronze. Title “QUALIFYING REPORT”.
RACE RESULTS: boat badge | flag 32×24 | driver | LAPS | GAP.
ROW_H=62. col_laps_r = W-PAD-160, col_gap_r = W-PAD-4. DNF, DNS
and ACC in grey. Winner gap column empty. Title “RACE RESULTS”.
FREE PRACTICE: boat badge | flag 32×24 | driver | LAPS | BEST
LAP | GAP. ROW_H=62. col_laps_r = W-PAD-300, col_best_r =
W-PAD-150, col_gap_r = W-PAD-4. Top 3 best laps gold, silver,
bronze. Title “FREE PRACTICE”.
WARM UP: identical to FREE PRACTICE. Title “WARM UP”.
Subtitle format throughout:
“Grand Prix of [Location] – [City]”.
**********
SECTION 22G. CONTRIBUTOR PHOTO DROP-OFF, GOOGLE DRIVE
One subfolder per contributor underneath. Currently created:
Chris Davies, Claude Sammut – KCS Photography, Danny Casey, Claudio Cappelli.
SHARING STATUS
Chris Davies subfolder shared with [email protected]
(writer access), 3 September 2026. Corrected 7 September 2026:
the working folder is “PN Folder”, nested inside the Chris
Davies subfolder, not the top-level folder itself.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xLUW16PgHRPIJ8_Zezi05d1X7P-JjNRn
Other subfolders exist but are not yet shared with anyone.
Share individually as each contributor is onboarded to this
route, John to supply the email address.
WORKFLOW
Contributor drops photos directly into their own subfolder, no
resizing or renaming required on their end. Claude checks the
folder (Google Drive connector, already live, no attachment
download limitation) and pulls files via download_file_content.
Existing Section 22 rules still apply once downloaded: never
alter, crop, or re-encode a contributor’s supplied photos.
WHY DRIVE, NOT EMAIL, FOR PHOTOS
The Gmail connector cannot download attachment file bytes (see
Known Gap above), only metadata. Drive gives Claude direct file
access via download_file_content with no such limitation, so it is
the reliable route for getting a contributor’s photo files into
Claude’s hands.
SECTION 22G ADDITION: NOTIFICATION AND RETRIEVAL WORKFLOW
(added 4 September 2026)
CONTRIBUTOR NOTIFICATION
Once a contributor’s subfolder is shared, they email
[email protected] with a short note when they have dropped
files into it (e.g. “photos are in”). The email is a ping only,
never the delivery method. Do not attach the photo to the
email; Gmail’s connector cannot download attachment bytes
(Section 31), so an attached photo is unreachable. The photo
must go into the Drive subfolder itself.
RETRIEVAL METHOD (CRITICAL)
Use Google Drive:list_recent_files (orderBy: recency), NOT
Google Drive:search_files, to find newly dropped contributor
files. Confirmed 4 September 2026: a file dropped directly into
a contributor’s Drive subfolder did not appear via search_files
under any query tried (by parentId, by title, by owner, by
fullText, by createdTime) for over 15 minutes after upload,
despite being visible in the Drive web UI throughout.
list_recent_files found it immediately. The structured search
index lags for files it did not create; the recency listing
reads live. Treat this as the standard retrieval method for
this workflow, not a fallback.
If a specific file still cannot be located via
list_recent_files (e.g. it has fallen off the recent-files
page), ask for the direct file share link
(drive.google.com/file/d/FILE_ID/view) and fetch by fileId
directly via download_file_content, which works even when
search does not.
KNOWN FAILURE MODE, CONTRIBUTOR SIDE
A file that appears to be “in” a shared folder from the
contributor’s own Drive view is not necessarily inside it.
Browser “Save to Drive” extensions and similar tools can save
into the contributor’s own My Drive (e.g. a “Saved from Chrome”
folder) while only sharing that individual file with the
folder owner, which looks identical to a proper upload from
the contributor’s side but does not place the file inside the
actual shared folder tree. If a contributor reports a file is
there but it is not visible in the folder from the owner’s own
Drive view, this is the likely cause. Fix: contributor moves
the file into the shared subfolder directly, or uploads via the
folder’s own upload button rather than a save extension.
WordPress version: 7.1.3 (checked live 10 October 2026, the
latest release on that date; 7.1 “Mary Lou” was released 20
August 2026). The 7.0 notes below still apply.
New in 7.0: Command Palette (Cmd/Ctrl+K), Visual Revisions
(colour-coded diff, one-click restore), custom CSS per block,
responsive per-block visibility controls, PHP-only block
registration. AI Connectors screen (Settings > Connectors) is
present but not yet functional for the PBN workflow.
PBN runs a custom WordPress theme called “Powerboat News”
(activated April 2026). All code previously in WPCode snippets
has been migrated into theme files.
THEME FILE STRUCTURE
functions.php
PHP: REST API fields (Yoast, BBH schema, categories, event
dates), PHP utilities, related posts, redirects, homepage and
archive functions, sitewide RSS feed image and excerpt enhancements
(the “RSS FEED ENHANCEMENTS” block, added June 2026 for the
Boating NZ partnership but applied to every feed on the site,
full detail in Section 20.2).
Tidied 22 October 2026 (tested in a local WordPress 7.1.3 before John
applied it): removed the unused Multispark order form (the shop uses
Form "" not found. Add it via FastAI Forms in your admin.
from the FastAI Contact Form plugin), the
pbn_category_card shortcode, pbn_coming_up_section(), the hero branch of
pbn_render_grid_card() and the coverage directory footer script. The
foreign-language category list lives once, in
fastai_seo_suite_language_categories() in FastAI SEO Suite 1.3.1+; the
theme reads it through pbn_lang_cat_ids() (with a fallback copy only for
when the plugin is off). Add a new language there, never retype the IDs.
SEO Suite 1.3.1 also owns noindex categories
(fastai_seo_suite_noindex_categories(), default 15 UIM E1 Series): their
posts and archive get noindex in both robots tags, and are left out of the
sitemaps and IndexNow. The SEO Suite robots tag now follows WordPress’s own
whenever that says noindex (for example search results). The 301 redirects are one template_redirect handler (contains, then
prefix, then exact path). E1 (category 15) noindex goes through the
wp_robots filter. pbn_post_id is output with wp_add_inline_script().
AUTHOR PAGES RETIRED (22 October 2026, John’s decision): PBN has no
author archives. pbn_author_profile_url() in functions.php maps a
WordPress user ID to a profile page (3 John Moore -> /john-moore/,
8 Chris Davies -> /chris-davies/, 6 Neil Perkins -> /neil-perkins/,
anyone else -> /about-powerboat-news/). The author_link filter makes
every generated author link (byline, author box, NewsArticle schema
author url) point there, any /author// address (page 2 and feeds
included) 301s there, and the users sitemap is switched off. author.php
is only a fallback redirect. When a contributor gets a profile page, add
their user ID to the map; never link to /author/ URLs.
ICONS (22 October 2026): the cdnjs Font Awesome stylesheet is gone.
pbn-main.css embeds Font Awesome Free 6.5.1 fonts cut down to the 11
icons PBN uses (solid: bars, calendar-days, cart-shopping, envelope,
magnifying-glass/search, house/home; brands: facebook, instagram,
x-twitter, whatsapp, youtube), same class names. Any other fa- icon in
new content or templates will show as a blank box until it is added to
those fonts (rebuild the subset from the 6.5.1 package with pyftsubset).
Homepage section functions (pbn_category_section,
then pbn_coming_up_section, since removed) refactored 4 July 2026:
pbn_category_section() takes an optional $exclude_posts param
(used to pass hero post IDs and prevent duplicate cards across
sections; a hero story is deliberately suppressed from its
category section while it holds a hero slot, and reappears once
it drops out of the hero six; this is not a missing post),
excludes category 174 from all category-section queries (Coming
Up previews now surface only via the Coming Up section and the
This Weekend strip plugin, Section 26), and emits class-based
markup (.pbn-hsec family) instead of inline styles.
Further changes 4 July 2026 (second pass):
(1) The homepage ticker runs its own query, 10 most recent
posts excluding the six hero posts, category 174, language
categories, and pbn_hide_from_front_page posts, so the ticker
never duplicates the hero grid; it falls back to the hero posts
if the query returns empty.
(2) pbn_category_section() takes an optional $max_age_days
param (after $exclude_posts): if set and the section’s newest
post is older than the limit, the entire section is skipped;
the check is bypassed for ‘rand’-ordered sections. Currently
set to 30 days on TV & Movies and US Racing. A section
vanishing from the homepage under this gate is expected
behaviour, not a bug; it returns as soon as a fresh post is
published in its categories.
(3) The IHRA section is renamed US Racing and pulls categories
134, 177, 178, 191, 135, 23, 36, 12, 62, 38, 16 (IHRA, IHRA F1,
IHRA Offshore, OPA, APBA, H1 Unlimited, Race World Offshore, US
P1 Offshore, Key West, Englewood Beach Waterfest, NBRA). CPA
(17) and OSS (40) are deliberately excluded as non-US content.
The section link still points to /category/ihra/ labelled “All
IHRA” because no combined US racing archive exists, an accepted
mismatch, revisit if a combined archive is ever created.
(4) A fourth homepage AdSense unit is emitted by the theme
directly, immediately before the Championship Leaderboards
panel, using the same slot (8998609576) and pbn-ad-lazy class
as the units injected by the FastAI Google AdSense plugin so
its lazy loader initialises it. This is the one theme-emitted
ad unit; the other three come from the plugin via the theme
hooks below. Moving it into the plugin is a documented
consolidation target (Section 26).
Note: hero, ticker and category-section queries all order by
publish date. In-place updates to an existing post (e.g. live
race updates added to a preview) never move it up the homepage;
only a newly published post does.
pbn-main.css
All CSS including design tokens, components, responsive rules.
Homepage section styling (.pbn-hsec block) can now be edited
directly via the Theme File Editor without a theme zip; it sits
immediately before the IHRA block, which must remain last in
the file. The Theme File Editor path for this file is
assets/css/pbn-main.css, not the bare filename.
pbn-main.js
All JavaScript: ticker, events bar, hero header fallback,
timetable timezone, calendar, championship leaders, PDF button,
click tracker.
header.php
Ticker bar and navigation HTML. Front-page-only meta
description and screen-reader h1 added 4 July 2026, inside
is_front_page() conditionals. Do not remove these when editing
header.php for other reasons. Digital Edition icon link removed
10 July 2026 via the Theme File Editor (Flipbook deleted,
Sections 26 and 29). The live header.php is therefore NEWER
than the 4 July theme zip backup; re-pull live files before any
theme rebuild or the dead link silently returns.
footer.php
Footer HTML and links.
front-page.php
Homepage template (thin wrapper; calls pbn_march26_homepage()
in functions.php).
single.php
Single post template: PHP-rendered hero header, featured image,
related posts, and the “most read” label (see MOST READ LABEL,
10 OCTOBER 2026, below). The em dash TO DO previously listed
here was cleared on 10 October 2026: both em dashes in comments
(docblock and the featured image HTML comment) were replaced
with hyphens when the file was rewritten for the label.
archive.php
Category archive template.
page.php
Static pages template.
screenshot.png
Theme thumbnail shown in Appearance > Themes (added 4 July
2026: PBN logo centred on white, 1200×900, gold and navy rule
at the base). The Theme File Editor API does not serve this
file (text files only), so any rebuilt theme zip must carry it
forward from the previous zip or it silently disappears from
Appearance.
THEME ACTION HOOKS AVAILABLE FOR PLUGINS
(all fire inside pbn_march26_homepage())
pbn_after_up_next, fires directly below the homepage events bar
pbn_after_latest_posts, fires after the latest-posts hero grid
pbn_after_boating_industry, fires after the Boating Industry
section
Use these rather than editing functions.php when new homepage
content is needed from a plugin. FastAI This Weekend Strip used
to be the reference example of this pattern (it rendered on
pbn_after_up_next); it was deleted 7 September 2026 (confirmed
intentional), so the pattern itself is documented here but no
live plugin currently demonstrates it.
FASTAI THEME FILE EDITOR PLUGIN v1.2.0 (updated 10 October
2026 from v1.1.2)
Claude reads theme files via the REST API. John applies
functions.php changes himself; Claude may write other theme
files directly via POST /file (as done for the 10 July
header.php edit).
ACCESS (v1.2.0): the REST API, the admin page and the abilities
require manage_options (administrators: john, blowfish, graham).
v1.1.2 checked only edit_posts, which every contributor and
author has (security fix, History H9). The plugin folder is still
named fastai-theme-editor-v1.1.2 so the zip replaces in place;
any future zip must keep that folder name.
ABILITIES (v1.2.0), usable through PBN Connect once the grant
allows them (Section 24)
wp_ability_pbn_theme_list_files, wp_ability_pbn_theme_read_file
(returns content plus md5), wp_ability_pbn_theme_list_backups,
wp_ability_pbn_theme_backup, wp_ability_pbn_theme_write_file.
theme_write_file refuses: functions.php in any folder or letter
case; .bak files; any extension other than .php, .css or .js;
an existing file without base_md5, or with a base_md5 that no
longer matches the live file (a stale read); a new file without
create=true; a missing folder; and PHP that fails a syntax parse
(nothing is written). It saves .bak first, as POST /file
does.
WHICH ROUTE TO USE: for a large file such as
assets/css/pbn-main.css (about 100KB), the curl route stays the
better choice, because the file is pulled to disk and edited
locally; the ability needs the complete new file passed as one
parameter. Use the abilities for reads, backups and small files,
and whenever the session has no shell. The REST route still
accepts functions.php from an administrator; the abilities never
do. The standing rule below (John applies functions.php changes,
or explicitly instructs a single edit) is unchanged on either
route.
AVAILABLE OPERATIONS
GET /files, list all editable theme files
GET /file?path=FILE, read file content (.bak files are
readable)
POST /file, write file content for non-functions.php files only
(auto-.bak backup created; writing to .bak files is blocked)
CRITICAL RULES FOR THEME FILE EDITING
1. ALWAYS fetch the live file first via GET /file before making
any edit.
2. Apply the change to the fetched content, verify it is
present, then build the zip.
3. PHP EDITING METHOD: Never use shell variables for PHP
content, they corrupt it. Never use string replacement on
PHP source, in Python or anything else. Always write the
entire PHP file out as a single clean literal from scratch
via a Python temp file, then verify the result before use.
This applies to functions.php above all, but to every PHP
theme file. String replacement silently strips
backslash-escaped quotes inside PHP single-quoted strings
and brought the site down on 16 June 2026.
4. After any edit registering rewrite rules: visit Settings >
Permalinks > Save Changes immediately.
5. Before building any theme zip, check GET /files modified
timestamps against the time of the original pull. If any
file changed since, re-pull before zipping, or the upload
will silently revert live changes. As of 10 July 2026 this
applies concretely: header.php was edited live after the 4
July zip was built, so any rebuild from that zip without a
fresh pull reverts the Digital Edition link removal.
functions.php, JOHN APPLIES ALL CHANGES HIMSELF (CRITICAL)
Claude never writes to functions.php via the API directly.
Never edit it without asking John first. Never touch it when a
plugin will do the job (see the theme action hooks above and
Section 26). A PHP error there breaks CSS and JS file writing
sitewide. John’s approach to errors is never blame, always fix,
always learn.
WORKFLOW
1. Claude pulls all live theme files via the Theme File Editor
API using curl.
2. Claude applies changes locally per rule 3 above and verifies
the change is present in the file before zipping.
3. John applies via: Activate 2025 theme > Delete PBN theme >
Upload zip via Appearance > Themes > Add New > Upload >
Install Now > Activate PBN theme.
ACTIVE WPCODE SNIPPETS (two remaining on PBN)
ID 5293, Google Text File: domain verification for Google
Search Console.
ID 5637, Stats Dashboard: PBN stats admin page.
CRITICAL: THEME UPLOAD RULE
Always upload the theme via wp-admin > Appearance > Themes >
Add New > Upload > Replace. NEVER upload theme files via FTP.
John has no access to cPanel or FTP; server backend access is
via Blowfish Technology only.
THEME ZIP BACKUP
4 July 2026, second build
(powerboat-news-theme-1-with-logo.zip, includes everything in
the same-day track3 backup plus: ticker de-duplication query,
$max_age_days freshness gate, US Racing rename and
eleven-category pull, theme-emitted fourth ad unit, and
screenshot.png). Supersedes powerboat-news-theme-1-track3.zip
from earlier the same day, which itself superseded the 26 May
2026 backup (the YouTube embed fix, functions.php, diagnosed
25-26 May 2026, John’s idea).
STALE as of 10 July 2026: does not contain the header.php
Digital Edition link removal. Do not use as a rebuild base
without pulling live files first.
————————————————————
HOMEPAGE CHANGES, 3 OCTOBER 2026
————————————————————
UP NEXT STRIP, NOW SERVER-RENDERED
The “Up Next” event strip at the top of the homepage is the
ONLY place Coming Up previews (category 174) surface on the
homepage. pbn_coming_up_section() was removed from functions.php
on 22 October 2026, so there is no separate Coming Up
section (Sections 5 and 26 corrected to match).
pbn_up_next_html(), at the end of functions.php, builds the
strip in PHP: the next six Coming Up posts whose
pbn_event_date (or pbn_event_start_date if no end date) is
today or later, sorted by start date. Venue and flag come from
the SportsEvent node in bbh_custom_schema (addressLocality and
addressCountry), the series label from the first category that
is not 174 or a language category. Cached in the transient
pbn_up_next_v1 for six hours and per calendar day, cleared on
every save_post. The row carries data-ssr=”1″, and pbn-main.js
skips its own REST fetch when it sees that. Crawlers and
first-time visitors now get the events in the HTML instead of
“Loading calendar…”.
CONSEQUENCE: a race only appears in Up Next if it has a Coming
Up preview with pbn_event_start_date set and a SportsEvent
location in its schema. Shanghai 2026 was missing until post
10501 was created.
The Up Next PHP and JS each hold their own language-category
list (160 to 194, without 199 or 202). Coming Up previews are
English-only by rule (Section 22B), so this has no effect
today.
US RACING SECTION LINK
Now “All coverage” to the coverage directory, matching Latest
News. It was “All IHRA” to /category/ihra/, which did not match
a block also holding H1, OPA and Race World Offshore stories.
FOOTER XCAT LINK
footer.php links to /category/uim-xcat/ (fixed 3 October 2026,
History H11).
CALENDAR PAGE FAQ
The FAQ on the calendar page (3042) is not in the page content.
It lives in the page’s bbh_custom_schema meta and must be
edited there (wp_update_post_meta with post_type pages) when a
round is added or cancelled. Jeddah was removed from the F1H2O
answer on 3 October 2026; the E1 Jeddah mention (January) is
correct and stays.
LATEST NEWS LEAD CARD (3 October 2026)
Latest News now shows nine posts: the newest as a full-width
lead, then two rows of four. The lead is always the latest post,
not a pinned one (John’s choice).
PHP (functions.php): the pbn_latest_news_section() call in
pbn_march26_homepage() is wrapped in
and asks for 9 posts. Inside pbn_latest_news_section(), after the
card title, the first card (0 === $i) echoes
pbn_lead_standfirst( get_the_ID() ), a helper at the end of
functions.php.
STANDFIRST: the post’s meta description (yoast_metadesc, then
_yoast_wpseo_metadesc, skipping anything containing %%). If a
post has none, falls back to the first sentence of the first
paragraph longer than 60 characters, capped at 45 words. The
helper deliberately uses no mb_* functions, as they may be
missing on the host. Meta descriptions are now visible on the
homepage, so write one for every post: on 3 October 2026, 12 of
the last 40 posts had none at all (mostly UIM F2 race reports and
UKOPRA pieces), and the live pages carried no description tag.
CSS (pbn-main.css, three blocks at the end of the file, “LATEST
NEWS LEAD CARD (3 October 2026, revised)”, “Lead card standfirst”
and “Lead card fit fix”): on desktop the image sits on the left
(60%) and the headline, standfirst and date on the right. The
image keeps its natural shape, filling its column and trimming
only the excess when the text is taller, so a standard 1200 x 600
image loses about 8% of its width on desktop and at most 18% at
around 1,200px. The 72% brightness filter used on the dark
sections is switched off for the lead image only. The standfirst
is capped at four lines and hidden at 901-1199px and on phones
(600px and below). Tablet: image full width above the text.
The first 2 x 2 version cropped the photo badly and was replaced
the same day; do not return to it.
The 3 October functions.php edits behind the Up Next strip and
this card were made by Claude through the Theme File Editor API,
each on John’s explicit instruction (History H10). The standing
rule that functions.php changes go through John is unchanged.
————————————————————
MOST READ LABEL, 10 OCTOBER 2026
————————————————————
Posts in the live all-time top 40 show a gold pill above the
headline in the hero header: “One of our most read articles”.
Posts in category 179 (Francais) show “L’un de nos articles
les plus lus” instead. The CSS uppercases both.
HOW IT WORKS
single.php fetches top40_alltime from the FastAI Stats /data
endpoint in-process via rest_do_request, so the stats key never
reaches the browser. The ID list is cached in the transient
pbn_most_read_ids_v1 for 6 hours (30 minutes if the stats call
fails), with the last good list kept in the option
pbn_most_read_ids_backup. A 60-second lock transient
(pbn_most_read_lock) stops simultaneous rebuilds. No post
content is edited, so no modified dates change, and the label
moves on and off posts automatically as rankings change.
Pages (e.g. 358, 3042) never show it, as they use page.php.
EXCLUSIONS
Fatal-accident stories are excluded by post ID, John’s
decision: $pbn_most_read_exclude in single.php, currently
10267 (Chip Romer), 9491 (Lenni Strandberg) and 9427 (Kotka
driver death). This is NOT automatic. Any future death or
fatal-accident story that enters the top 40 must be added to
that array by hand. Check the top 40 when one is published.
CSS
.pbn-most-read block in pbn-main.css, placed directly after
the .pbn-hero-badge rules (not at the end of the file), with a
600px mobile size reduction.
FILES AND BACKUPS
single.php and assets/css/pbn-main.css were both written
through the Theme File Editor API on 10 October 2026 (.bak
backups created). Both are NEWER than the 4 July theme zip
backup. Any rebuild from that zip without a fresh pull of live
files will silently remove the label.
LITESPEED
Cached pages only pick up a change in the list when their
cache is purged or expires.
Two separate hardcoded language-category exclusion arrays exist
in functions.php, and neither updates itself when a language
category is added. A missing ID lets that language’s posts into
the homepage (found 10 September 2026 with 199, History H12).
As recorded then: line 159, the main homepage query filter
(pre_get_posts), and line 724, $exclude_cats, which feeds
pbn_latest_news_section() for the Latest News hero grid and the
other homepage sections built from $hero_ids. Line numbers move
as the file changes; find the arrays in a fresh pull.
RULE GOING FORWARD: whenever a new language category is added
to PBN (Section 20), it must be added to BOTH arrays above in
the same pass. This is a functions.php change, John applies it
via the Section 23 rebuild-and-reupload workflow, Claude never
writes it via the API directly.
STATUS 3 October 2026: category 202 (Zhongwen, Chinese) was
created and is NOT yet in either array. Until John adds 202 to
both, set pbn_hide_from_front_page to “1” on every Chinese post
(done on 10503). Replacement list for both lines:
160, 161, 162, 173, 179, 180, 182, 183, 188, 189, 190, 194, 199, 202
CONFIRMED CAPABILITIES
wp_create_post, wp_get_post, wp_update_post: fully operational.
wp_update_post_meta: Yoast SEO fields and BBH schema confirmed.
wp_list_media: returns attachment ID, dimensions, alt text by
filename.
wp_update_media: sets alt text confirmed.
BBH schema stored under private key _bbhcuschma_custom_schema;
exposed as bbh_custom_schema REST field.
KNOWN GAPS (confirmed 2 July 2026)
No working wp_delete_post MCP tool exists, despite being
referenced in wp_update_post’s own error message when
attempting status: trash. This MCP-level gap is unchanged, but
it is closed at the site level: the Post Delete component of
FastAI Content Workflow (Section 26) provides a dedicated REST
endpoint for trashing or permanently deleting posts and pages
by ID, separate from MCP.
No media-delete MCP tool exists either. This gap is also closed
at the site level as of 7 September 2026: the same Post Delete
component handles media attachments too, requiring force=true
(media has no recoverable trash on this site, MEDIA_TRASH is
off) and a type parameter matching the object’s actual type as
a safety check. See Section 26 for the full endpoint contract.
No user-creation tool exists. New author accounts must still be
created manually by John in wp-admin. This gap remains open.
Do not spend time searching for MCP tools covering deletion or
user creation. The delete gap is closed via the REST endpoint
above; the user-creation gap is confirmed, not a search
failure.
WORDPRESS ABILITIES THROUGH PBN CONNECT
Easy MCP AI 2.1.1 turns each WordPress ability registered on the
site into a PBN Connect tool named wp_ability_, but only
when (1) the ability is ticked under Easy MCP AI > Tools >
Abilities tab, and (2) the connection’s grant includes that
ability group. A chat started before a reconnect keeps its old
tool list; start a new chat.
CONNECTION (10 October 2026): grant id 2 (client c821f48f…,
full access) is the only way Claude connects. There are no API
tokens. Edit scope can only narrow a grant; widening it needs
John to approve the connection again.
RECONNECTING depends on two plugins staying in place:
FastAI Home URL Fix (Section 26), because WP_HOME in
wp-config.php reads “hhttps://powerboat.news/” and Easy MCP AI’s
HTTPS check (A8) fails without the fix. PERMANENT, John’s
decision: do not remove it and do not suggest contacting
Blowfish about it.
FastAI Block Bot Search v1.2.0 or later (Section 26), which
exempts the sign-in address from its length limit. Earlier
versions blocked the sign-in with a blank 403.
How the connection was rebuilt on 10 October 2026: History H13.
ABILITIES TAB STATE, 10 October 2026 evening: Pbn 17/17 on (the
four Content Workflow and five Theme File Editor abilities, plus
the eight FastAI Stats abilities), including delete content
(John’s call; suggested he set it and Write theme file to “ask”
in Claude’s PBN Connect settings, not confirmed). Backwpup 6/6
on. Core 0/3 off. Check the tab before relying on this.
First live ability call: wp_ability_pbn_workflow_status, 17:50
UTC 10 October 2026, status ok. NO stats ability call had been
made when this was written: check the Easy MCP AI activity log
for a wp_ability_pbn_stats_ or wp_ability_pbn_second_counter_
call before saying they work.
EASY MCP AI DIAGNOSTICS (run with POST
/wp-json/easy-mcp-ai-admin/v1/diagnostics/run), 10 October 2026:
0 failures, 4 warnings, all harmless while calls succeed.
A3, Authorization header rewrite missing, most likely because
WordPress cannot write .htaccess (not confirmed).
D6, three stale mcp-adapter ability names in Easy MCP AI’s
enabled list. They create no tools and CANNOT be cleared through
its settings (its save logic only changes groups that are
currently registered). Leave it; if BackWPup registers those
abilities again, the group reappears and can be unticked.
E5, no LiteSpeed Do Not Cache exclusion for Easy MCP AI.
Optional fix suggested to John: LiteSpeed Cache > Cache >
Excludes > Do Not Cache URIs, add /wp-json/easy-mcp-ai/ and
/easy-mcp-ai/ (not confirmed done).
G1, PHP max execution time 30 seconds, a server setting. The
largest single write so far (this page, about 194KB, before the
History split) went through fine.
SECOND MCP SERVER: BackWPup bundles the WordPress MCP Adapter
(/wp-json/mcp/mcp-adapter-default-server, serverInfo
“groupone-backwpup-plugin”). It accepts application passwords
and exposes only abilities marked mcp.public: the core read-only
abilities and BackWPup’s own job tools. The PBN abilities are
deliberately NOT marked mcp.public, so it does not expose them.
GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE THROUGH PBN CONNECT (added 16 October
2026)
Easy MCP AI > Tools > External data > Google Search Console
gives six tools: wp_gsc_list_sites, wp_gsc_get_site,
wp_gsc_query_performance, wp_gsc_inspect_url,
wp_gsc_list_sitemaps, wp_gsc_get_sitemap. They authenticate as a
Google service account:
pbn-google-stats@powerboat-news-1758215528488.iam.gserviceaccount.com
That account is a Full user on the URL-prefix property
https://powerboat.news/ (added 16 October 2026). Pass site_url
“https://powerboat.news/” on every call; sc-domain: does not
work, as there is no domain property.
“Connected” on the Easy MCP AI card only means the key is loaded
in WordPress. It says nothing about Google access. If calls fail
with “access denied”, run wp_gsc_list_sites first: an empty list
means the service account has been removed from the property
(Search Console > Settings > Users and permissions). When adding
it, check the saved row shows the iam.gserviceaccount.com
address; on 16 October browser autofill put a Gmail address in
the box instead.
VERIFIED 16 October 2026: list_sites returned the property as
siteFullUser, and inspect_url on post 10914 returned “Submitted
and indexed”.
GOOGLE ANALYTICS 4 THROUGH PBN CONNECT (added 16 October 2026,
VERIFIED 16 October 2026 in a new chat: a report for 15 October
returned 1,502 active users, 1,662 sessions, 1,816 views)
GA4 DAY BOUNDARY: the property reports in GMT, not London time.
While BST is in force a GA day runs 01:00 to 01:00 UK time, so
day-by-day GA figures will not match WP Statistics or FastAI
Stats exactly. Note this whenever comparing daily figures.
Easy MCP AI > Tools > External data > Google Analytics 4, 11
read-only tools, same service account as Search Console above.
GA4 property ID 541550555 (account 397905484), reporting time
zone UK. Google Analytics Data API and Admin API enabled 16
October 2026.
GOOGLE CLOUD PROJECT: powerboat-news-1758215528488 (project
number 398962139111), created September 2025. It sits under a
DIFFERENT Google account from the one that owns Search Console,
AdSense and Analytics ([email protected]). If John cannot find
it, that is why: he must switch Google accounts in the Cloud
console, not create a new project.
KEYS on the service account: one created 20 May 2026 (in the
Search Console card, never delete it) and one created 16 October
2026 for the GA4 card. The first 16 October key (07bbb1d475e7)
was pasted into a chat by mistake; John was asked to delete it
and load a fresh one. John deleted it and loaded a new key into
FastAI Stats v1.3.x on 16 October 2026 (“key sorted”); GA through
PBN Connect still worked on 17 October. The total number of
active keys on the service account has not been re-checked.
GA4 ROLE: changed from Administrator to Viewer by John on 16
October 2026; GA reports through PBN Connect still worked
afterwards (checked 16 and 17 October 2026).
NEW TOOLS NEED A NEW CHAT: a chat already connected to PBN
Connect does not pick up newly enabled tools.
CREDENTIAL RULE: when John sets up any key or JSON credential,
tell him in the same sentence to paste it ONLY into the plugin
field, never into chat. Never say just “copy it”.
READING THE NOT-INDEXED REPORT: the “Crawled, currently not
indexed” example export lags live status (post 10914 was in it
while already indexed), so inspect a URL before acting on it. On
16 October the bucket held 513 URLs, almost all /feed/ URLs and
WP Statistics admin-ajax beacons from before mid-July, plus
theme assets and pagination; only nine were articles, seven of
them two days old. Feeds stopped appearing after FastAI Feed
Noindex went in (18 July) and the beacons after FastAI Robots
Rules (both now SEO Suite, Section 26). Treat that bucket as
noise unless an article older than about two weeks sits in it.
BREADCRUMBS: URL inspection lists the breadcrumb rich result as
“Unnamed item” with verdict PASS. Not a fault. The live
BreadcrumbList (checked on post 10914, 16 October 2026) names all
three levels (Home, category, post title); the label only means
the list itself carries no name property, which BreadcrumbList
does not need. Do not raise it as an issue.
CUSTOM META FIELDS MUST BE REGISTERED FIRST (CRITICAL)
Any custom meta field must be registered with show_in_rest
before it can be written via the REST API or MCP. If it is not
registered, the write FAILS SILENTLY. No error is returned, the
API responds 200, and the field is simply absent. This is
invisible unless specifically checked.
Rule: after writing any custom meta field, read it back and
confirm the value is present before considering the operation
complete. If a value will not stick, the cause is almost always
registration, not the write call.
Applies to: pbn_event_start_date, pbn_event_date,
pbn_featured_caption, pbn_hide_from_front_page,
bbh_custom_schema, and any new field added later.
TWO-STEP PUBLISH WORKFLOW (CRITICAL)
Step 1, wp_create_post
title: Post headline
content: Full HTML wrapped in div class=”pbn-content-wrapper”
status: draft (ALWAYS on initial create, never publish directly
unless John has given the Section 11 publish override)
author: 3
categories: [array of category IDs]
featured_media: attachment ID (integer)
slug: URL-friendly slug
Step 2, wp_update_post_meta (separate call, immediately after)
yoast_focuskw: focus keyphrase (lowercase, no quotes)
yoast_title: SEO title (under 60 chars, no “| Powerboat News”)
yoast_metadesc: meta description (under 160 chars)
bbh_custom_schema: JSON-LD schema string (no script tags)
CRITICAL: wp_update_post silently drops Yoast and schema
fields. ALWAYS use wp_update_post_meta separately. Never pass
these fields through wp_update_post.
wp_create_post IGNORES status “publish”
Confirmed twice on 24 July 2026 (posts 9122 and 9124). Passing
status: “publish” to wp_create_post still returns a DRAFT. A
publish override therefore takes THREE calls, in this order:
1. wp_create_post (returns a draft regardless of the status
passed)
2. wp_update_post_meta to set Yoast and schema, so the fields
are in place at the moment of indexing
3. wp_update_post with status “publish”, AND re-passing
categories and featured_media or they drop
No fourth call for the published date. Since FastAI SEO Suite
1.3.0 (22 October 2026) the plugin takes datePublished and
dateModified from the post itself at output (Section 15), so the
schema written at step 2 is correct whenever the post publishes.
After step 3, check /wp-json/fastai-bbh-schema/v1/status?id=ID.
(The old fourth-call rule was confirmed on post 10257, Sea Fend,
13 September 2026, History H14, and is now retired.)
ADDITIONAL WORKFLOW RULES
Always search for existing drafts before creating a new post.
Always fetch the live version via wp_get_post before editing
any post.
NEVER revert a published post to draft. Google indexes
immediately and reverting causes indexing damage. Pass status
“draft” on initial create only.
Always deliver the preview link https://powerboat.news/?p=ID
after every create or update operation.
Categories must be passed on every update or they drop.
pbn_featured_caption overrides the featured image caption
per-post (use for translations so the English original is
unaffected). Set via wp_update_post_meta.
MULTILINGUAL DISCLAIMER RULES
First element inside pbn-content-wrapper for translated
articles, wrapped in
.
VERIFIED AGAINST LIVE PUBLISHED POSTS, 24 July 2026. Earlier
versions of this list had their diacritics stripped by the
preferences document’s own encoding. These are the correct
strings:
Swedish (Svenska, 160)
Denna artikel \u00e4r \u00f6versatt av AI.
French (Francais, 179)
Cet article a \u00e9t\u00e9 traduit par IA.
Italian (Italiano, 180)
Questo articolo \u00e8 stato tradotto dall’IA.
Finnish (Suomi, 161)
T\u00e4m\u00e4 artikkeli on k\u00e4\u00e4nnetty teko\u00e4lyll\u00e4.
Lithuanian (Lietuva, 162)
\u0160is straipsnis i\u0161verstas dirbtiniu intelektu.
Norwegian (Norsk, 173)
Denne artikkelen er oversatt av AI.
Polish (Polski, 182)
Ten artyku\u0142 zosta\u0142 przet\u0142umaczony przez AI.
Czech (Cesky, 183)
Tento \u010dl\u00e1nek byl p\u0159elo\u017een pomoc\u00ed AI.
Chinese (Zhongwen, 202), added 3 October 2026, first used on
post 10503
\u672c\u6587\u7531\u4eba\u5de5\u667a\u80fd\u7ffb\u8bd1\u3002
RULE: if this file is ever re-saved in a non-UTF-8 encoding the
diacritics above will be destroyed silently. Before reusing any
disclaimer line, pull the exact string from a live published
post in that language category and compare. After publishing
any translation, verify on the live page that the diacritics
rendered and that there is no mojibake. Swedish confirmed
against posts 8006, 6559, 4515, 4306 and 4305.
No social promotion for translated articles. Staggered
publishing required for batches (Google RSS indexing).
COMING UP POSTS (category ID 174)
pbn_event_start_date: displayed on card; section orders by this
ascending.
pbn_event_date: end date, controls expiry.
Both fields set via wp_update_post_meta. Both required on every
Coming Up post. Both subject to the registration rule above.
CHAMPIONSHIP LEADERS WIDGET
Pulls from page slug “2026-championship-leaders” via REST.
Updated after race rounds only (not qualifying).
No effective cache: CACHE_TTL is 0 in pbn-main.js (checked 3
October 2026), so it fetches on every page load. The earlier
“30-min sessionStorage cache” note was out of date.
Still rendered by JavaScript only: functions.php outputs a
hidden, empty #pbn-champ-section and pbn-main.js fills and
unhides it, so crawlers see no standings on the homepage.
Server-rendering it was assessed on 3 October 2026 as optional,
since the data is crawlable on the leaders page itself, and
was not done.
Columns: Championship | Leader | Team | Points | Gap | Rounds |
Pip pattern | P2 | P2pts | P3 | P3pts
**********
SECTION 25. IMAGE EDITING
This section applies ONLY to images Claude sources or
composites itself, or prepares because John has asked (Section
22, On the Road). It does NOT otherwise apply to photographs
supplied by John or a contributor, which must never be altered
(Section 22).
CROPPING
Remove foreground bystanders who break composition or distract
from the primary subject.
Retain paddock equipment (cranes, loaders, rigs add race-day
context).
Focus on primary subject: driver, race number, class or series
logo where visible.
Tight framing preferred over wide contextual shots.
Portrait: crop to head and upper torso, include boat where
relevant.
Landscape: subject occupies at least 60% of frame.
COLOUR AND TONE
Vibrant and punchy, never mute or desaturate.
Saturation +10-15%, contrast +10-15%, sharpness +15-20%.
Preserve natural highlights, do not blow out skies or water.
Warm white balance preferred for outdoor race shots (+3% red,
-3% blue).
Bright sunshine shots need minimal adjustment, trust the
natural light.
OUTPUT
Width: 1200px, height proportional. Format: WebP, quality 88.
Filename: descriptive-slug.webp (lowercase, hyphens, no
spaces).
Add metadata: Title and Description.
**********
SECTION 26. ACTIVE PLUGIN REGISTRY
(moved to its own page 17 October 2026)
The full registry now lives on the For Claude Plugin Registry
page: read it with wp_get_page(11047), not the rendered front
end. It holds every FastAI/PBN and third-party plugin entry
(versions, folders, REST routes, abilities, settings screens and
how each was verified), the deleted plugins, the consolidation
status and the full plugin delivery rules. Check it before
building, patching or relying on any plugin, and update plugin
entries there, not here. Moved because this page passed the
204,800-byte limit for in-place edits; keep this page under it.
OWNERSHIP: John and Claude build, patch, and maintain all
FastAI/PBN plugins directly. Blowfish Technology’s role is
server and hosting infrastructure only (Section 28). Plugin
bugs, updates, and new builds are not their responsibility and
should not be routed to them.
PLUGIN DELIVERY RULES, SUMMARY (full rules on page 11047)
Build from the live zip (Plugins list > Download link), never
from memory. Zip folder name must match the installed folder.
Author FastAI, Plugin URI powerboat.news. Anything that writes
code, theme files or site settings needs manage_options. Before
delivery: php -l on every PHP file, pure ASCII, no em dashes, no
closing ?> tag, hooks diffed against the previous version. John
installs via Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin > Replace current
with uploaded.
**********
SECTION 27. SERIES REFERENCE DATA
F1H2O
Images: Rights-free, no credit required. Emanuela Rota is the
H2O Racing press contact.
Engine specs (2026)
Mercury Racing 2-stroke: 2.5L EFI, ~400hp, 10,500rpm,
homologation to 31 December 2026.
Mercury Racing 360 APX: 4-stroke V8, 4.6L, 360+hp.
Both run 100LL Avgas. NOT turbocharged.
Boat specifications
Boat + driver combined weight: 550kg.
0-100km/h in under 2 seconds.
Top speed: 250+km/h.
Single-pilot closed cockpit safety cell.
US OFFSHORE STRUCTURE (do not conflate these three)
RWO (Race World Offshore, category 36): holds UIM world
championship recognition under a ten-year licensing deal signed
March 2026, and is APBA-sanctioned. APBA has been UIM’s
recognised US national authority since 1903.
IHRA (categories 134, 177, 178): a separate national
championship with significant prize money. NO UIM affiliation.
Never describe an IHRA title as a world championship or imply
UIM sanction.
OPA (category 191): an independent northeast calendar. Not UIM,
not APBA-sanctioned in the RWO sense. Confirmed 2026 rounds:
St. Clair River Classic, Michigan (24-26 July) and Lake
Hopatcong Grand Prix, New Jersey (18-20 September).
Getting this wrong is the single easiest factual error to make
in US offshore copy. Check the sanctioning body before writing
“world championship” about any US offshore result.
————————————————————
KEY WEST 2026 TITLE STRUCTURE, ADDED 18 OCTOBER 2026
————————————————————
Reference for Key West coverage in November 2026. Source: Speed
on the Water, “Decoding Title Stakes In Key West”, Matt Trulio,
18 October 2026, which credits Rodrick Cox (Race World Offshore)
and Ryan Beckley (APBA Offshore Racing Commission chairman) for
the explanation:
One secondary source. Check RWO and APBA official documents
(entry rules, class lists) before relying on this in copy
(Section 6.1).
EVENT: Race World Offshore Key West World Championships, Key
West, Florida, Monday 2 to Sunday 8 November 2026. Three days of
racing.
WHO DOES WHAT
RWO is the event producer (permits, logistics, infrastructure).
UIM is the international sanctioning body and APBA the domestic
one (rules, safety standards and their enforcement). IHRA ran
four races in 2026 as both producer and sanctioning body, but
awarded no titles after its shutdown.
THREE SEPARATE TITLE STRUCTURES AT KEY WEST
1. UIM WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS. Only four of the 14 US classes:
Class 1, Class 2 (formerly Factory Stock), Super Cat and
Super Stock. Ends after the races on Friday 6 November;
winning and podium teams honoured that evening.
2. APBA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS. The other 10 classes only. The four
UIM classes earn no APBA World Championship points. Runs to
Sunday 8 November.
3. UIM NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENTAL CHAMPIONSHIPS. Described as a
UIM version of a national championship. Runs to Sunday 8
November. Open to teams that have run APBA/UIM events in the
past 12 months. The article confirms Class 2 contests it but
does not list the other classes.
NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH the APBA Offshore National Championship
Series, which finished at Englewood Beach Waterfest (Columbus
Day weekend, October 2026).
ELIGIBILITY
Any team can enter Key West, race and take home trophies.
Championship points in any class need the prior APBA/UIM entry
requirement (APBA/UIM events in the past 12 months). Prior-year
UIM/APBA world champions get automatic entry under APBA rules.
WORKED EXAMPLE, VINNIE DIORIO
Rollin Transport (Super Cat): owner/throttleman Vinnie Diorio,
driver Sean Connor (the article also spells it Conner; check
before use). Has not raced Super Cat in 2026, so can race and
win trophies at Key West but earns no Super Cat points or
titles.
The same owner’s 151 Express team won the 2025 APBA/UIM Factory
Stock World Championship, and Diorio and Connor ran 151 Express
in Class 2 at Englewood Beach in October 2026. As prior-year
champions, 151 Express is eligible for Class 2 UIM/APBA points
and titles at Key West.
2025 KEY WEST WAS DIFFERENT: RWO ran the 2025 Key West Worlds
under the now-defunct World Powerboat Racing Association (WPRA),
not APBA/UIM. A 2025 Key West world title is therefore not the
same thing as a 2025 APBA/UIM world title. Name the sanctioning
body whenever citing a 2025 or 2026 title.
IHRA F1 Powerboat Series, 2026 Calendar (updated 2 July 2026)
R1 Bradenton, FL (20-21 Feb)
R2 Port Neches, TX (1-3 May)
R3 Shreveport-Bossier, LA (22-24 May)
R4 Marble Falls, TX (5-7 Jun)
R5 Alton, IL (17-19 Jul), CONFIRMED SOLE REMAINING ROUND
IHRA confirmed 30 June 2026 that it had cut the remaining 2026
schedule to one event each across Offshore, F1, and Outlaw Drag
Boat Racing, citing budget issues that emerged earlier in the
season. Windsor CO (Roar of the Rockies), Sheboygan WI, and
Miami FL are cancelled for F1. IHRA Offshore is reduced to
Sheboygan only.
Always verify against the live calendar page (Section 20)
before citing round numbers or dates. This is the second time
IHRA’s schedule has changed mid-season.
IHRA F1 CONTEXT (updated 2 July 2026)
Tim Seebold has kept the F1 series alive for years through
personal dedication. 2026 opened with institutional backing
from the IHRA acquisition, but the season has since been cut to
a single remaining round following budget issues IHRA confirmed
on the record. When covering IHRA F1 or its drivers, do not
default to the earlier framing of 2026 as a straightforward
turning point; current coverage should reflect the season’s
actual trajectory. Every driver regardless of finishing
position still deserves respectful, serious coverage.
Talent Cup calendar: R1 Port Neches, R2 Shreveport confirmed as
of last verification (May 2026). This needs reverification
before further use. Do not add additional round columns or
assume the calendar has stayed static, given IHRA’s wider
schedule cuts since. Known from other reporting: Eddie Love
(son of Spencer Love) currently leads Talent Cup points,
confirmed via Tim Seebold interview 2 July 2026, but the full
Talent Cup calendar itself is unverified.
Table styling: all IHRA F1 and Offshore articles use ihra-theme
on pbn-content-wrapper and ihra-standings on
scroll-table-wrapper. See Section 13 for the full HTML pattern.
Key driver profile planned: Jared Jensen, second-generation
racer, whole family races, works at Island Lake Marine & Sports
in Windsor CO, self-deprecating personality. DO NOT PURSUE
UNTIL REWORKED: this profile was built around Round 8 (Roar of
the Rockies, Windsor CO, his home town) as a season-finale
homecoming angle. That round no longer exists following the
schedule cuts above. Needs a new angle before John contacts
him.
**********
SECTION 28. KEY CONTACTS AND PRESS
PBN EDITORIAL
Chris Davies, PBN photographer and writer.
[email protected]. His interview text must never be edited
or paraphrased when used in PBN articles, use verbatim with
attribution.
Claude Sammut, KCS Photography, Malta (with Kurt Ciappara).
Marine and superyacht photography, UIM Offshore photography
competition winners 2022 and 2023. Byline contributor
arrangement started July 2026: own byline, own voice, not
ghostwritten. Recurring pieces on superyachts visiting Valletta
and Grand Harbour. Needs a disambiguated WP author slug (e.g.
claude-sammut-kcs) as an unrelated UNSW robotics professor
shares the exact name. Author account must be created manually
by John (no user-creation tool in PBN Connect, Section 24).
INDUSTRY
Francesca Holt, Sunseeker Communications Manager.
Paulo Ferreira, FPM president (met Lisbon, April 2026).
CHAMPIONSHIP PRESS
Emanuela Rota, H2O Racing press contact (F1H2O). Warm
relationship with John.
Maxime Lagarde, UIM PR contact. Recipient of John’s direct
communication on the Class 3D coverage blackout (Section 5).
TECHNICAL / HOSTING
Matt Palfreyman (and Graham Palfreyman), Blowfish Technology,
Ormskirk (blowfishtechnology.co.uk). PBN hosting provider and
ongoing technical advisor. Server backend access ONLY, not
plugin development (see Section 26).
**********
SECTION 29. PBN DIGITAL EDITION, DISCONTINUED
The monthly digital magazine (Edition #1, 13 May 2026) was
discontinued 10 July 2026. FastAI Flipbook plugin deleted;
Digital Edition icon removed from header.php the same day.
Pages 6628 (hub) and 6634 (archive) still published with dead
viewers as of 10 July, trash via wp-admin (no MCP page-delete
route exists); draft 6636 harmless. Do not pitch a revival or
reference the Digital Edition in articles or navigation.
**********
SECTION 30. GOOGLE DISCOVER
Established 23 July 2026 from PBN’s own Search Console Discover
export (21 April to 20 July 2026) and the country-by-post stats
endpoint, extended 24 July 2026. Everything in this section is
measured from PBN data or quoted from Google’s own
documentation. Nothing here comes from third-party SEO
commentary.
————————————————————
30A. WHAT DISCOVER ACTUALLY IS FOR PBN
————————————————————
Discover is not a channel that lifts the site generally. It is
heavily concentrated and highly volatile.
In the three months to 20 July 2026:
78 URLs received any Discover impressions at all, out of
roughly 813 published posts.
Total impressions 600,812.
One article (AX300) took 424,901 of them, 70.7%.
Top 4 articles: 90.5% of all impressions.
Top 10 articles: 97.8%.
Ranks 11 to 78 combined: 2.2%.
Impressions per day by month: April 6,236 | May 194 | June
15,539 | July (20 days) 3,975.
May was almost dead for a full month and recovered with no
intervention. June was one article. Treat Discover as
occasional very large wins on top of Search and Facebook, never
as a baseline to be defended.
————————————————————
30B. THE ROUTING MECHANISM
————————————————————
Discover delivers a story to the market its entities belong to,
in the language of the body text.
VERIFIED CASES
French Normandie preview (6058) FR 97.8%
Caudwell AX300 (8197) US 65.1, CA 9.2, NZ 6.0,
AU 5.4, ZA 5.2, GB 3.4
OXE Marine Q2 (9122) US 59.1, CA 11.7, GB 10.4,
SE 2.6, NO 1.9, ZA 1.9
Mercury V12 concept (3824) US 62.8, plus CA, AU, DE,
FI, GB, FR
CHANNEL SPLIT ADDED 11 September 2026, AX300 (8197). Full
all-time referrer breakdown: android-app (Discover) 12,960
visitors, 48.4% of the article’s 26,794 all-time views; Google
10,171, 38.0%. This is the first case with a confirmed channel
breakdown showing an insight-type extraction piece (6.1)
pulling substantial numbers from Discover AND Search
simultaneously, not one or the other, which sits alongside
rather than replaces the UTILITY/INSIGHT split in 20.1. Worth
watching whether this is typical of the category or specific
to AX300; do not generalise from one case (30D).
NOT ROUTING EVIDENCE: West Marine 59 closures (8083). Its 96.3%
US split counts all channels, and its traffic was overwhelmingly
organic Search (withdrawn 24 July 2026, History H25). The routing
conclusion stands on the AX300 and OXE Marine cases.
————————————————————
30C. THE CEILING RULE
————————————————————
The single most important editorial consequence: the Discover
ceiling is set when the SUBJECT is chosen, before a word is
written. Say so at the point of choosing, not afterwards.
A globally distributed brand written in English clears every
English-speaking market simultaneously. A national brand or a
single-country event is capped at one country and cannot exceed
it however well the piece is written.
When choosing between two equally strong story ideas, the one
with the larger addressable market wins.
THE CAP IS THE ADDRESSABLE MARKET, NOT THE HOME MARKET
(clarified 24 July 2026). West Marine reached only the US
because a US high-street retailer’s addressable market IS the
US; home and addressable market were the same thing. The two
came apart on OXE Marine, a Swedish company reporting Swedish
kronor to a Stockholm exchange, and Discover followed the
addressable market: 81% of readers were American, Canadian or
British, with Sweden fourth on 2.6%. Discover routes on the
product’s distribution and the language of the body text, not
on the company’s nationality.
That prediction was registered before publication, which is why
it counts as a test rather than a post-hoc explanation. Do this
routinely: state the expected outcome before publishing.
————————————————————
30D. WHAT WE CAN AND CANNOT CONTROL
————————————————————
CAN control: the ceiling, via subject selection.
CANNOT control: whether a given piece is picked up at all.
Nothing in the data distinguishes the AX300 from dozens of
comparable industry pieces that received a few hundred
impressions. Same author, same format, same site authority,
same image standard. Do not construct after-the-fact
explanations for why one piece hit. That is survivorship bias
and it produces confident nonsense.
Write every piece to the same standard, choose subjects with
the largest honest addressable market, and accept that the hits
are occasional.
————————————————————
30E. SUBJECT CATEGORIES, RANKED BY EVIDENCE
————————————————————
OUTBOARDS AND PROPULSION. Strongest recurring signal in the
export. Four of the top ten Discover articles are outboard or
engine stories. New engines, technical specifications,
manufacturer launches. Category 193. This outranks both the
preview format and industry news generally.
EVENT PREVIEWS in the native language of the host market.
“Everything you need to know” format, free entry stated where
applicable.
CORPORATE AND INDUSTRY NEWS. Bankruptcies, closures,
acquisitions, leadership change, product launches built from a
buried technical or structural detail rather than a press
summary (6.1). Capped at the ADDRESSABLE market, per 30C.
CONFIRMED as a Discover category as of 13 September 2026 (30K
item 6): three independent cases (AX300, Parsun, Sea Fend) show
the same dual-channel shape, Discover and Search pulling
roughly even traffic on the same story rather than one
dominating. West Marine remains withdrawn as evidence (30B),
it was a search/citation story, not a Discover one.
RACE RESULTS AND POST-RACE. Not excluded from Discover,
contrary to earlier assumption. Lake of the Ozarks Shootout
results took 12,048 impressions (6th) and Poole Bay 100
post-race quotes 4,261 (8th). Section 20’s 4.6% figure is a
share of total site traffic, which is a different measure from
feed eligibility. A large event at a recognisable venue can
travel.
————————————————————
30F. LANGUAGE AND TRANSLATION
————————————————————
Native-language versions outperform their English counterparts
on the same story. The Terengganu F3000 piece ran in both:
Bahasa Malaysia 9,388 impressions, English 3,176. Roughly three
to one.
Native language also converts better per impression. CTR by
country: France 7.49%, United States 6.55%. By article:
Normandie FR preview 7.53%, AX300 5.51%.
English still reaches more markets in absolute terms, so reach
beats conversion on raw numbers. Both are worth doing. The
Section 22B translation filter still applies: only translate
where the event already has a pulse in that market.
————————————————————
30G. DECLARED LANGUAGE METADATA IS IRRELEVANT
————————————————————
Google’s “Localized versions of your pages” documentation
states it does not use hreflang or the HTML lang attribute to
detect a page’s language, and uses its own algorithms on the
visible text instead. John Mueller has said on record that the
lang attribute is not used at all because it is almost always
wrong.
PBN’s translated posts all serve html lang=”en-GB” and
og:locale en_GB, with no hreflang anywhere on the site. The
French Normandie preview still reached 97.8% French readers.
DO NOT build machinery to inject hreflang or per-post lang
attributes for SEO or Discover reasons. It buys nothing.
hreflang is additionally inapplicable because it exists to link
equivalent variants of the same page, and PBN translations are
separately written pieces of different lengths and angles,
often with no English counterpart.
One genuine reason to fix lang eventually: screen readers use
it to choose pronunciation, so an Italian article currently
announces itself in a British English voice. That is an
accessibility fault, not a traffic issue. September 2026
deferred list (Section 26).
Related: the Section 15 rule setting inLanguage to en-GB should
not be applied to translated posts. Set inLanguage to the
article’s actual language.
————————————————————
30H. DO NOT
————————————————————
Do not add geographic or market tags to headlines to chase a
market (“US”, “Global”, “Europe”). It is keyword stuffing, it
conflicts with the Section 22B-1 named entity rule, and the
site’s best article carries no geographic marker at all.
Do not diagnose a Discover decline from monthly totals.
Do not treat a fall in Discover traffic as a problem until the
per-URL test in 30I has been run.
Do not reverse-engineer a formula from a single hit.
Do not cite an all-channel statistic as evidence about a single
channel. Use post-views and read the referrer list instead
(Section 20).
————————————————————
30I. DIAGNOSING A DECLINE
————————————————————
A month-on-month fall almost always means a large article has
decayed out of the feed, not that anything is wrong.
Normal decay: impressions drop on specific older URLs while
newly published articles continue to produce their own spikes.
July 2026 showed near-zero days punctuated by 30,307 on the
9th, 17,924 on the 17th and 11,907 on the 18th. That is the
machine working.
Site-wide eligibility loss: Discover impressions flatline
uniformly across all URLs at once, while Search impressions
stay healthy. Check the Manual Actions tab, which should be
empty.
Run the check in Search Console under Performance, Discover,
filtered by date and compared period on period, before raising
any concern.
————————————————————
30J. TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS, ALREADY IN PLACE
————————————————————
max-image-preview:large is live sitewide, verified 23 July
2026 on both homepage and article pages.
Featured images 1200px wide minimum (Section 22: 1200×600 is a
guideline, not a hard rule).
Post schema outputs correctly since 22 July 2026.
No further technical work is required for Discover eligibility.
Verify these on the live page rather than assuming, per Section
6.2.
————————————————————
30K. OPEN ITEMS, DO NOT WRITE UP AS CONCLUSIONS YET
————————————————————
1. SWEDISH TRANSLATION TEST. Post 9124, published 17:06 on
24 July 2026, same story, same image, same day as the
English 9122 (published 15:32). Registered predictions:
(a) heavy Sweden routing means Discover reads body text;
(b) near-zero pickup means the 22B translation filter was
right and there is no Swedish appetite for the subject;
(c) high impressions with poor CTR means it was served and
ignored because the domestic financial press covered it
first.
Note: the page declares lang=”en-GB” and og:locale en_GB
while every visible word is Swedish. Outcome (a) would be
direct proof of 30G rather than inference from Google’s
documentation, and would settle whether the parked lang
attribute fix has any SEO value at all. It is an
accessibility fix either way.
2. PICKUP VERSUS CLICK-THROUGH. Untested whether an extracted
hook (Section 6.1) causes Discover to SERVE a piece, or
merely converts better once served. Impressions measure
pickup, CTR measures headline strength. Benchmarks: AX300
5.51%, Normandie FR 7.53%. Check Search Console on 9122 in
a few days.
3. FIRST-HOUR SIGNAL. Worth testing against the Discover
export whether first-day impressions predict final totals
per URL. “Discover picked it up at all” is not predictive
(68 of 78 URLs shared 2.2% of impressions). “Picked it up
hard, fast” might be.
4. Do not convert items 1 to 4 into rules off one article
each. 30D and 30H still apply.
5 and 6. SETTLED: Parsun (post 10180, 11 September 2026; all-time
Discover 51.7%, Google 41.7%) and Sea Fend (post 10257, 13
September 2026; Discover 49.1%, Google 44.5% at hour 6) joined
AX300 (48.4/38.0) as the three cases that confirm the
dual-channel pattern in 30E. Parsun was picked up by Discover
within about 10 minutes of publishing.
OPEN, ONE CASE ONLY, DO NOT GENERALISE: Sea Fend did not decay
the way 30A describes; hourly gains held flat around 435 to 440
for six hours. Track the next candidate hour by hour to see if
it repeats. Full logs: History H26.
7. DUCATI PIRELLI 44 (post 10264), published 13 September 2026,
21:50 BST. Fourth Boating Industry/product-launch piece.
Snapshot taken 14 September 2026, hours after publish, NOT
settled (views_today still climbing: 62 of 299 all-time
arrived today). All-time referrers at snapshot: Google 156,
52.2%; android-app/Discover 86, 28.8%; Direct 18, 6.0%;
Facebook 16, 5.4%. Unlike AX300, Parsun and Sea Fend, this is
NOT the roughly-even dual-channel split those three showed,
Google leads by a wide margin here. Revisit once growth
plateaus before drawing any conclusion; noted now so the
eventual settled figure has a same-day snapshot to compare
against.
8. APACHE 555 REPAIR (post 10251), published 13 September 2026,
11:22 BST. Different shape again: a UKOPRA race-team piece
(category 22), not corporate/industry extraction, tied to an
existing story (the June Poole Bay 100 debris strike) with an
embedded YouTube video from a named contributor (Dan Lee).
Snapshot taken 14 September 2026, NOT settled (149 of 469
views arrived today). All-time referrers at snapshot:
android-app/Discover 181, 38.6%; Facebook 152, 32.4%; Google
78, 16.6%; Direct 31, 6.6%. Facebook’s share here is far
higher than on any corporate/industry case tracked so far,
plausibly because this is a follow-up to an existing story
with its own established Facebook audience, rather than a
cold product reveal. THREE-WAY split (Discover/Facebook/
Google), not the two-way Discover/Google pattern in 30E’s
corporate/industry category. Do not fold this into that
category. One case only, do not generalise (30D).
TAKEN TOGETHER, 13 to 14 September 2026: of the last four
published articles, three (Ducati, Sea Fend, Apache 555) drew
meaningful Discover traffic and one (Lake Havasu boat crash,
post 10267, General News) drew effectively none, 1 visitor
out of 2,801 all-time views, the rest from Google Search and
Facebook instead. General News personal-tragedy content is
not a category Section 30E has evidence for either way; this
is one data point, not a rule. The document’s own position
(30D) still holds: nothing here explains why comparable
pieces split the way they do. Resist building a formula from
four articles.
————————————————————
30L. COMPETITIVE CROWDING: AUTHORITY, NOT VOLUME
Added 14 September 2026.
————————————————————
A story attracting many other outlets does not by itself predict
Discover suppression. What predicts it, on the evidence so far,
is whether any of those outlets carries more authority than PBN
in the SPECIFIC niche the story sits in.
THREE CASES
Lake Havasu boat crash (post 10267, 14 September 2026): at least
nine other outlets ran it within a day, including FOX 10 Phoenix,
KTNV and KLAS/8NewsNow, three local Arizona TV newsrooms with
direct authority on a local Arizona incident. Discover: 1 visitor
out of 2,801 all-time views.
West Marine 59-store closures (post 8083, withdrawn as Discover
evidence in 30B, still valid evidence here): heavy mainstream
pickup (MLive, The Sun, Patch, Myrtle Beach Online, MSN, CE
Outlook). Discover: 30 visitors out of 8,996, roughly three in a
thousand.
Ducati Pirelli 44 (post 10264, 13 September 2026, snapshot logged
in 30K item 7): at least nine other outlets ran it too, including
Ducati’s own press release, autoevolution, visordown, rideapart,
boatnews.com, luxurylaunches and two newswire syndications.
Discover: 86 visitors, 28.8% of traffic at snapshot, the lowest
share among the four articles logged in 30K items 6 to 8, but
still meaningfully present, unlike the two cases above.
WHAT DIFFERS. Lake Havasu’s and West Marine’s competitors carry
more authority than PBN specifically for that story: local news
for a local Arizona event, national retail and jobs-press outlets
for a US retail closure. Ducati’s competitors are general
automotive and motorcycle press. None of them has more marine or
powerboat authority than PBN in that niche, even though there are
more of them by raw count.
WORKING HYPOTHESIS, THREE CASES ONLY, TREAT AS PROVISIONAL (30D
still applies): raw competitor count does not predict Discover
suppression. Whether a HIGHER-AUTHORITY competitor in PBN’s
specific niche already owns the story does. Needs more cases
before this becomes a rule, particularly a case where PBN faces
heavy competition from other marine or powerboat-specific
outlets, which none of the three cases above tests.
[email protected] is the Gmail inbox connected to Claude for
Powerboat News automation. Primary use is Google Alerts news
monitoring and other automated tasks. John also emails it
directly to test Claude’s connectivity.
Claude can both send and receive email via this account (Gmail
connector).
If Claude checks the inbox and finds anything other than a
Google Alert, forward it to [email protected] rather than
acting on it directly.
KNOWN GAP: Gmail attachment download
The Gmail connector’s get_message/get_thread tools return
attachment metadata (filename, MIME type, attachment ID) but
not the file bytes. There is no attachment-download tool
exposed. Claude cannot pull an email attachment out and save
or upload it directly.
Workaround: John downloads the attachment and uploads it in
chat (Image Upload plugin workflow, Section 22), or uploads it
to Drive/a public URL first, and Claude pulls it from there via
wp_upload_media_from_url.
Do not repeatedly search for a download tool, the gap is
confirmed, not a search failure.
SECTION 31 ADDITION
(added 4 September 2026)
Contributor photo drop-off notifications also arrive here.
See Section 22G for the full workflow: contributors email a
heads-up only, never the photo itself as an attachment, and
retrieval from Drive uses list_recent_files, not search_files.
SECTION 31 ADDITION
(added 12 October 2026)
SIGN-OFF: when Claude sends an email on John’s behalf (to a
contributor, contact or anyone else), always sign off with
Claude’s own name, never John’s. The email may speak for PBN
and pass on John’s requests, but the signature is Claude.
**********
SECTION 32. CASE STUDY: SENSITIVE BREAKING-NEWS STORY WORKFLOW
(CHIP ROMER / LAKE HAVASU CRASH)
Added 14 September 2026, published as post 10267.
Template for the next sensitive breaking-news story (a death, a
contested story, or one many outlets already carry). The full
worked case, Chip Romer / Lake Havasu, post 10267, is in History
H27.
ROUTING: chat-review-first (Section 11). WordPress only after
John says “publish it”.
INCIDENT FACTS: the authority’s own statement is the only source
for the incident itself; no outlet, contact or AI tool adds to
it.
IDENTITY AND BIOGRAPHY: lead, then verify. AI research (Grok,
Gemini, AI Overviews) and social media posts are leads only.
Identity is confirmed only by an independent primary source, and
each further biographical layer is checked against its own
primary or trade source before it goes in.
UNCORROBORATED CLAIMS are left out, not softened.
PUBLISH LEAN, EXTEND AS FACTS CLEAR: each addition is its own
wp_update_post, followed by wp_update_post_meta to advance
dateModified in the schema.
IMAGES: confirm the credit line with John before captioning,
even when it looks certain. Supplied portraits go in unaltered.
SOURCES: flag AI-generated aggregator sites to John rather than
using them.
WHY IT MATTERS: on that story the extra reporting, not speed,
won the search result over FOX 10 Phoenix. Its Discover and
crowding data are in Section 30K item 8 and Section 30L.
**********
SECTION 33. ADSENSE/TRAFFIC SPIKE DIAGNOSIS AND GOOGLE NEWS
Added 15 September 2026, from a full walkthrough of the AdSense
export (6 April to 15 September) cross-checked against Search
Console’s Search, Discover, Discover-with-AI-summaries and
Google News exports (14 June to 13 September).
————————————————————
33A. FINDING WHAT DROVE AN ADSENSE SPIKE
————————————————————
Method that worked: pull wp_list_posts for a 2-3 day window
around the spike date, then confirm against Search Console’s
per-day Chart tab (Discover/Search/Google News) for the same
dates. The Chart tab is per-day; the Pages tab is a total across
the whole export range and only shows which page carries volume
somewhere in that range, not which day.
TIMEZONE TRAP. AdSense report dates run on the account’s report
timezone (commonly Pacific, roughly 7-8 hours behind the UK). A
story published in the early hours UK time can appear on the
PREVIOUS calendar day in the AdSense export. Seen 14 September
2026: the Chip Romer story (post 10267) published 04:36 UK time
and its traffic split across the AdSense “13 September” and “14
September” rows, initially read as two separate spikes before
the timezone offset was identified as the likely explanation.
DO NOT GUESS A CAUSE FROM STORY THEME. Guessed the 15 June
AdSense spike (£96.21, 17,344 page views) was the Groupe
Beneteau industry story, matching the general pattern that
non-racing content travels further (30E). Wrong: Search
Console’s Discover Pages data showed the AX300 piece (30A, 30B)
took 461 of 861 Google News clicks and was also the single
largest Discover page across the whole period, 23,405 clicks,
while Beneteau barely registered (139 impressions, Discover-
with-AI-summaries only). Always check Pages/Chart data before
naming a cause, even when a theme-based guess feels consistent
with existing evidence elsewhere in this document.
————————————————————
33B. GOOGLE NEWS BEHAVES LIKE DISCOVER FOR PBN
————————————————————
Google News performance (14 June to 13 September 2026 export):
monthly clicks 660 (Jun), 137 (Jul), 51 (Aug), 13 (Sep, partial
to the 13th). Impressions fell in near lockstep (11,268 to 502),
so CTR held steady around 5-6% throughout, ruling out an
engagement problem.
First read of this was “eligibility loss, needs investigating.”
Wrong, or at least premature. Checked Manual Actions (clean),
news-sitemap.xml (processed successfully, current) and a live
Google search for three same-day articles, all indexed and
appearing in Top Stories/News tab within 9-10 hours of publish.
Pipeline is healthy.
The real explanation matches 30A’s finding for Discover almost
exactly: Google News clicks are heavily concentrated in one or
two stories a month. The AX300 piece (461 clicks) plus the West
Marine 59-store piece (79 clicks, published 10 June) account for
540 of June’s 660 clicks, 82% of the month. Remove them and
June’s “ordinary” News performance (roughly 120 clicks) is not
far off July’s 137 or August’s 51. A month-on-month drop in
Google News totals is not itself evidence of a problem, same
principle as 30I, now confirmed for News as well as Discover.
Apply 30I’s existing diagnostic order here too: Manual Actions,
then news-sitemap.xml status (Discovered pages around 7 is
normal, the spec only expects a rolling ~2-day window, not the
full archive), then a live Google search for a recent article,
then Google Publisher Center approval status specifically. The
last of these is separate from Search Console, will not show as
a Manual Action if it lapses, and has not yet been checked
against a real case.
————————————————————
33C. DO NOT
————————————————————
Do not treat a Google News or AdSense monthly decline as a
technical problem before running 30I’s Manual Actions/sitemap/
live-search check. Same discipline as Discover, now confirmed on
direct evidence rather than assumed to carry over.
Do not read Search Console’s Pages tab as day-specific. It is a
range total; use the Chart tab for anything date-sensitive.
**********
SECTION 34. BOT TRAFFIC AND AI ASSISTANTS
Added 15 October 2026. How this was worked out, with the test
and verification record: History H31.
————————————————————
34A. HOW TRAFFIC REACHES THE SERVER
————————————————————
CLOUDFLARE IS IN FRONT OF POWERBOAT.NEWS. REMOTE_ADDR on every
request is a Cloudflare server, not the visitor. The visitor’s
real IP is in the CF-Connecting-IP header and their country in
CF-IPCountry. Any IP rule, at any layer, must match the real
visitor IP. A rule written against REMOTE_ADDR, or covering a
Cloudflare range, blocks real readers. Who holds the Cloudflare
account login is not recorded; ask John before proposing rules
in Cloudflare itself, which would stop a bot before it reaches
the server at all.
LITESPEED CACHE then serves most pages without running PHP, so
anything that checks requests in PHP misses cached page views.
Bot-blocking plugins that warn against page caching are
unsuitable for PBN. Reviewed and declined 15 October 2026:
Blackhole for Bad Bots 3.8.4 (its readme says do not use on sites
with caching) and BotBlocker Security 1.7.6 (to work it stops
caching for every visitor without its cookie, locks down the REST
API by default and writes to wp-config.php).
BOTH COUNTERS COUNT THROUGH JAVASCRIPT. WP Statistics posts to
/wp-statistics/v2/hit and the second counter to
/fastai-pbn-stats/v1/track, and both calls fire on cached pages
too. A bot that runs JavaScript is counted by both; one that
does not is counted by neither. A gap between the two counters’
visitor figures is not on its own evidence of a bot that skips
JavaScript: that was the first theory on 15 October 2026 and it
was wrong. The counters define a visitor differently.
————————————————————
34B. BLOCKS IN FORCE (FASTAI BOT SHIELD, SECTION 26)
————————————————————
Bytespider (ByteDance’s AI training crawler). User agent rule,
15 October 2026, John’s decision. It was making 20 to 30
requests an hour from 43 IPs in one Singapore range; none since.
Meridian-HP (unidentified, one Amazon cloud IP, crawling
category pages). User agent rule, same date, same evidence.
LinkupBot (AI search index, linkup.so). User agent rule, 15
October 2026, 20:08, John’s decision. First kept, then blocked
the same evening when it rose to 79 requests in two hours from
one German IP. Not to be confused with LinkUp (linkup.com), a
jobs site with its own LinkUpBot; AI summaries have mixed the
two.
aiohttp (Python scripting library). User agent rule, 15 October
2026, 21:01, John’s decision. One Dutch IP (5.253.84.0/24)
requested the homepage in bursts of four, with no browser
language or referrer, 16 times in the hour. Catches any script
built on aiohttp. If an uptime monitor or feed service ever
reports PBN as down or unreachable, check this rule first.
l9scan (LeakIX security scanner). User agent rule, 15 October
2026, 22:51, John’s decision. Probed for exposed developer and
server files (/.vscode/sftp.json, /actuator/env, /info.php,
GraphQL, cPanel) from two IPs.
20.194.17.163 (cloud server, Korea). IP rule, same time, same
decision. 48 requests in four seconds hunting for PHP backdoors
(/gulu.php, /file.php and similar) behind a Chrome 120 user
agent. Single IP only: its wider range may carry genuine
Microsoft cloud services. First IP rule written to .htaccess; it
matches CF-Connecting-IP, and the homepage answered 200 after.
43.172.0.0/15 (Tencent Cloud, Singapore; registered to Aceville
Pte Ltd, Tencent abuse contact). IP range rule, 16 October 2026,
09:32, John’s decision, the first block made under his view-count
rule. A bot that runs JavaScript, so both counters logged it as a
reader: about 70 requests overnight from some 60 addresses, one
archive article per address, no referrer, a different old Chrome
version (103 to 133) each time. It made about 25 of Singapore’s
31 counted visits that night. Blocked as a range because its
browser label changes on every request. The .htaccess layer stops
its page loads and the PHP layer its tracking calls.
212.147.227.185 (server, Sweden). IP rule, 16 October 2026,
12:26, John’s decision, under the scanner exception. One of the
addresses behind the Firefox 131 scraper below: it took about 150
pages in two seconds at 01:03 UTC, then at 11:02 UTC probed for
/webmail and /mail behind old Chrome 41 user agents. Single IP
only. The scraper’s other addresses stay unblocked under the
view-count rule.
All eight rules also sit in the .htaccess block at the top of the
file, so cached pages are refused too. Vulnerability scanners
change addresses often; block the worst by name or IP as they
appear, and do not chase every one.
CHECK PAGES IN FORCE (challenges, not blocks; how they work: Plugin
Registry, Bot Shield entry). John rejected UA and country blocks
for these on 19 October 2026 because they risk shutting out
genuine readers; a challenged reader presses one button and is
let through for 30 days.
Latin America Chrome 148. User agent Chrome/148.0.0.0 from CO,
VE, AR, EC, DO or ES. Switched on 19 October 2026 at about 05:57
BST, John’s decision. A residential-proxy scraper loading one
article per address with exactly that user agent, about 20
counted views a day in overnight bursts. Seven challenged and
none passed in its first 24 hours.
Chrome with Firefox language. User agent containing Chrome/,
any country, language header en-US,en;q=0.5. Switched on 20
October 2026 at 04:39 BST, John’s decision. A homepage pinger
rotating Chrome 147 to 151 identities on Mac, Windows and Linux
from proxy addresses in about 25 countries, one homepage load per
address with no referrer. Real Chrome sends en-US,en;q=0.9 and
real Firefox, which does send en-US,en;q=0.5, has no Chrome/ in
its user agent. The preview before switching on showed 593
counted views from 735 addresses in 24 hours, 579 of them the
homepage. Expect the homepage count to fall by roughly that much;
it is a correction, not lost readers. Verified live after
switching on: the bot fingerprint got the check page, Firefox and
normal Chrome with the same request got the homepage.
iPhone Chrome with Firefox language. User agent containing
CriOS/, any country, language header en-US,en;q=0.5. Switched on
20 October 2026 at 04:58 BST, John’s decision. The same pinger
also uses iPhone Chrome identities, which carry CriOS/ rather
than Chrome/ and so got past the rule above: one fired a counted
homepage call from Singapore at 04:52 BST, 13 minutes after that
rule went live. Same Chrome 147 to 151 rotation, on iOS 18.2 to
18.6. The preview before switching on showed 45 counted views
from 87 addresses in 24 hours, 31 of them the homepage. Two hits
on CriOS 135 looked different and may be real readers; a
challenge lets them through. Verified live 20 October 2026 at
05:00 BST: the bot fingerprint got the check page (403), CriOS
with a real browser language and iPhone Safari with
en-US,en;q=0.5 both got the homepage (200), and the log shows the
test as challenge:iPhone Chrome with Firefox language. That test
came from 160.79.106.135 (US), Claude’s own address, so it counts
once in the first day’s challenged figure.
NOT YET ACTED ON: an iPhone iOS 13.2.3 user agent (Version/13.0.3
Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1, from 2019) sweeping single articles
through proxies worldwide, counted. Burst of about 11 views on
West Marine: The 91 Stores Now Closing at 08:41 BST on 19 October
2026, a handful more since. No decision from John; Claude
suggested leaving it unless it grows.
BLOCKING RULE, John, 16 October 2026: he is not concerned about
bots that do not inflate PBN’s view numbers. Bots that never run
JavaScript are invisible to both counters, so they are not
blocked for copying alone. Check the beacon (tracking call)
figures in Bot Shield before proposing a block. Scanners probing
for vulnerabilities remain a separate case, blocked by John’s
decision on 15 October.
Left alone under this rule: a scraper posing as Firefox 131 on
Windows (about 770 pages overnight 15 to 16 October, from rented
servers and VPN exits in GB, HK, SE and DE, no tracking calls).
Exact-sentence searches of five articles it took found only PBN’s
originals. Also kept: DoubleVerify (DVbot) and Leikibot, ad
industry crawlers whose blocking could cut AdSense demand.
KEPT, John’s decision 15 October 2026:
TikTokSpider. ByteDance’s crawler for TikTok link previews and
search. Blocking it would strip the preview card from PBN links
shared on TikTok.
NO DECISION YET: Amazonbot (left alone 15 October 2026, John’s
decision; per Amazon’s own page it serves general product work
and AI training, while Alexa search is Amzn-SearchBot and live
Alexa answers Amzn-User, each controlled separately, so blocking
Amazonbot would not affect Alexa), ExaSearchBot (Exa AI search),
AhrefsBot (SEO tool). Raise with John if any becomes
heavy.
NEVER BLOCK: Googlebot and the other Google crawlers,
Mediapartners-Google (AdSense), Bingbot, facebookexternalhit and
the meta-webindexer, Applebot, ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot,
Claude-User, PerplexityBot. Bot Shield refuses rules matching
these.
————————————————————
34C. INVESTIGATING A TRAFFIC ODDITY
————————————————————
1. Bot Shield /summary for the window (?hours=, ?country=):
countries, busiest /24 ranges, user agents, suggestions.
2. /recent?subnet= for a suspect range: timing, pages, user
agent.
3. Compare with WP Statistics (pbn/stats-overview), remembering
its figures cover the whole day while Bot Shield’s cover the
window asked for.
4. Propose specific rules. John decides. Add them with POST
/rules, then confirm the bot is absent from /recent. Do not
judge a block by Bot Shield’s blocked count: requests refused
in .htaccess never reach WordPress, so they are never logged.
The Brazil spike, 15 October 2026: WP Statistics showed 152
Brazilian visitors by 15:20, top country of the day. Once Bot
Shield was logging (15:45), Brazil sent 7 page loads in three
hours, one per IP, six with English rather than Portuguese
browser settings, none making a tracking call. Cause not
identified. Treat a one-day country spike as unexplained until
Bot Shield data covers the period it happened in.
————————————————————
34D. AI ASSISTANTS: READING VERSUS CLICKING
————————————————————
The Stats Dashboard’s AI Assistants section (FastAI Stats,
Section 26) shows both sides.
ANSWER FETCHES: pages fetched by ChatGPT-User, Claude-User,
Perplexity-User and similar agents while answering someone’s
question. The nearest available measure of PBN being cited by AI.
Not a reader count: one question can fetch several pages, and
only some are cited. Minimum figures, because an assistant served
a cached page is never seen.
CLICKS FROM AI: real visitors whose landing URL carries an AI
utm_source tag, or whose referrer is an AI site. ChatGPT tags
cited links utm_source=chatgpt.com and links in its “More”
section utm_source=chatgpt (the second since June 2025, PPC Land,
16 June 2025). AI apps that strip both still land in Direct.
FIRST READINGS, 15 October 2026: about 300 answer fetches in the
first four hours of logging, almost all ChatGPT; 16 AI clicks
over the previous seven days (ChatGPT 11, DuckDuckGo AI 3,
Claude 2). All-time AI referrals in WP Statistics at that date:
chatgpt.com 228, gemini.google.com 71, copilot.microsoft.com 32,
claude.ai 28, perplexity.ai 24. Fetches were spread widely (179
pages in the first four hours; the most-fetched had 7 at 19:29),
with news and industry explainers ahead of race results.
Conclusion so far: AI assistants read PBN often and send few
readers.
RULE: compare fetches with clicks only over the same window. Bot
Shield began logging at 15:45 on 15 October 2026, so until 22
October its 7-day figures cover less than seven days while the
click figures cover a full week. Its 30-day view fills by 14
November.
————————————————————
34E. DO NOT
————————————————————
Do not write IP rules against REMOTE_ADDR or Cloudflare ranges.
Do not judge a block by the blocked count (34C, step 4).
Do not install bot plugins that need page caching switched off.
Do not take an AI tool’s description of a bot on trust; check the
user agent in the log against the operator’s own page.
Do not compare figures from windows of different lengths (34D).
Added 16 October 2026, John’s instruction. When John posts “Bot
check!” or similar (“check the bots”, “any bots?”), run every
step below without asking, then report. Propose blocks; add none
without John’s yes.
1. READ 34B LIVE FIRST (wp_get_page 10174), not from a chat
summary or memory. It holds the blocks in force, the
view-count rule, and the KEPT, NO DECISION YET and NEVER
BLOCK lists. On 16 October 2026 Claude skipped this, relied
on an older chat, and added blocks that contradicted a
decision already on record; they had to be removed.
2. CURRENT RULES: GET /fastai-bot-shield/v1/rules.
3. BOT SHIELD, two windows: /summary?hours=24 for the day, and
/summary?hours=3 for what is active now. Note page_hits
against beacon_hits, the top countries, user agents, and the
suggestions list. Ordinary log rows are kept for 7 days only.
4. DRILL INTO EACH SUSPECT: /summary?country=XX for an odd
country, /recent?subnet=x.x.x.0/24 for a range. Check timing,
pages, user agent, browser language, and the source column:
“page” is a page load, a tracking call means it was counted.
5. OUR COUNTERS: pbn/stats-overview (WP Statistics) and
pbn/second-counter-summary. Look for countries out of line
with PBN’s normal mix, and a sharp jump in Direct.
6. GOOGLE ANALYTICS (property 541550555, timezone GMT, so an
hour off UK days during BST): sessions by country and
channel, with engagementRate and averageSessionDuration,
last 7 days against the 7 before. Flag rows with real volume
and near-zero engagement (for example, under 5% engaged and
under 5 seconds). GA sees only visitors that run JavaScript,
which are exactly the bots that inflate PBN’s counts, and it
filters out bots that declare themselves. It has no IP or
full user agent, so it spots suspects; Bot Shield identifies
them. GA keeps months of history, so use it to date when a
pattern began.
Quickest daily check: the Stats Dashboard’s WP Statistics vs
Google Analytics panel, or /fastai-stats/v1/ga-compare
(FastAI Stats v1.3.1, Section 26). A flagged settled day
means one counter caught traffic the other did not; ignore
today and yesterday, which GA is still processing.
7. CONFIRM EARLIER BLOCKS: each blocked IP and user agent should
be absent from /recent since its block time, and the GA
country or channel it affected should have dropped from the
day after. Never judge a block by the blocked count.
8. CLASSIFY EACH SUSPECT under the 34B rules:
a) Runs JavaScript and is counted (tracking calls in Bot
Shield, or visible in GA): propose a block.
b) Probes for vulnerabilities (admin, mail, config or backdoor
paths): propose a block, single IP where possible.
c) Copies pages without tracking calls: leave it, note it.
d) On the KEPT or NEVER BLOCK lists: leave it.
e) NO DECISION YET: raise only if it has become heavy.
9. REPORT, short: blocks working or not; each suspect with its
evidence (IP or range, user agent, hits, tracking calls, GA
figures) and the proposed rule; anything left alone and why.
Once John says yes, add the rule with POST /rules (add_ips,
add_uas and so on), confirm the homepage answered 200, and
add an entry to 34B in the same format as the others.
