The older look. Here for comparison, not for approval — the new look is the venue page, Paradesi Synagogue.
Mockup control — not part of the page. Pretend it is:
cats of Kochi

Cats of Kochi — Fort Kochi and Mattancherry

Fort Kochi, right now — Friday, 1.15 pm

Heavy rain from mid-afternoon. Do the outdoor things before two.

Checked Everything for today and tomorrow

Fort Kochi and Mattancherry, told by people who live here — what's open, what's worth it, and when we last checked.

This week

Getting around

Checked on the ground, and dated.

Fort Kochi, first time

A stance, not a ranking. Written for two days and no plan. Somebody else would choose differently, and we would rather say so than call this "the best".

Other ways in: Second visit · With children · When it rains · Everything, unsorted

What's on

Newest writing

Coming for a few days?

Four days in Kochi is not four daily pages. It is an order — which day for the fort, which for the islands, which one you keep loose because half of Mattancherry is shut. We write that order for your dates, and keep it right while you are here. ₹0,000 for the trip, however many of you there are.

What that includes

⭐ What changed, and why today is at the top

Two readers, and only one of them can use today. Somebody on Bazaar Road at nine wants what is open. Somebody in Berlin planning December cannot use a word of it — and that second person is the one who pays. ⛔ The price is shown as ₹0,000 here and in itinerary because none has been set; a plausible number printed in a mockup becomes the one everybody assumes.

⭐ So today earns the front page for the planner as evidence, not as utility. "This site knows the synagogue shuts at two, and it knows it today" is what makes the registry believable. The planner cannot use the content and is entirely persuaded by its existence. That is why the block is short and links away rather than trying to be the daily page.

Order: today, then the reason to come, then the trip. The orienting line moved below today — the band's own label does the framing, and a first-time visitor is told what this is before the lead story rather than before the evidence.

⭐ The state that had no component — and it is ahead of the build

FactsStrip, CheckedStamp, Unchecked and Correction cover shut and unknown. Nothing covered open, but not now — the April afternoon, where the place is open today and you still cannot get in. It is the case the product is best at and it had no design.

⛔ And it is worse than useless as a warning alone. Telling somebody a door shuts in forty minutes and stopping there strands them. So the component is a pair — the state and where to go instead — and the "instead" line is bound to the state: it appears when the door is closing or shut, and disappears when there is no problem to solve. Press 11 am on the black bar and it goes away; press 3 pm and the row rewrites itself to "shut since 2 pm".

⚠️ Every row is true with no JavaScript. "Shuts at 2" is a posted fact and lives in the HTML. "In 45 minutes" is not a posted fact and is never written there — it is computed at read time, or not at all.

⛔ "Places" is gone. There is no unnamed default list.

The homepage's recommendations are the most load-bearing opinion on the site. Presented unlabelled, they read as neutral fact — which is exactly how unlabelled opinion comes back wearing neutral clothes. The band is now "Fort Kochi, first time", says in one line that it is a stance rather than a ranking, and shows the other stances beside it.

The trip, and where it sits

Below the writing and above the newsletter: the reader who can use today cannot buy it, and the reader who can buy it has just scrolled past the reason to believe it. Same words as the daily page — the product is the sequence, not the days.

What the Guardian's front page actually does — measured, then translated

  1. ⭐ Four headline sizes and nothing between them — 28px lead, 24px, 20px, then a 14px run of links. That ladder is the whole hierarchy.
  2. ⭐ The picture shrinks with the headline — 620px wide for the lead, then 460, then 220, then none at all. Weight is stated twice, in type and in picture, so it survives scanning.
  3. ⭐ Front-page images are cropped to one ratio — every one measured 5:4. ⚠️ That is the opposite of their article images, which keep their own shape. A grid needs a constant; an article does not. I had written the no-fixed-ratio rule without that qualification.
  4. Section labels are bold where headlines are medium, at the same size — so a label reads as a label without being bigger.
  5. Every card carries a kicker. Theirs is the section; ours is the place.
  6. ⭐ No big H1. Their front page does not put its own name in large type — the masthead does that, and the first screen belongs to a story. So "The newest writing" is not reworded here, it is deleted: the newest writing becomes one section near the foot, and a story takes the top.

Where I departed, and why

One orienting line survives above the lead. The Guardian needs no introduction; catsofkochi is unknown to a first-time visitor, and the homepage is its best-performing page precisely for strangers. Named reader difference: a slow guide, not a news product. It sits at standfirst size, not hero size.

Density is a fifth of theirs. Twelve sections becomes five, and the practical block is a plain list rather than cards — those twelve answer pages are utility, and utility does not want photographs.

⭐ The footer now has links. The live one has none at all — which means a reader who finishes a page has nowhere to go.

⚠️ Rendered in Figtree, the real face — inlined as base64 below, it downloads inside an artifact the same as anywhere else.