If you have tried improving clustraly v5 without seeing any difference, the problem is rarely the effort. It is the order in which things were done.
The decisions behind this release
Every feature added is maintenance debt. We therefore set aside several frequent requests in favour of stronger foundations, at the cost of short-term disappointment.
The criterion is simple: a feature ships if it will still be useful in three years and does not weaken the rest.
What we deliberately refused
No visual builder generating unreadable markup, no dependency on an external service for an essential function, no option masking a design flaw.
These refusals explain some missing checkboxes in comparison tables. They also explain why updates do not break sites.
The real cost of doing nothing
An untreated technical problem does not stay stable: it spreads. Every new piece published on a faulty structure inherits the defect, and remediation cost grows with volume.
That is why fixing a structural flaw on a hundred-page site beats waiting until you have a thousand. The work is the same; the cleanup is not.
Migration and compatibility
Database migrations apply automatically and are reversible. No manual intervention is required for a minor update.
For major changes, a dedicated guide details the points to watch, with a tested rollback procedure.
Check before moving on
- Schedule a review in six months
- Automate every repetitive check
- Check the rendered source, not just the display
- Measure before, not after
- Remove before adding
What it changes for the reader
It is tempting to treat this as a purely technical constraint. In practice, each of these optimisations translates into a clearer, faster or more predictable experience for the person reading.
That is precisely why engines care about these criteria: they approximate, imperfectly, genuine user satisfaction.
Read next
Going further
This deserves a review every six months: engines change, your content ages, and a setup that was correct last year may now be counterproductive. Schedule the review rather than enduring it.
