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Updates this week (February 21-28)

Updates this week (February 21-28)

· By Ryan Hayden

A summary of everything that shipped across the Congregation Hub ecosystem this week.

app-core

Features

  • Custom domain DNS instructions — Added clear DNS setup instructions to the publishing page so churches can easily connect their own domains.

  • Default sermon series image — When no series image is provided, a sensible default is now used instead of showing a broken/empty state.

  • Multi-line hero headings — The hero heading input is now a textarea, allowing churches to craft multi-line headlines on their sites.

  • Caddy on-demand TLS verification — Added a domain verification endpoint so Caddy can automatically provision SSL certificates for custom church domains.

  • Subdomain auto-resolution — {slug}.ultimatechurchwebsites.com subdomains now always resolve, removing manual setup steps.

  • Default website URL on registration — New churches get a website URL set automatically; API settings moved to the Publishing page for a cleaner workflow.

Billing & Pricing

  • Switched to a donation model — Replaced the previous subscription billing with a donation-based approach.

  • Redesigned donate page — New two-column layout with updated preset amounts for a better giving experience.

  • Less aggressive donation prompts — Reduced prompt frequency and added a proper dismiss flow so users aren't nagged.

  • Updated home page copy — Refreshed text throughout the home and pricing pages to reflect the new model.

Fixes

  • Nav logo fallback — The app now falls back to logo_web when nav-specific logos aren't set, preventing missing logo issues.

  • Blog image controller — Fixed issues with the blog image upload/display controller.

Refactors

  • Backlink partial — Replaced scattered title-bar back buttons with a reusable _backlink partial for consistency.

websites

  • Tailwind Typography plugin — Added the @tailwindcss/typography plugin for proper prose styling on content-heavy pages.

  • Cache table migration — Added the migration needed for the database cache driver in production.

  • Production deployment prep — Configuration and infrastructure changes to get the websites app ready for its first production deploy.

themes-blade

  • Breadcrumb links — Wired up working breadcrumb navigation across all theme pages.

  • Semantic color tokens — Replaced hardcoded gray color values with DaisyUI semantic tokens for better theme support.

  • Series description cleanup — HTML tags are now stripped from sermon series descriptions on both list and detail pages.

  • Series card linking — Series cards now properly link to their detail pages.

This changelog covers commits from February 21–28, 2026 across the app-core, websites, and themes-blade repositories.