Brick Breaker Games - maintenance documentation

Everything you need to keep this site running, add content and extend it. These pages are noindex and are not listed in the XML sitemap.

How the site is built

This is a static HTML5 site. The files you upload are plain HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JSON and WebP images - no server code, no database, no build server required at runtime.

The HTML is generated from content files in _src/ by a Python script, so that ~90 pages share identical head tags, navigation, schema and footer. You can also edit the generated HTML by hand if you prefer; it is ordinary, readable markup.

py _src/build.py            # rebuild all HTML + JSON, create any missing images
py _src/build.py --images   # also regenerate every image
py _src/build.py --check    # rebuild, then verify every internal link resolves
py _src/build.py --smoke    # also write _smoke.html, the automated game test

--check verifies that every internal href and src resolves to a real file, and that no two pages share a title or meta description. Run it before every deploy. --smoke is documented in adding a game.

What to upload

Upload	Do not upload
`index.html`, `404.html`, `robots.txt`, `sitemap.xml`, `site.webmanifest`, and every generated directory (`games/`, `articles/`, the six category folders, `about/`, `contact/`, `author/`, `search/`, `sitemap/`, the legal folders), plus `assets/` and `data/`.	`_src/` - this is build tooling only. `docs/` is optional; it is harmless to publish (it is noindex) and useful if you want the documentation available from any machine.

Directory map

brickbreakergames.xyz/
  index.html              home
  404.html                custom not-found page
  robots.txt sitemap.xml site.webmanifest
  games/                  directory + 10 game pages
  articles/               20 cornerstone articles
  brick-breaker-games/    six category sections
  brick-breaker-guides/
  brick-breaker-challenges/
  brick-breaker-types/
  brick-breaker-strategies/
  retro-brick-breaker-games/
  about/ contact/ author/ search/ sitemap/
  privacy-policy/ cookie-policy/ terms/ disclaimer/
  editorial-policy/ fact-checking-policy/
  assets/css/             style.css, responsive.css
  assets/js/              main.js, engine.js, games.js, search.js, favorites.js
  assets/images/          branding, games, articles, categories, authors
  data/                   games.json, articles.json, search-index.json
  docs/                   this documentation (noindex)
  _src/                   build tooling - NOT uploaded

Hosting requirements

Any static host: Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages, Vercel, or ordinary shared hosting.
HTTPS must be enabled - several browser APIs used here prefer or require a secure context.
Configure 404.html as the not-found document (on Apache: ErrorDocument 404 /404.html).
Serve .webp as image/webp and .json as application/json. Most hosts do this already.
Long cache lifetimes for /assets/ are safe; keep HTML short-lived.

Local preview

The search page fetches /data/search-index.json, which browsers block on file://. Run a local server instead:

py -m http.server 8000
# then open http://localhost:8000/

Before you launch

Work through the launch checklist. It lists every highlighted placeholder in the legal pages that must be completed, plus the SEO, performance and game-quality checks.