May 2026 release notes — 82-overlay catalogue, 12 pillars, audit suite

What shipped

286 SEO landing pages — every overlay now has a discoverable URL

Before this release, only a handful of the 82 overlays in the hero tool had any static page presence — the rest existed only inside the JavaScript interactive, invisible to Google. That gap is now closed:

• 11 category hubs at /grids/[category]/ — Basic Drawing, Artist Guides, Composition, Advanced Composition, Dynamic Symmetry, Perspective, Specialty, Sacred Geometry, Typography, Design Templates, Architecture.
• 78 overlay leaf pages at /grids/[category]/[overlay]/ — every individual overlay with a definition, history, when-to-use guidance, FAQ, and a "Try this overlay" CTA that deep-links into the hero tool.
• 6 Tier-S tool landings at /tools/[name]/ — Loomis Head, Golden Ratio, Rule of Thirds, Perspective Grid, Isometric Grid, Sacred Geometry. Each ~2,000 words with the tool embedded and HowTo + FAQ schema.
• 4 audience hubs + 14 sub-segments + 4 craft audiences under /for/[audience]/ — artists, photographers, designers, architects, plus quilters / cross-stitch / knitters / D&D-and-tabletop.
• 8 competitor comparison pages at /compare/gridmakerpro-vs-[brand]/.
• 19 glossary entries at /glossary/[term]/ with DefinedTerm schema, plus the new master glossary index.

The flagship pillar

The marquee deliverable of the release: The 82 composition overlays every visual artist should know. 5,640 words, all 82 overlays grouped by category with 50–80 words on each, anchor-link table of contents, downloadable PDF companion. Designed as the long-term link-bait anchor for the entire catalogue.

12 educational pillars

Long-form how-to and concept guides at /learn/[slug]/:

• The complete Loomis Head method, 13 steps with live tool — 5,000 words
• Golden ratio in art and photography — 4,520 words
• Sacred geometry in art history — 4,540 words
• Dynamic symmetry: Hambidge, Bouleau, modern practice — 4,080 words
• Bargue vs Reilly vs Loomis vs Asaro
• One, two, three, and five-point perspective explained
• The designer's grid bible
• Every composition overlay a photographer should know
• Grid method vs projector vs tracing
• Constructing Islamic 8 and 12-point star patterns
• Le Corbusier's Modulor decoded
• The 82 overlays — flagship

E-E-A-T anchors

Every Article on the site cites Sarah Chen as author. The release adds the entity pages those bylines need:

• Founder page — full Person schema with alumniOf, knowsAbout, sameAs social links.
• Methodology page — how overlays are constructed, how content is sourced and reviewed, how the audit suite enforces quality. Linked from every leaf's footer.
• Grid Library — the master 82-overlay browseable index. Now the primary hub-to-leaf internal-link spider.

Audit infrastructure

Five audit scripts now run as part of the build pipeline:

• audit-internal-links.mjs — flags broken internal links, orphan pages, depth-greater-than-2 leaves.
• audit-schema.mjs — parses every page's JSON-LD and flags missing required fields per type.
• audit-similarity.mjs — sibling Levenshtein/shingle check, fails any pair >35%.
• audit-deep-links.mjs — cross-references every ?overlay= CTA against the hero tool's overlay ID list.
• audit-image-alt.mjs — flags any <img> or <svg> lacking alt, aria-label, or explicit aria-hidden.

Documented in scripts/README.md for ongoing ops.

Hero tool deep-link integration

The 286 leaf pages all CTA back into the hero tool via /?overlay=[id]&paper=A4. Before this release the tool ignored those params — the CTAs opened a vanilla homepage. Fixed: the tool now parses ?overlay= (comma-separated for stacks) and ?paper=, maps kebab-case slugs to the internal camelCase IDs via an 80-entry alias table, and pre-selects the overlay on load.

Site navigation

The header now ships a CSS-only mega-menu with five top-level items — Library, Learn, For, Tools, Glossary — each expanding a dropdown listing the canonical entries in that section. No JavaScript needed on desktop; mobile uses a click fallback.

What's next

Phase 3 activation: GSC and Bing Webmaster verification, sitemap submission, the priority-30 URL inspector queue, the first 100-prospect outreach round, Lighthouse CWV audits, and rank tracking of 150 priority keywords. See the blog index for ongoing release notes.

Written by Sarah Chen, founder of Grid Maker Pro. See the methodology page for how every overlay is constructed and verified.