Cycle Five Syndicate — website

The marketing site for Cycle Five Syndicate, built with Zola (Rust static site generator) and deployed to Cloudflare Pages. Replaces the previous Backdrop CMS site at cyclefive.xyz.

Stack

• Zola 0.22.1 — static site generator (Tera templates + built-in libsass).
• No external theme. Custom templates in templates/, custom styles in sass/.
• No JS framework. The build is zola build plus serve-the-source, which writes each page's Markdown source beside its HTML for agents (npm run build runs both). Fonts: Inter + JetBrains Mono via Google Fonts (with system fallbacks).

Layout

.
├── config.toml            # Zola config + [extra] site data (links, email, year)
├── content/
│   ├── _index.md          # Home (renders templates/index.html)
│   ├── about.md           # About
│   └── contact.md         # Contact
├── templates/
│   ├── base.html          # Shell: header, nav, footer, <head>, skip-link
│   ├── index.html         # Home: hero + products + community
│   ├── page.html          # Generic prose page (About)
│   ├── document.html      # PDF-first page: PDF + Markdown source buttons, body not rendered
│   └── contact.html       # Contact page with email + community cards
├── sass/
│   └── main.scss          # Design system → compiled to /main.css
├── static/
│   ├── favicon.svg        # Wordmark glyph (gradient "5")
│   └── img/
│       ├── crack-tunes.jpg  # Crack Tunes logo (from old site)
│       └── anya-og.png      # Anya AI image (from old site, also the OG image)
├── functions/
│   └── _middleware.js     # Pages Function: Accept: text/markdown → index.md
├── package.json           # `npm run build` = zola build + serve-the-source
├── .claude/launch.json    # Local dev-server config (zola serve on :1111)
├── .gitignore             # ignores public/ and .zola-cache/
├── LICENSE                # MIT
└── README.md

Design

• Palette: ink (#14161c) on warm-white, with an electric-violet → teal accent gradient (#7c5cff → #00c2a8). Full dark-mode variant via prefers-color-scheme.
• Type: Inter for UI/body, JetBrains Mono for the wordmark and eyebrow labels (a nod to the terminal/Rust identity).
• Wordmark: a gradient rounded-square mark with a stylized "5" (the "Five"), reused as the SVG favicon.
• Responsive (CSS grid, clamp() fluid type), accessible (skip link, semantic landmarks, visible focus rings, prefers-reduced-motion), and fast (one CSS file, lazy-loaded images, no JS).

Local development

Requires Zola 0.22.1 (brew install zola / pacman -S zola / other methods).

zola serve     # live-reload dev server at http://127.0.0.1:1111
zola build     # HTML only, into ./public
npm run build  # what Pages runs: zola build, then the Markdown for agents
zola check     # validate internal links & markup

Deploy — Cloudflare Pages

Connect this repo to Cloudflare Pages (Workers & Pages → Create → Pages → Connect to Git) with:

Setting	Value
Framework preset	None
Build command	npm run build
Build output dir	public
Root directory	/

The build command must be npm run build, not zola build. Plain zola build deploys a site that looks fine, but it writes no index.md files, so functions/_middleware.js has nothing to serve and agents asking for text/markdown silently get HTML. Check after a deploy: curl -sI -H 'Accept: text/markdown' https://cyclefive.xyz/about/ should say content-type: text/markdown.

Pin the Zola version — Cloudflare's default Zola is older. Add an environment variable (Settings → Environment variables, Production and Preview):

ZOLA_VERSION = 0.22.1

Cloudflare Pages serves over HTTPS automatically and redirects HTTP→HTTPS for free — no extra config.

DNS / custom domains

Context: the old host got the cert and DNS wrong, which is what got the domain rejected. Specifically — the apex cyclefive.xyz was served under a wildcard cert (*.cyclefive.xyz), and a wildcard does not cover the apex; www.cyclefive.xyz had no DNS record at all; and plain HTTP never redirected to HTTPS. Cloudflare Pages fixes all three.

In the Pages project → Custom domains, add:

1. cyclefive.xyz (apex) — the canonical domain.
2. www.cyclefive.xyz — set up as a redirect to the apex (recommended canonical: bare cyclefive.xyz). Pages will create the CNAME/redirect for you; pick one canonical host and 301 the other to it so you don't split SEO or cookies.
3. cyclefive.org (second domain you own) — add as a custom domain and redirect it to the canonical cyclefive.xyz.

For each domain, let Cloudflare issue the certificate. Cloudflare's Universal SSL covers the apex (the wildcard problem goes away), and www now has a real record, so both https://cyclefive.xyz and https://www.cyclefive.xyz resolve and serve valid certs. HTTP→HTTPS redirect is automatic.

If the domains' nameservers aren't already on Cloudflare, move them to Cloudflare (or add the CNAME records Pages shows you) so it can manage the records and certs.

Redirect setup

The cleanest way to do apex-vs-www and the .org redirect on Cloudflare is a Bulk Redirect or a Redirect Rule (Rules → Redirect Rules):

• www.cyclefive.xyz/* → https://cyclefive.xyz/$1 (301)
• cyclefive.org/* and www.cyclefive.org/* → https://cyclefive.xyz/$1 (301)

⚠️ Placeholders to confirm before launch

• Contact email — hello@cyclefive.xyz in config.toml ([extra].email) is a placeholder. Replace it with a real, monitored inbox (the old site had no contact info at all, so there's nothing to inherit).
• Medium — the old site linked an auto-generated handle (@reserved_honeydew_guineapig_87), which has been dropped. No real Medium URL was discoverable, so Medium is currently omitted from the site. If you have a real Medium profile, add it to [extra] in config.toml and surface it in the footer/community/contact sections.
• Community links were pulled live from the old site and are wired in: Discord https://discord.gg/b6KVpfH9CF, Telegram https://t.me/cracktunes. Confirm the Discord invite hasn't expired (invite links can be set to expire).