Porto Chapter — Notes & Ideas (July 2026)
A working scratchpad for the Porto group calendar: things to remember, decisions made, and ideas not yet on the grid. The calendar itself lives in porto-chapter-calendar.html; this file is just the human context around it.
Last updated: 2026-07-09
📌 Open actions
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Sunset river cruise (Sun 5 Jul, 19:30–21:30) happened before the calendar window (grid starts Mon 6 Jul), so it was dropped from the grid for now. Revisit if we ever want a “past / retrospective” section covering the first weekend. |
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✅ Decisions log
- Cruise dropped (9 Jul): it’s in the past and sits outside the 4-week window; not worth extending the grid backward for a single finished event.
- Villa weekend rendered as per-day tiles inside the 24–26 Jul cells (not a floating lane).
- RSVP banner removed — it referenced 8 Jul deadlines that have passed.
🛠️ Troubleshooting (fixes that worked)
- Social link preview not showing (WhatsApp, 9 Jul) — SOLVED. The page had valid Open Graph tags and a reachable image, but WhatsApp still rendered a plain title/domain card with no thumbnail. Two causes, both fixed:
- Stale scraper cache. WhatsApp caches the preview per exact URL, effectively forever, and has no debugger to clear it. Fix that worked: re-share the link with a fresh cache-buster query, e.g.
https://cv.garlez.me/porto-chapter-calendar.html?v=3 — WhatsApp treats it as a new URL and re-fetches everything. Bump the number (?v=4, ?v=5, …) each time.
- Oversized image. The original
og:image was a 320 KB PNG; WhatsApp silently drops previews over ~300 KB. Fix: switched to a 600×315 JPEG (~39 KB). Keep the OG image a small JPEG/PNG — avoid WebP, which WhatsApp doesn’t reliably render for previews.
- Other platforms: Facebook/Messenger → developers.facebook.com/tools/debug → “Scrape Again”; LinkedIn → linkedin.com/post-inspector; Telegram → message @WebpageBot. The
?v= trick works everywhere as a fallback.
💡 Ideas parking lot (not scheduled)
Things floated in the channel with no fixed date yet — nudge an organiser to pin a time:
- Tile-painting workshop — no date/venue.
- Via Ferrata climb — Erin researching routes.
- Skill share — SEO & GEO fundamentals — Nigel; date once volunteer numbers are in.
🗒️ Notes
- “Today” in the calendar is pinned to Wed 8 Jul 2026 (inferred from RSVP-deadline language). Bump it if the reference date should move.
- Statuses: Confirmed = booked/decided · Pending = binding post awaiting cut-off · Interest = poll or idea.
- Always verify times and prices against the channel before committing money.
🔗 Quick links