Hondabase Articles

Content repository for the articles published on https://hondabase.com. The website indexes this repo directly — the database is fully derived from these files and can be rebuilt at any time with php artisan hondabase:reindex from the site checkout.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for writing guidelines.

Structure

An article is a folder containing a Markdown file of the same name, with its images and attachments beside it:

<type>/<category-path>/<slug>/<slug>.md

For example:

cars/sensors/a143-transistor/a143-transistor.md
cars/honda/civic/ef/tuning/some-article/some-article.md
pt/cars/tuning/some-article/some-article.md          (Portuguese locale)

• <type> is one of cars, motorcycles, engines, aircraft, common (defined in the site's config/hondabase.php). Only cars has content today; create the other folders when the first article for them lands.
• <category-path> is any depth of [a-z0-9-] folder segments. The folder path is the category — never put category: in frontmatter. Segments that match a taxonomy node (make/model/generation, e.g. honda/civic/ef) are recognized as such by the indexer; everything else is treated as a subject category.
• _partials/ holds reusable Markdown fragments included by articles.

Subject categories

These are the subject categories in live use under cars/, matching the site's canonical subject vocabulary (managed at /admin/taxonomy):

Folder	Subject
ecu	ECU & Engine Management (includes ROM/tuning-map material, tagged rom)
sensors	Sensors & Solenoids
wiring	Wiring & Conversions
tuning	Tuning
diagnostics	Diagnostics & Troubleshooting
reference	Reference & General
fueling	Fueling & Injectors
ignition	Ignition
transmissions	Transmission
electronics	Electronics
engines	Engine & Drivetrain (engine-family reference, e.g. engines/k-series)

Other subjects exist in the vocabulary (brakes, suspension, chassis, forced-induction, maintenance) but have no articles yet — use them when content warrants; do not pre-create empty folders.

Pick the narrowest existing category that fits. Chassis-specific articles nest under the make/model/generation path instead (e.g. cars/honda/civic/ef/tuning/).

Frontmatter

The linter (php artisan app:lint-articles in the site checkout) enforces the schema. Allowed top-level keys — anything else is an error:

---
title: 'Optional — defaults to the article''s first H1'
summary: 'One or two sentences shown in listings and search results.'
tags: [ecu, electronics, components]        # free-form, lowercase; reuse existing tags
applies_to:
  make: [honda]                             # allowed keys: make, models/model,
  models: [civic, integra]                  #   chassis, trims/trim, engines,
  chassis: [ef, eg, ek]                     #   years, scope
complexity: intermediate                    # beginner | intermediate | advanced
sources:                                    # optional; for ported/adapted material
  - name: pgmfi.org
    url: https://...
---

Not allowed: category (derived from the folder path), date/last_updated (derived from git history), and applies_to.ecus/applies_to.obd (use tags instead — e.g. obd1, p28).