CHANGELOG
What's shipped on LocalAd.
Release notes for the LocalAd platform. 11 entries since the first commit on April 16, 2026. Latest update: September 28, 2026.
- ImprovementSeptember 28, 2026
Three solo sizes, named by homes
- Your own postcard now comes in three sizes, each named by a round number of homes: about 1,000, about 2,000 and about 5,000.
- All three are picked on one page, /solo. The old pages for the two smaller sizes send you there.
- No price changed. Every size still says "about", because USPS delivers to whole carrier routes.
- FixAugust 28, 2026
Solo and shared each mean one thing
- The shared card is priced against the slot count it actually prints, resolved from the card geometry rather than declared twice.
- A shared drop mails at its minimum fill instead of requiring every slot to sell.
- Tiers that cannot be mailed under EDDM Retail rules, or that lose money at that fill, unpublish themselves from every surface at once.
- The payment screen shows a solo buyer the solo card: no slot number, no fill meter, no underfill remedy on a drop that cannot miss fill.
- FeatureJuly 30, 2026
Route Test, buyable end to end
- The entry rung is purchasable: two whole USPS carrier routes in a ZIP, the whole front of the card, the same mail window.
- What the buyer paid comes back as credit against a bigger drop in the same ZIP inside the window.
- LocalAd picks the route pair from the USPS route map for that ZIP. The buyer names the ZIP, not the routes.
- FixJuly 25, 2026
Fact ledger and the claims purge
- Every outside-world number on the site now has to trace to a source someone opened, or it does not render.
- Unsourced performance figures removed across the marketing pages and the guides.
- Solo moved to its own card geometry, and the published price ladder was pinned while the print quotes are still provisional.
- ImprovementJuly 24, 2026
Prices computed from cost, never typed
- Every published price is now derived by the cost policy in the pricing ladder: postage, print, bundling, overhead and the margin target.
- Solo runs in any US ZIP with residential mail delivery, so a solo buyer no longer waits for a zone to open.
- FeatureJuly 17, 2026
Solo drops: own the whole front
- New solo SKU: one advertiser takes the entire front of the card, edge to edge, with the back carrying the postal address and nothing else.
- A solo drop gets its mail date at purchase, with no zone to wait for.
- Reserve-first correctness work on the shared side, and funnel telemetry on the buying flow.
- ImprovementMay 7, 2026
One card-layout geometry
- Slot positions and dimensions now come from a single geometry table instead of being derived per surface.
- Print assembly, the buyer preview and the admin card view all read the same numbers.
- ImprovementApril 24, 2026
Sign-in without a wall
- Google OAuth alongside the magic link.
- The magic link is offered after checkout instead of before it, so buying never requires an account first.
- Stripe webhook made idempotent on the event id, so a retry cannot fulfil an order twice.
- FeatureApril 19, 2026
Underfill resolution flow
- A cancelled drop notifies every buyer on it.
- Three resolution paths in the portal: roll over to the next drop, store credit, or a full refund.
- A response window, with rollover as the default if the buyer does not answer.
- FixApril 17, 2026
Scan analytics that read the real table
- The portal scan chart now derives from actual scan rows. It was partly synthetic.
- Geographic ring and peak-hour charts added to the analytics tab.
- Device breakdown per QR code.
- Admin PDF export for drop card assembly.
- FeatureApril 16, 2026
Initial release
- Zone, drop and slot model live: a drop mints category-exclusive slots against real USPS carrier routes.
- Category-exclusive slot purchase flow: one business per trade per drop.
- Buyer portal with order history and upcoming drop dates.
- Checkout with a slot hold that expires and returns the slot to the pool.
- Admin surfaces for categories, drops, pricing and zones.