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Metadata Format Regression Check

By Hines Custom Fence & IronSeptember 10, 2026Updated September 14, 2026

A fixture article that intentionally uses loosely-formatted frontmatter (unquoted dates, a single category instead of a list, and messy tags) to confirm the loader normalizes it correctly.

This fixture exists to catch regressions in frontmatter normalization, not to be a real article. It intentionally mimics common CMS authoring mistakes:

Why this fixture exists

  • date and updated are unquoted YAML date scalars, which parse to native Date objects rather than strings -- the exact shape that previously broke the published date on the live site.
  • categories is written as a single bare value, not a YAML list.
  • tags includes leading/trailing whitespace, a case-insensitive duplicate, and an empty string, all of which should be cleaned up.

What a passing build confirms

If the build succeeds and this page renders a real date and a single "Guides" category badge with two deduplicated, trimmed tags, the frontmatter normalization fix is working correctly.

Tagged#Wood Fences#stain

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