Overview
Boise Today design system
A city publication and its custom publishing workspace, documented as one product with two deliberately different interface contexts.
On this page
Product and audience
Boise Today helps residents find local stories, useful places and things to do. Its public experience prioritizes reading, imagery and local context. Editors use the Townwell admin to prepare stories, review intake, manage reusable media and curate directory records.
This reference documents Boise Today as a standalone publication powered by the Townwell platform. Shared publishing components belong to Townwell; Boise branding, editorial identity and curated local content belong to the Boise tenant. It is a practical alternative to a general-purpose CMS, with purpose-built editorial workflows.
Two contexts, one product
| Context | Audience | Design emphasis |
|---|---|---|
| Public publication | Readers and local visitors | Warm paper surfaces, serif editorial typography, orange accents and generous imagery. |
| Custom admin | Editors and content operators | Scoped neutral surfaces, sans-serif controls, teal accents, compact lists and explicit publishing state. |
Principles
- Let a headline and its local context lead; imagery supports the story.
- Separate editing, saving, review and publication. Each action has a different consequence.
- Keep public and admin tokens scoped. A shared variable name does not mean a shared color.
- Prefer existing components and domain models to one-off page styling.
- Show honest data availability. A map, score or chart must not imply information the system does not have.
Evidence and boundaries
| Area | Evidence |
|---|---|
| Source baseline | ce8bc72b96da6d16579dfd0fe994be9dcde24376; audited local working-tree files are individually hashed. |
| Screenshots | Native routes and components in an isolated copy, desktop and phone, light and dark; component crops at 2× pixel density. |
| Content | Synthetic stories, business records, review candidates, editor identity, media metadata and analytics. Existing Boise imagery and source-curated city-guide content. |
| Isolation | No environment files, live database, publishing, newsletter send, provider upload or account writes. |
| Not certified by captures | Map tiles and live conditions, account persistence, AI review, actual publication, provider delivery, full keyboard/screen-reader conformance. |
How to use this reference
Begin with foundations and choose the public or admin scope. Component pages explain anatomy, configuration, states and usage. Patterns connect those pieces into tasks; applied screens show the resulting native interface. Accessibility and implementation pages identify concrete checks a team must complete before extending or shipping the product.
Source references
| File | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| sites/boise/config.ts | Audited Townwell implementation; use this file when extending this interface. |
| sites/index.ts | Audited Townwell implementation; use this file when extending this interface. |
| app/globals.css | Audited Townwell implementation; use this file when extending this interface. |
| components/site-shell.tsx | Audited Townwell implementation; use this file when extending this interface. |
| components/admin/admin-shell-navigation.tsx | Audited Townwell implementation; use this file when extending this interface. |
Examples from the app
Actual Boise Today and Townwell UI with synthetic editorial, business, review, media metadata and analytics. Existing Boise imagery; no live data changes. Captured at 2× resolution or higher. Select an image to inspect it full size.
Reference downloads
Related topics
Source audit: 2026-10-07 · Revision ce8bc72b96da · Documentation v0.1