Bonumark Stream v0.6.0 is now available on GitHub, bringing a major Profile expansion, Theme Architecture 2.0, and a rebuilt Midnight Ledger theme. It is a substantial release that expands what Bonumark Stream can do while keeping the project focused on simple, self-hosted publishing.
Bonumark Stream Is Becoming More Than a Stream
I built Bonumark Stream because I wanted somewhere to publish short posts without handing everything over to a social platform.
I wanted the speed of a social feed with the ownership of my own website. My posts should live on my domain. My content should remain mine. My site should not depend on somebody else’s algorithm, business model, or decision about what happens to the platform tomorrow.
That part has not changed.
What has changed is how much can now exist around the stream.
Bonumark Stream v0.6.0 adds a real public Profile system and a much more capable theme architecture without turning the project into a giant publishing platform. The goal is still not to compete with WordPress or become another content management system trying to do everything.
The goal is to make a small publishing system better at being yours.
Profiles Are Now First-Class Public Pages
The largest visible addition in v0.6.0 is the expanded Profile system.
Profiles are no longer basic account pages. They can now function as a real public identity layer for the person behind the stream.
A Profile can include a headline, About section, Now section, location, interests, flexible links, cover media, a photo gallery, and Featured Work.
Featured Work can point people toward Stream Posts, Pages, or external URLs you want to highlight. That gives somebody visiting a Bonumark Stream site a place to understand more than what was posted five minutes ago.
The stream can show what you are publishing.
The Profile can show who you are.
That makes Bonumark Stream much more useful as a personal publishing home because visitors no longer have to piece together your identity from a chronological feed alone. They can learn who owns the site, what that person is doing, what matters to them, and where they should go next.
Profiles also have their own public metadata, including canonical URLs, Open Graph information, Twitter metadata, and structured data for Person and ProfilePage information.
And because ownership is still one of the core ideas behind Bonumark Stream, Profile information is portable. Profile data can be exported as JSON or Markdown, along with original locally stored Profile media.
Your Profile should not belong to the application any more than your posts should.
Theme Architecture 2.0 Opens Up the Design System
v0.6.0 also introduces Theme Architecture 2.0.
This is one of the biggest changes underneath Bonumark Stream because themes can now control much more than colors, fonts, borders, and spacing.
Bonumark Stream themes remain code-free.
That matters.
A theme should be able to dramatically change the presentation of a site without gaining access to the database, application logic, permissions, publishing system, routing, or anything else that has nothing to do with presentation.
Theme Architecture 2.0 expands what themes can do through validated JSON layouts.
The first version supports declarative composition across four major public surfaces:
- Profile
- Stream Card
- Site Header
- Home
Themes can rearrange approved Bonumark Stream components and create much more distinct layouts while Bonumark Stream core remains responsible for the actual application.
Themes still cannot contain PHP, JavaScript, SQL, arbitrary HTML templates, application routes, database access, callbacks, permission logic, or executable expressions.
That boundary gives themes significantly more design freedom without turning every theme installation into a security decision.
Existing Themes Still Work
The new architecture does not require every existing theme to be rebuilt.
CSS-only Bonumark Stream themes remain supported. If a theme does not provide declarative layouts, Bonumark Stream continues using the established core composition.
Themes can also adopt Theme Architecture 2.0 gradually.
A theme might only customize the Profile initially, then add its own Stream Card or Home composition later. There is no requirement to implement every supported layout just because the capability exists.
That gives theme developers room to build something simple or take much greater control of the presentation.
Midnight Ledger Has Been Rebuilt
Midnight Ledger remains the bundled default theme, but the version included with v0.6.0 is not the same theme from the previous public release.
It has been rebuilt around Theme Architecture 2.0 and now uses declarative layouts across the Profile, Stream Card, Site Header, and Home surfaces.
The redesign also includes substantial responsive and visual refinement. Profiles have stronger composition. The stream is easier to scan. Desktop and mobile layouts hold together better across different content lengths, optional sections, galleries, longer link collections, and the other variations a real site produces.
Midnight Ledger is also now the reference implementation for the current theme system.
Rather than maintaining several first-party themes just to demonstrate that Bonumark Stream can look different, I would rather maintain one strong default theme while making the architecture capable enough for other designers to take Bonumark Stream in completely different visual directions.
Profile Images Are Handled More Intelligently
The larger Profile system also required better handling of Profile media.
A large cover image at the top of a page should not be treated exactly like a gallery image farther down the page.
In v0.6.0, Profile covers and gallery images can use bounded responsive image candidates. Servers with WebP support through GD or Imagick can also provide modern-format image sources while keeping JPEG or PNG fallbacks available.
Loading priorities are handled differently depending on where the image appears.
The cover is part of the first Profile view, so it receives higher loading priority. Gallery images farther down the page remain lazy-loaded so they do not unnecessarily compete with content someone sees first.
The result is a Profile system that can be much more visual without treating every image as equally important to the initial page load.
External Content Stays External
There are smaller changes in v0.6.0 that matter because they reinforce how Bonumark Stream treats ownership.
An external link preview is information about somebody else’s website. It is not a local Bonumark Stream document.
v0.6.0 tightens that distinction.
Remote page titles remain remote page titles instead of being processed like local content. Bonumark Stream no longer adds the local site’s title suffix to the title pulled from another website for a link preview.
Reusable fragments are also kept separate from processing intended for complete local documents.
These are smaller details compared with Profiles or Theme Architecture 2.0, but they reinforce an important rule inside Bonumark Stream:
Local content is local content.
External information is external information.
The application should know the difference.
Upgrading From the Last Public Release
The previous public GitHub release was Bonumark Stream v0.5.77.
v0.6.0 includes database changes for the expanded Profile system, including new Profile identity information, Featured Work, and Profile photos.
Existing Stream Posts and Pages remain intact during the upgrade. The new Profile capabilities are added around the content already stored in Bonumark Stream rather than treating the new version like a fresh installation.
That was important because this release is not only meant for somebody discovering Bonumark Stream today. It also needs to work for somebody who has already been using it.
A fresh v0.6.0 installation and the upgrade path from the previous public release have both been part of preparing this release.
The GitHub Project Is Easier to Understand
Bonumark Stream also needed a cleaner public face on GitHub.
Development moved through nearly 100 internal versions between v0.5.77 and v0.6.0. Those versions are useful during development because they make changes easier to isolate, test, and trace.
They are considerably less useful to someone landing on the repository and trying to figure out what Bonumark Stream actually is.
The project documentation has been cleaned up around that distinction.
The root README now works as the main project introduction, covering what Bonumark Stream is, how its publishing model works, installation, themes, and where to find deeper documentation.
The root changelog is focused on public GitHub releases rather than forcing everyone to navigate the complete internal development history.
That history still exists for anyone who needs it. It just no longer gets in the way of understanding the project.
What v0.6.0 Changes
Bonumark Stream started as a simple answer to a problem I had with social platforms.
I wanted somewhere fast to publish that I controlled.
That is still what Bonumark Stream does.
v0.6.0 simply gives that idea more room.
The stream remains the publishing surface. Profiles give the person behind that stream a real identity layer. Theme Architecture 2.0 gives designers much greater control over presentation. Midnight Ledger provides a stronger default experience. Better Profile media handling makes richer Profiles practical. Cleaner boundaries keep local and external content where they belong.
All of that happens without changing the basic philosophy of the project.
Bonumark Stream is still small.
It is still self-hosted.
It is still built around ownership.
It is still designed to let you publish without asking a social platform for permission.
v0.6.0 is where Bonumark Stream starts showing how much can be built around a simple stream without losing the simplicity that made me want to build it in the first place.
Bonumark Stream v0.6.0 is available now on GitHub.
You can see the project running at demo.bonumark.org, and my own live Bonumark Stream site is at jimlunsford.net.
New Here?
Read Next:
- Builder Receipt: Bonumark’s Theme Architecture
- Why I Built Bonumark Stream
- Builder Receipt: Reworking Bonumark Stream