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Evidence — author avatars never render protocol-relative //assets/… URLs (issue #297)

_includes/components/author-avatar-url.html — the single shared resolver behind every author byline, card, E-E-A-T banner, and profile hero — built the relative-path branch by manual slash concatenation:

{{ site.baseurl }}/{{ site.public_folder }}{{ _avatar }}

Remote-theme consumers do not inherit the theme's _config.yml, so on a site where the joined slashes double up (public_folder unset, or set with a leading slash), a site-absolute avatar like /images/authors/cassandra.svg rendered as //assets/images/authors/cassandra.svg — a protocol-relative URL the browser resolves against a host literally named assets. Every such avatar was a broken image. The fix builds the path in a capture, collapses // → /, and applies relative_url exactly once (keeping the documented public_folder prefix contract and the full-URL / GitHub-handle branches untouched).

How this evidence was produced

The include renders server-side, so both states are real Jekyll builds of the same misconfigured consumer (public_folder: "/assets"): BEFORE with the include reverted to the PR's merge-base, AFTER at the PR head — a faithful diff of the real code change, driven by ../../author-avatar-evidence.mjs (exact commands in its header).

What each file shows

  • 01-authors-index.png — the /authors/ index. BEFORE: the three authors with site-relative avatars (Zer0-Mistakes Team, Cassandra, Vega) render src="//assets/…" and show no image; the two full-URL (GitHub) avatars are unaffected. AFTER: 0 protocol-relative srcs, 5/5 avatars load.
  • 02-profile-hero.png — the /authors/cassandra/ profile hero. BEFORE: broken 128px avatar (//assets/images/authors/cassandra.svg). AFTER: the avatar renders (/assets/images/authors/cassandra.svg).
  • metrics.json — every avatar's src, protocol-relative flag, and loaded state per page and state.

Measured before → after (from metrics.json)

Page Protocol-relative srcs (before) (after) Avatars loading (after)
/authors/ 3 of 5 0 5/5
/authors/cassandra/ 1 of 1 0 1/1

On the theme's own default config (public_folder: assets, no leading slash) the pre-fix and fixed outputs are byte-identical — which is why the theme site never showed the bug and why the regression test pins invariants rather than a pixel state.

Regression test: ../../features/authors.spec.js ("Author avatar URLs (issue #297)", smoke tier) — on every avatar surface, no src may start with //, and every site-served avatar URL must resolve 200.