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Changelog

Last verified August 10, 2026 · Commit 0d64de9 · Also on archive.org

A running log of substantive updates. We publish a new entry when:

  • A government immigration agency changes a form field, fee, or eligibility rule
  • A new arrival-card country launches and we cover it
  • We find and correct a factual error in an existing guide
  • We add or retire a whole category of content

We do not log every typo fix or layout tweak. For that, see the git history.

2026-08-10 - Middleman listings retired

The site no longer publishes pages listing the commercial sites that charge for each country’s form. Those 36 pages drew almost no readers while carrying the whole legal exposure of naming third parties, and a July re-verification found that most of the companies now disclose their non-official status themselves, which made the original framing wrong.

What replaces them: nothing. The official URL and the field-by-field guide already carry the message that matters, and they are the pages people actually read.

  • Removed: /{country}/is-ivisa-official/ for all 18 countries, English and Chinese
  • Removed: the evidence-card galleries on the main form pages and their 14 screenshots
  • Kept: every official URL, last_verified date, fee statement, and field guide
  • Kept: the price comparisons, minus the company names — the official total versus what commercial sites charge is still on each guide
  • Old URLs 301-redirect to the country hub

2026-06-17 - URL verification dates corrected for unchanged official links

Re-checked official URL records that stayed unchanged in the June address audit and updated their last_verified dates instead of leaving the older April dates in place.

  • Updated: Malaysia MDAC, Mexico FMM-E, Singapore SGAC, Indonesia All Indonesia / e-VOA, Philippines eTravel, Cambodia e-Arrival, Visit Japan Web, Korea e-Arrival Card
  • Updated: Thailand TDAC main portal and Vietnam’s two current e-visa domains
  • Left unchanged: URLs that still returned 403 or failed DNS during this follow-up check, so we do not mark them freshly verified without evidence

2026-06-11 - Philippines, Cambodia, Japan, Korea added; Indonesia and Vietnam URLs refreshed

Added four country guides and refreshed official URL data for Indonesia and Vietnam after a live address audit.

  • New: /philippines/, /cambodia/, /japan/, /korea/
  • New: English and Chinese country hubs, form guides, field guides, official-site explainers, rules JSON, field TOML, official URL TOML, and country changelogs
  • Updated: Indonesia now points travelers to allindonesia.imigrasi.go.id for the unified arrival declaration and evisa.imigrasi.go.id for e-VOA
  • Updated: Vietnam now uses evisa.gov.vn as the primary e-visa URL, with thithucdientu.gov.vn recorded as an official alternate
  • Removed: DNS-dead active warning cards for thailand-tdac.com and vietnam-visa-online.com
  • Updated: site navigation and decision tool now cover 11 countries

2026-04-27 - Methodology and freshness signals added

Added a public methodology section to /about/, a longer /trust/ page, and visible freshness signals in the article rail. The rail now shows when each guide was last reviewed and links back to this changelog.

  • New: /trust/, /zh/trust/, /changelog/, /zh/changelog/
  • Updated: /about/, /zh/about/, article rail freshness badge
  • Added: monthly maintenance checklist and per-country changelog TOML files

2026-04-26 - Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore added

Added three countries with full English and Chinese coverage. Vietnam is the first country covered where the underlying form has a real government fee, so the framing is “middlemen overcharge” rather than “free form sold for money.”

  • New: /vietnam/, /indonesia/, /singapore/
  • New: country guide, how-to-fill, and official-site explainer for each
  • Updated: site navigation now lists seven countries

2026-04-26 - Scam-site DNS audit

Re-audited known scam-site domains and removed dead entries instead of keeping stale warnings. Commit 6c841f3 removed 13 domains that failed DNS checks.

  • Updated: data/official_urls/*.toml
  • Policy: only list domains that resolve at audit time and have documented evidence

2026-04-25 - SEO output checks and sitemap validation

Added automated output checks for robots.txt and sitemap generation after the Cloudflare Pages build. This protects Google Search Console setup from regressions.

  • New: scripts/check-seo-output.mjs
  • Updated: GitHub Actions now runs SEO checks after production build
  • Verified: root sitemap index and localized sitemaps render correctly

2026-04-22 - Thailand TDAC added

First country published. Covers the full TDAC flow at tdac.immigration.go.th, documents the middleman situation publicly named by Thai immigration in March 2026, and includes an in-browser validator.

  • New: /thailand/tdac/, /thailand/how-to-fill/, /thailand/is-ivisa-official/
  • New: data/official_urls/thailand.toml, data/rules/thailand.json

How to read the audit dates

Each country’s TOML at data/official_urls/{country}.toml has a last_verified field. That field updates whenever we re-check the official URL against the live site. If you see a guide reviewed more than 90 days ago, treat it as potentially stale and verify against the official site before relying on it.