[baealex]

🎯 Goal

• Align BLEX canonical metadata with the clean series URLs Google selected for the two Search Console mismatches on first-page ?sort=asc variants.
• Reduce duplicate default query variants without collapsing distinct paginated content into the series root.

🔧 Core Changes

• Emit the clean series root as canonical for ascending and descending first-page views.
• Preserve self-canonical URLs for later pages: ascending page N uses ?sort=asc&page=N, while descending page N uses ?page=N.
• Stop generating page=1 in pagination links.
• Link the default newest-first control directly to the clean request path instead of ?sort=desc.
• Add regression coverage for canonical metadata and pagination-link normalization.

🤔 Key Decisions

• Normalize only first-page sorting variants because the observed Search Console mismatch was ?sort=asc on page 1.
• Keep page 2 and later self-canonical because those URLs represent different page content and must not be folded into the series root.
• Preserve sort=asc on later pages so their canonical URL continues to describe the rendered ordering.
• Normalize default internal links as well as metadata to reduce rediscovery of redundant page=1 and sort=desc URLs.

🧪 Verification Guide

How to verify

1. Run ./scripts/manage.sh test board.tests.templates.test_series_static_seo board.tests.test_pagination_tags -v 2.
2. Run ./scripts/manage.sh test board.tests.api.test_series_api board.tests.templates.test_series_static_seo board.tests.test_pagination_tags -v 1.
3. Open a series first page with ?sort=asc and confirm its canonical points to the clean series path.
4. Open ascending and descending page 2 views and confirm each retains the expected self-canonical query.

Expected result

• All 20 focused SEO and pagination tests pass.
• All 62 related series API, SEO, and pagination tests pass.
• Django system checks report no issues.
• Ascending and descending page 1 canonicalize to the clean series root.
• Ascending page 2 canonicalizes to ?sort=asc&page=2; descending page 2 canonicalizes to ?page=2.
• Pagination links omit page=1, and the newest-first control uses the clean path.

✅ Checklist

• Tests completed
• Django system checks completed
• Canonical regression coverage added
• Documentation updated (not needed: behavior is covered by tests and PR rationale)