soft_start_date

[Danysan1]

In the italian instance we are representing single-month-long projects but we need to also show the history of tagging in the months right before and after the month.
This is a draft of changes I'm implementing to allow this, specifically:

• add the soft_start_date option to the project config, allowing to specify the beginning of the strong community involvement period. The only required date option would remain start_date, if all four are configured they should be in the order start_date < soft_start_date < soft_end_date < end_date. If the two soft dates are specified, their range is automatically highlighted on the chart (see screenshots below)
• add the USE_SOFT_DATES boolean option to the site config, which if true makes the site use soft_start_date and soft_end_date to calculate whether each project is past, current or next (which changes how it's shown in the homepage and what's shown at the top of the project page)
• if USE_SOFT_DATES=true all statistics of the project page should show the statistics for only the soft_start_date - soft_end_date range, instead (or alongside) the statistics for the full history
• if USE_SOFT_DATES=true use soft_start_date and soft_end_date range for badge calculations

Do you have feedback on the current changes or suggestions on the remaining changes?

Examples:
https://osmit-podoma.wmcloud.org/projects/2025-12_ithydrant

https://osmit-podoma.wmcloud.org/projects/2025-07_ittownhall

[PanierAvide]

This is amazing ! I wasn't aware that Chart.js offered plugins allowing to do that, I looked a bit in the past to have this kind of highlight but didn't manage to implement it. Changes & docs are looking good for now, glad to see the rest of it 😀