Add 1.8.1 announcement blog + changelog

[adityaoberai]

What does this PR do?

Adds 1.8.1 announcement blog + changelog

Test Plan

Visit /blog/post/appwrite-1-8-1-self-hosted-release and /changelog/entry/2025-12-31

Related PRs and Issues

#2673

Have you read the Contributing Guidelines on issues?

Yes

Summary by CodeRabbit

• New Features

  • Appwrite 1.8.1 self-hosted: TanStack Start support, Next.js standalone sites, ElevenLabs site template, Resend email integration, per-bucket image-transformation toggles, expanded database operators, Flutter/runtime updates, branch-only deployments, function & sites stats, disable-count option.

• Stability & Security

  • General stability, security and upgrade improvements with migration guidance.

• Documentation

  • New blog post and changelog entry with upgrade instructions.

_{✏️ Tip: You can customize this high-level summary in your review settings.}

[coderabbitai]

Walkthrough

Two new documentation files were added: a blog post at src/routes/blog/post/appwrite-1-8-1-self-hosted-release/+page.markdoc describing Appwrite 1.8.1 self-hosted release features (Sites & frontend compatibility, Functions & runtimes, Storage & image handling, Email integrations, Database improvements, stability/security notes, and upgrade instructions), and a changelog entry at src/routes/changelog/(entries)/2025-12-31.markdoc summarizing the same release and linking migration and release notes. No code, exported/public API, or behavior changes were introduced.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 1 (Trivial) | ⏱️ ~2 minutes

Pre-merge checks

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The pull request title directly and accurately describes the main change: adding a blog post announcement and changelog entry for Appwrite 1.8.1 release.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

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📜 Recent review details

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Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 2f8c85a and 864969f.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• src/routes/blog/post/appwrite-1-8-1-self-hosted-release/+page.markdoc
• src/routes/changelog/(entries)/2025-12-31.markdoc

✅ Files skipped from review due to trivial changes (1)

• src/routes/blog/post/appwrite-1-8-1-self-hosted-release/+page.markdoc

🚧 Files skipped from review as they are similar to previous changes (1)

• src/routes/changelog/(entries)/2025-12-31.markdoc

⏰ Context from checks skipped due to timeout of 90000ms. You can increase the timeout in your CodeRabbit configuration to a maximum of 15 minutes (900000ms). (3)

• GitHub Check: assets
• GitHub Check: build
• GitHub Check: tests

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[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 3

📜 Review details

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 2236dbd and 2ba4ec5.

⛔ Files ignored due to path filters (1)

• static/images/blog/appwrite-1-8-1-self-hosted-release/cover.png is excluded by !**/*.png

📒 Files selected for processing (3)

• src/routes/blog/post/appwrite-1-8-1-self-hosted-release/+page.markdoc
• src/routes/changelog/(entries)/2025-12-30.markdoc
• src/routes/changelog/(entries)/2025-12-31.markdoc

🧰 Additional context used

🧠 Learnings (1)

📓 Common learnings

Learnt from: ItzNotABug
Repo: appwrite/website PR: 2362
File: src/routes/(marketing)/(components)/features.svelte:9-13
Timestamp: 2025-09-05T14:29:00.422Z
Learning: In the Appwrite website repository, fragment links (URLs with #anchor) in documentation are handled internally by the system and don't require explicit markdoc anchors or HTML id attributes in the source files.

⏰ Context from checks skipped due to timeout of 90000ms. You can increase the timeout in your CodeRabbit configuration to a maximum of 15 minutes (900000ms). (3)

• GitHub Check: tests
• GitHub Check: build
• GitHub Check: assets

🔇 Additional comments (2)

src/routes/blog/post/appwrite-1-8-1-self-hosted-release/+page.markdoc (2)

1-12: Blog post structure looks good.

The front matter is properly configured with appropriate metadata, and the Docker upgrade command syntax is correct. The content is well-organized with clear sections covering all major features in the 1.8.1 release.

Also applies to: 112-118

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28-30: All referenced internal links are valid and exist in the repository:

• ✓ /blog/post/tanstack-start-support-in-appwrite-sites
• ✓ /blog/post/nextjs-output-modes
• ✓ /integrations/ai-elevenlabs-text-to-speech
• ✓ /changelog/entry/2025-11-21
• ✓ /blog/post/announcing-db-operators

No action required.

[stnguyen90]

Seems random to have the changelog link here.

[adityaoberai]

We did not have a blog for this, so I linked the changelog that announced this feature