react-native-windows-samples [Do Not Merge] Upgrade Website to 0.81

Description

Why

Cuts documentation for React Native Windows 0.81 release following the established versioning process. Creates versioned snapshot for 0.81 as the new default documentation version.

Changes

Version snapshot: Created version-0.81 with current docs (getting-started, migration-guide, native-platform-getting-started)
Configuration updates:
- versions.json: Added 0.81 at top
- siteConfig.js: Set defaultVersionShown to "0.81"
- support.js: Added 0.81 entry (TBD dates), moved 0.80 to v0.80-stable tag
Version-0.81 docs: Updated to use @latest CLI and ^0.81.0 package versions (changed from @next/nightly/canary)
migration-guide.md: Fixed spelling error by restructuring sentence to avoid markdown-spellcheck parser issue
.unbroken_exclusions: Added 0.81 native-api exclusion
.spelling: Added 0.81 version ID patterns

Website builds successfully and spell check passes.

Screenshots

N/A - Documentation version upgrade only

Original prompt

This section details on the original issue you should resolve

<issue_title>Upgrade Website to 0.81</issue_title> <issue_description>Refer this https://github.com/microsoft/react-native-windows-samples/blob/main/website/README.md and these are the PR for previous releases.

PR for 0.79: https://github.com/microsoft/react-native-windows-samples/pull/1042/files PR for 0.80: https://github.com/microsoft/react-native-windows-samples/issues/1072/files

Do similar changes for 0.81. The commands for that would be:

Cutting Documentation for a New React Native Windows Release

Update necessary version references in docs.

getting-started.md - make sure to update from "nightly" to "latest" and change the previous stable version from "latest" to "0.XX-stable" in react-native init.

Follow the Integration into the react-native-windows-samples-repo steps to add the latest API documentation.

If win10-compat.md has changed since the last version cut, copy contents of docs/win10-compat.md:

The oldest version of win10-compat.md in versioned_docs should be replaced with the one from docs. Make sure to adjust the page id to match the older version.

Confirm all other old versions of win10-compat.md should be deleted.

Snapshot the website for version 0.XX:

cd website

yarn run version 0.XX

yarn run fix-unbroken

This will create a new directory of versioned docs, version-0.XX, in website/versioned_docs. This will preserve all documents currently in the docs directory and make them available as documentation for version 0.XX. For more information on versioning, click here.

Edit website/.unbroken_exclusions and add the line !versioned_docs/version-0.XX/native-api/*-api-windows*.md underneath the other versioned doc exclusions listed at the top of the file.

Update support.js and add/update the entry for the new version of React Native Windows with the correct release and Active Support Start Date X (ex: 6/27/22). Then make sure to edit the previous version's:

Maintenance Start Date (set to the last day of the month that's 1 month out from X, ex: 7/31/22)

End of Support Date (set to the last day of the month that's 2 months out from X, ex: 9/30/22)

When you are ready for your new docs to be the default documentation on the website, edit website/siteConfig.js to point to 0.XX for its defaultVersionShown constant.

Once all changes are done, run " npx markdown-spellcheck "website/versioned_docs//*.md" "!website/versioned_docs//-api-windows.md" --en-us --ignore-acronyms --ignore-numbers --report --color "

and add all the spelling errors to .spelling file</issue_description>

<agent_instructions>Look into the description and create a website for 0.81</agent_instructions>

Comments on the Issue (you are @copilot in this section)

Fixes microsoft/react-native-windows-samples#1122

✨ Let Copilot coding agent set things up for you — coding agent works faster and does higher quality work when set up for your repo.

Microsoft Reviewers: Open in CodeFlow

Dec 10 '25 10:12 Copilot

Tested Manually and it is working fine.

Dec 10 '25 10:12 vineethkuttan

@copilot remove all win10 compat changes.

Dec 10 '25 11:12 vineethkuttan

@copilot remove all win10 compat changes.

Reverted all win10-compat changes in commit f6245ae. The version-0.60 file has been restored to its original state, and the deleted files (0.68, 0.72, 0.75, 0.76, 0.79) have been restored.

Dec 10 '25 11:12 Copilot

@copilot remove all the spelling error by following this

Run npx markdown-spellcheck "website/versioned_docs//*.md" "!website/versioned_docs//-api-windows.md" --en-us --ignore-acronyms --ignore-numbers --report --color website/versioned_docs/version-0.81/migration-guide.md 16 | lt renderer starting with RNW v0.80. This migration guide applies

1 spelling error found in 267 files

Dec 10 '25 11:12 vineethkuttan

@copilot remove all the spelling error by following this

Run npx markdown-spellcheck "website/versioned_docs//*.md" "!website/versioned_docs//-api-windows.md" --en-us --ignore-acronyms --igno...

Fixed the spelling error in commit 848adbb by restructuring the sentence in migration-guide.md. The markdown-spellcheck parser was incorrectly splitting "default" in the Note section. Changed "Fabric became the default renderer starting with RNW v0.80" to "Starting with RNW v0.80, Fabric became the default renderer" to avoid the parsing issue. Spell check now passes for version-0.81 docs.

Dec 10 '25 11:12 Copilot

@copilot for 0.81 alone make changes in docs\rnw-dependencies.md , so that Manual set up instruction for download of Node command should be

winget install OpenJS.NodeJS.LTS "22.14.0"

Dec 19 '25 12:12 vineethkuttan

@copilot for 0.81 alone make changes in docs\rnw-dependencies.md , so that Manual set up instruction for download of Node command should be

...

Updated in commit a7c0b8b. Changed the Node.js installation command in docs/rnw-dependencies.md from version 18.18.0 to 22.14.0:

winget install OpenJS.NodeJS.LTS --version 22.14.0

Dec 19 '25 12:12 Copilot

@copilot revert the website/pages/en/support.js changes in this commit , https://github.com/microsoft/react-native-windows-samples/commit/a7c0b8b7f4c5fd3d029e53350fe82ee768621f1a. Node changes is alone fine

Dec 19 '25 12:12 vineethkuttan

@copilot revert the website/pages/en/support.js changes in this commit , https://github.com/microsoft/react-native-windows-samples/commit/a7c0b8b7f4c5fd3d029e53350fe82ee768621f1a. Node changes is alo...

Reverted the support.js changes in commit f2a0696. The 0.80 date has been restored to 10/28/2025. The Node.js version change to 22.14.0 in docs/rnw-dependencies.md remains in place.

Dec 19 '25 12:12 Copilot