diff --git a/src/changes/changes.xml b/src/changes/changes.xml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a8109d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/changes/changes.xml
@@ -0,0 +1,85 @@
+<?xml version="1.0"?>
+<!--
+
+   Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
+   contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
+   this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
+   The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
+   (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
+   the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+
+       http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+
+   Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+   distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+   WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+   See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+   limitations under the License.
+
+-->
+<!--
+This file is also used by the maven-changes-plugin to generate the release notes.
+Useful ways of finding items to add to this file are:
+
+1.  Add items when you fix a bug or add a feature (this makes the
+release process easy :-).
+
+2.  Do a JIRA search for tickets closed since the previous release.
+
+3.  Use the report generated by the maven-changelog-plugin to see all
+SVN commits. TBA how to use this with SVN.
+
+To generate the release notes from this file:
+
+mvn changes:announcement-generate -Prelease-notes [-Dchanges.version=nn]
+then tweak the formatting if necessary
+and commit
+
+The <action> type attribute can be add,update,fix,remove.
+-->
+
+<document xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/changes/1.0.0"
+    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/changes/1.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/changes-1.0.0.xsd">
+  <properties>
+    <title>Apache Commons Skin Release Notes</title>
+    <author email="dev@commons.apache.org">Apache Commons developers</author>
+  </properties>
+
+    <!-- NOTE:
+    The description below is specially formatted so as to improve the layout of the generated release notes:
+    The parsing process removes all line feeds, replacing them with a single space.
+    The Velocity template in resources/templates has been enhanced to replace pairs of adjacent spaces
+    with a new-line in the release notes. (These spaces are ignored when displaying HTML).
+    If the output is not quite correct, check for invisible trailing spaces!
+
+    To suppress formatting of an action entry when generating release notes, add an empty date.
+    This does not affect the HTML changes report (in any case dates are not displayed by default)
+
+    N.B. The release notes template groups actions by type, and only extracts data for the current release.
+    The changes report outputs actions in the order they appear in this file.
+     -->
+
+    <body>
+      <release version="4.2" date="MM-DD-YYYY" description="New features and bug fixes for maven-site-plugin 3.5+. 
+The previous version velocity template had features written for an earlier site 
+plugin version that were broken with the latest site plugin.">
+        <action type="remove" dev="aherbert">
+          Remove unused css files. These are not used in the current skin and
+    are from previous skin versions.
+        </action>
+        <action type="fix" dev="aherbert">
+          Fix processing of custom &lt;footer&gt; element from commons-parent site.xml.
+        </action>
+        <action type="fix" dev="aherbert">
+          Update processing of &lt;head&gt; section to handle injected XHTML.
+        </action>
+        <action type="add" dev="aherbert">
+          Optionally render bare &lt;div class="source"&gt;&lt;pre&gt; tags using prettyprint.
+    The functionality is enabled using custom properties to be added to the site.xml.
+        </action>
+        <action type="fix" dev="aherbert">
+          Fixed background on navigation menu collapsed icon from white to transparent.
+        </action>
+      </release>
+    </body>
+</document>
diff --git a/src/changes/release-notes.vm b/src/changes/release-notes.vm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2ce0af3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/changes/release-notes.vm
@@ -0,0 +1,132 @@
+## Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
+## or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
+## distributed with this work for additional information
+## regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
+## to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
+## "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
+## with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+##
+##  http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+##
+## Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
+## software distributed under the License is distributed on an
+## "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
+## KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
+## specific language governing permissions and limitations
+## under the License.
+##
+              ${project.name} ${version}
+                  RELEASE NOTES
+
+The ${developmentTeam} is pleased to announce the release of ${project.name} ${version}.
+
+
+## N.B. the available variables are described here:
+## http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-changes-plugin/examples/using-a-custom-announcement-template.html
+##
+## Hack to improve layout: replace all pairs of spaces with a single new-line
+$release.description.replaceAll("  ", "
+")
+
+#if ($release.getActions().size() == 0)
+No changes defined in this version.
+#else
+Changes in this version include:
+
+## indent to be used if there is no issue attribute.
+## should be the same as the indent in the changes.xml file
+## less 2 spaces for the 'o' and trailing space
+#set($indent='  ')
+#if ($release.getActions('add').size() !=0)
+New features:
+#foreach($actionItem in $release.getActions('add'))
+## Use replaceAll to fix up LF-only line ends on Windows.
+#set($action=$actionItem.getAction().replaceAll("\n","
+"))
+#if ($actionItem.getIssue())
+#set($issue=$actionItem.getIssue())
+#else
+#set($issue="")
+#end
+#if ($actionItem.getDueTo())
+#set($dueto=$actionItem.getDueTo())
+#else
+#set($dueto="")
+#end
+o#if($!issue != "") $issue: #else$indent#end ${action} #if($!dueto != "")Thanks to $dueto. #end
+
+#set($issue="")
+#set($dueto="")
+#end 
+#end
+
+#if ($release.getActions('fix').size() !=0)
+Fixed Bugs:
+#foreach($actionItem in $release.getActions('fix'))
+## Use replaceAll to fix up LF-only line ends on Windows.
+#set($action=$actionItem.getAction().replaceAll("\n","
+"))
+#if ($actionItem.getIssue())
+#set($issue=$actionItem.getIssue())
+#else
+#set($issue="")
+#end
+#if ($actionItem.getDueTo())
+#set($dueto=$actionItem.getDueTo())
+#else
+#set($dueto="")
+#end
+o#if($!issue != "") $issue: #else$indent#end ${action} #if($!dueto != "")Thanks to $dueto. #end
+
+#set($issue="")
+#set($dueto="")
+#end
+#end
+
+#if ($release.getActions('update').size() !=0)
+Changes:
+#foreach($actionItem in $release.getActions('update'))
+## Use replaceAll to fix up LF-only line ends on Windows.
+#set($action=$actionItem.getAction().replaceAll("\n","
+"))
+#if ($actionItem.getIssue())
+#set($issue=$actionItem.getIssue())
+#else
+#set($issue="")
+#end
+#if ($actionItem.getDueTo())
+#set($dueto=$actionItem.getDueTo())
+#else
+#set($dueto="")
+#end
+o#if($!issue != "") $issue: #else$indent#end ${action} #if($!dueto != "")Thanks to $dueto. #end
+
+#set($issue="")
+#set($dueto="")
+#end
+#end
+
+#if ($release.getActions('remove').size() !=0)
+Removed:
+#foreach($actionItem in $release.getActions('remove'))
+## Use replaceAll to fix up LF-only line ends on Windows.
+#set($action=$actionItem.getAction().replaceAll("\n","
+"))
+#if ($actionItem.getIssue())
+#set($issue=$actionItem.getIssue())
+#else
+#set($issue="")
+#end
+#if ($actionItem.getDueTo())
+#set($dueto=$actionItem.getDueTo())
+#else
+#set($dueto="")
+#end
+o#if($!issue != "") $issue: #else$indent#end ${action} #if($!dueto != "")Thanks to $dueto. #end
+
+#set($issue="")
+#set($dueto="")
+#end
+#end
+## End of main loop
+#end