Fanfic site generator pre-alpha release

[flamebyrd]

I need to admit at this point, over a year later, that I have mentally checked out of this project and thus I am now releasing it into the wild, in its mostly-complete state.

This does not mean I don't plan to fix bugs or answer questions, or even provide configuration instructions that I can later turn into wiki entries, if anybody wants to actually use it! It's just that I want to work on other things more right now in my limited free time (I have more than I used to, but it's still limited).

In short, this is a Python script that will take a folder of AO3 HTML files and format them into a consistent style/template, and generate an index listing all the pages, including work metadata.

Many many thanks go to sqbr for helping document this mess! They are also to thank for most of the excellent fake fandom names in the sample content.

You can download the script here:
https://github.com/flamebyrd/makesite

If you'd like some handholding on setting this up, please feel free to drop me a comment or ping me on Discord, and I can make time to go through it with you. Definitely let me know if you use it so I can keep you informed of any changes!

I'm sure as soon as I put this out there I'll discover a ton of bugs or suddenly be inspired to make changes, so keep an eye on this post for updates!

Comments

[bluedreaming]

This is so exciting!
I haven’t had a chance to look at the docs in depth, but I’m guessing, based on the “other files” section, that html of one’s fics posted on other otwarchive sites should work similarly (compared to html files formatted differently)?

I’m excited to try this and (I assume) completely fail on the first several attempts 😂

[flamebyrd]

I haven't tested it myself, but assuming it hasn't made substantial changes to the otwarchive code it should work, yes! And please let me know if it doesn't and I'll try to fix it.

Good luck!

[bluedreaming]

Tried it out! mini-test
Re non-ao3 otwarchive htmls, the only issue I seem to have so far is that squidgeworld uses "Fandoms" instead of "Fandom" so it doesn't pick up the fandom metadata, and I don't know where to look and see how to change that. (Like, of course I could manually edit the source html document, but that would be more difficult with a lot of files.)

I have a couple of other small questions; I'm not sure if I should ask those here or as github issues?

I have to say though (fingers crossed and knock wood that I'm not jinxing myself), while there are some things I'd like to tweak (don't we all, always), it completely worked on the first try to make a totally usable and uniform little archive! Very very cool.

[flamebyrd]

Yay, it mostly worked! I will take a look at your issues when I can. Making it support the Squidgeworld fandom field will definitely require a code change. With regard to adding podfic, I think you can add it to the list in params.json - can’t check right now (no laptop) but there’s a list with fanfic, fanart, etc. podfic should definitely be one of the defaults though so I will add it!

[flamebyrd]

OK, so what seems to have happened with the fandom/fandoms thing is that at some point after I downloaded all my work HTML files, the otwarchive code has changed and now correctly switches between fandom/fandoms, relationship/relationships etc depending on the number of tags. Oops! Currently trying to figure out the best way to handle this.

Podfic issue was probably caused by media tags being case-sensitive. I've fixed that now, along with the same issue for filtered tags. I've left merged tags alone until I can test it some more.

I've added a flag so you can replace spaces in filenames with a different character. Disabled by default, but if this is always going to be a problem with Neocities maybe it should be enabled by default? Although it seems like AO3 now provides files with underscores in the filenames anyway.

I'm also on the missing end notes issue but it's proving more complicated than it seemed at first glance. A tomorrow (or Wednesday) problem, I'm afraid. As for removing the copyright symbol, currently that would require making a new theme but I'll investigate making that text configurable like the menus (complicating factor is that IIRC it updates automatically for every year).

I forgot to say earlier, thank you very much for trying it out! No alpha release survives first contact with someone else without coughing up some bugs, haha.

Oh and as for questions, if it's something you think will be helpful to other people then feel free to raise a github issue, but I'm also happy to answer questions here.

[bluedreaming]

Downloaded the new code last evening an did a bit of poking! Switching to the new version worked well - I don’t know if I did it correctly as I think it was a tiny bit different from the instructions - I copied out my content folder and Params file, then got rid of the whole makesite folder, unzipped the new zip, ran the cmd for the first time, copied in my content and copied over my modified params (I checked it by line so as not to overwrite anything). Anyway, it worked great!
Oh, I’ve also been adding the notes to the top of the home page by including my stuff in the _index.md file.

The podfic tag thing could also have been because I was using a subset of the podfic tag “read by the author” - I’m using the function to merge tags, but I think media tag is detected before that happens. I wasn’t sure - is it possible to somehow specify that a media tag designation should check more than one specified tag? I fixed it with mine by manually replacing the tag with “Podfic” and then it was detected. If it’s not possible, it’s just a small fix for me (or I could go in and double-tag my live ao3 posts).

I also noticed that the media tag designations are also fanfiction (lowercase) but Podfic (uppercase) - I’m assuming this is due to the capitalization of the tag I used? I ran out of time to test if capitalizing Fanfiction in the defaults would have the page match. omit this section - I see it’s part of updates after I ran this!

That’s confusing about the tag label categorization; good luck!

Since these are alpha testing things, I’ll maybe stay here for right now if that’s okay - it might end up being more confusing if these things get tweaked anyway.

I’m super happy to be an alpha user; it’s really fun (and hopefully not bothersome to you - never any expectations of course) and also (cough) is way more fun than doing the testing I’m doing right now for work 😂😬

(I see the other comments - will check in about those later as I’m heading in to work right now.)

[flamebyrd]

Sorry, I ran out of momentum there! Anyway I think I have made it so that tag merges happen before the media tag processing now. I can't think of any quick fixes that would keep the "read by the author" tag (which seems useful) though - I think double-tagging is unfortunately the best solution for now.

Your method of updating is probably better than the one in the readme - for one thing it will capture any updated param.json entries - so if you're comfortable with that, stick to it!

[bluedreaming]

And now I got slammed with a stretch of busy weeks (sadness) but I'll definitely still come back to this! Looking forward to testing this out again; it will definitely make actually creating an archive and updating it so much easier, and the way it's set up will make poking at this and updating the site lots of fun!

[flamebyrd]

OK, today's changes:

• Should now correctly import fields provided in plural OR singular format. Field names will be singular/plural on display as appropriate (I hope).
• Should now correctly display end notes and chapter end notes.
• You can add "display_copyright": false to the display_options section in your params.json to remove the copyright line from the footer.
• Media tags will be displayed with the capitalisation in the media_tags params.json option, not the tag on the work (for consistency).

[melannen]

Ooh that looks really useful!

[delphi]

Oh wow, that's fantastic - thank you!

[linky]

This is awesome! Thank you so much for this.

[amalthia]

Thanks for sharing!