Muse's Success

In a comment in reply to a post on Novelr.com (will link when it comes back online), I expressed an interest in developing a "content management system" or specialised platform for the publication of web fiction. I’ve been thinking about doing this for awhile now since as early as around this time 2008 - which is actually arund the time myself and Darkthorn started Muse’s Success.

Before I continue I want to make a few things clear: This may not go ahead. I am merely considering it at this stage. I will make a decision based on the feedback this post (and my Novelr comment) recieves and my own analysis of need.

I am looking at creating a system for web fiction authors very much like how WordPress. b2evolution, Drupal and MovableType are to regular blogging. How Coppermine and Gallery are to online photo galleries. How eFiction is to web based fan fiction communities. A script that excels at its purpose - in this case to publish one or more of the stories of a single or small collaborating group of authors (if you need a big community of loosely related stories, eFiction has that covered).

Like WordPress, this would be an open source easy to install PHP script. I am aware that many authors use the freely available templates - I am sure myself and others can help convert them initially.

The script would be neutral. No integration with Muse’s Success, Web Fiction Guide or other listing sites would be enabled out of the box - but may be made available as plugins.

Now some notes about individual features:

- Simple Blogging
  Basically what you have now at the plethora of blogging scripts and hosts, but would not be used for story publishing.

- Story Management
  You could create chaptered novels (the distinction between novel, novella, serial is not important) and short stories (and collections of such). Of course scheduling is important. It is likely that we would eventually add revision control aswell (might be a bit much for a first version though).

- Standard Pages
  Basically anything that isn’t a blog post or story. About the author page, synopsis, the usual things.

- Commments
  Each chapter, blog post and page would be able to have comments. Of course, you would be able to control what exactly gets commented on a per-item or site wide basis.

- Story Export
  I envision being able to export the story to various formats beyond just RSS like PDF, zipped HTML, and Mobipocket.

- Search Engine Friendly / Pretty URLs
  Assuming the server you choose to host on supports it, the URLs would be in the form of exampe.com/(storyname)/chapter/13/nameofchapter rather then chapter.php?story=1&chapter=13. Story name could be omitted for single story sites.

- Templates and Plugins
  Easily extend the site using plugins rather then modifying the code. Templates would be seperate from the code, probably using Smarty, so mostly plain HTML.

- Customisable Homepage
  You could choose what displays on your homepage - whether that’s like now with a reverse chronology of posts and chapters, just the blog, just the latest post, just the table of contents or a custom page (or something else -via plugin).

What I Need From the Community

- Feedback
- Ideas (what does the community/authors want?)
- Encouragement
- People willing to test or use the script (assistance with setup and a porting of a template or existing design will be provided to those whom volunteer to actually use the script)
- Someone to work on the design of a default theme whom wouldn’t mind open sourcing the resulting design. If no one will help with this, I can create one but design isn’t my strongest trait.
- Beyond the initial version, more developers. :)
- Any other thoughts you have regarding this.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Here’s my support and encouragement, for what it’s worth.  I’d be willing to test a demo, and would be good for the "basic computer savvy but no more" demographic.

I like the ideas that you have put up, they seem to cover most requirements.  I especially like the export feature!  But I’d guess it’s the story archiving that will be of most interest.

Cheers,
M.

This is a good idea and something that I have personally felt the need of.

One thing that it would need (IMO) that blogs don’t provide, is the ability to arrange the story in the proper, linear order. I.e. the first chapter is at the top and the last chapter is at the bottom - even though they will be added in a different (typically the reverse) order.

Actually, another thing it would need is an index of chapters/sections. So you can jump to where you want to read from.

Oh yes, and a way to leave a bookmark, so you know where you’re up to.

It would be nice if you could export the finished piece to popular ebook formats (at least EPUB) so that people can take it off-line into an e-book reader.

Anyway, before I write a full user spec., consider this encouragement.

Cheers,

Graham.

Thanks MerFab, and Graham.

@MerFab:
- I’ve noted that your willing to play with it. Will contact you when (and if) I have something to show.
- Agree that story archiving is most important.

@GrahamStorrs:
- Paragraph 1 is definintly in. :)
- as is two - the table of contents (and how I will refer to it myself- novel detail page).
- This is an interesting idea. Not sure the best way to implement or whether it should be in the core- but certainly a plugin if not.
- eBook export would be in. I checked out ePub and it seems simple enough to implement. Would love to do Kindle too although no idea how to do that (other then a file suitable for converting).

Thank you both for the encouragement support.

I’m not very computer-savvy but I’d be happy to test out anything.

Actually, a platform that seems to work quite well is the one offered on Digital Novelists - I was going to join them til I realized it wasn’t free. :S

The Digital Novelist’s site is just Drupal.  Which is all right, but not specifically designed for web fiction, so needs a bit of savvy to do it yourself.  I don’t mind paying for hosting if I can get something snazzy out of it, but the DN sites for the most part look really bland.

M.

Well to begin with this would be host your own. There are plenty of decent free hosts that should be compatible. NearlyFreeSpeech.NET is really cheap and compatible (well, would be). I would love to offer a hosted version in the future though.

Digital Novelists is using Drupal which is a free content management system along with a few plugins (likely free). My experience with Drupal is that it’s not the easiest content management system to use (and makes the user download a ton of stylesheets too).

And seems MerFab beat me. :)

Nothing is stopping people using Drupal from customising it significantly, but most don’t seem to all that much.

I think this could end up great, and I like what you’ve listed here so far. I’m more than willing to beta-test, and I’m a little above average computer knowledge + starting from september I’m enrolled in some highclass php class, though focussing on the database aspect mostly.

One thing you haven’t mentioned here, and I’m not sure it would be possible (esp. timewise), but I’d prefer the Thing to be compatible with Wordpress, so more like a plugin/theme then a totally different platform. I’m sure that this would help mostly the tech-savvy authors, so it won’t be high up the list, but I’d prefer it above a totally seperate platform, because of design and support reasons.

I’d be very interested in a CMS designed for digital novels. I don’t have my site up and running yet, but I’m looking at Drupal as the current best potential solution. It’s not perfect, and I believe it has a very steep learning curve (mostly due to the lack of proper documentation), but it does most things.

Since any web fiction author needs to build a community round their work I think things like a forum module - since I would prefer to install as few seperate things as possible when I do get going.

Thanks Janoda and Shutsumon (Digimon fan? :p).

First I’ll address WordPress. It’s certainly going to be a stand alone CMS rather then an addon for WordPress. I’ve explored plugins, but there wasn’t much interest. It should not be any more difficult to install then WordPress (ie. if you can install WordPress, you can easily install this). I guess some kind of integration is possible, but I’m not sure it would be desirable (it would be a system built from the ground up for web fiction rather then a blogging system retrofitted for web fiction).

Thank you for offering to beta test.

Forum would be a plugin or bridge to another software package. I don’t think it’s something for the core. The core will focus on the management of fiction, and certain other content (blog/news, and generic pages). Export will be in the core, but the actual types of files to be exported will likely be plugins (you can be certain that certain plugins would be distributed with the core).

——

Table of Contents for WordPress code suitable for templates:

Be sure to replace 5 in category=5 with the ID of the category with your novel (and only your novel).

http://pastebin.com/f748eb868

and in action:
http://darkthorn.sorrowfulunfounded.com/the-inheritance-afflictions/

Ok, I am way biased because I am on Digital Novelists but…

This totally sounds like Digital Novelists. Except that the ability to customize & the start up fee would be $0. Everything listed can be done there (as far as I can tell with my measly +2 to Tech), though complete customization costs $, which is why only MeiLin’s is done. There’s even an author community page.

But in the world of the internet people will take free before they pay, so I’m sure you’ll still get lots of takers.

Digital Novelist is a specialised Drupal host aimed at web fiction authors. Essentially, for a fee, they install a copy of Drupal and some plugins (probably free) on their server, and then give you the login details. Nothing is stopping anyone from taking Drupal, and installing all the same plugins, for free, on a host like FreeHostia.

This yet unnamed script/software will be/is a free and open source PHP script that you’ll be able upload and install anywhere that supports PHP5 (most paid and many free hosts). I may also offer a hosted version, but that’s difficult money wise, well initially. I guess that’s like Drupal and it’s many plugins, but Drupal is hardly designed for it.

It being web fiction.

Those whom saw what this post originally said please consider it taken back. It’s not that I’m quitting exactly, but after thinking some more about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that I am most definitely spreading myself too thin and shouldn’t commit to something else. I have full time uni, Japanese learning, a somewhat neglected slowly developed Muse’s Success update, learning Java (for uni initially), and Python, other interests, and little free time that isn’t already being used for something else. Not to mention that my uni classes involve a lot of time in either a IDE or a Word Processor that I’m left with little desire to spend much more time in an IDE, despite me considering programming fun. I apologise if I got anyone’s hopes up.

I’m disappointed Chris, but I understand.  What we want to do and what we can achieve are two different things :)

But there’s nothing to stop you tackling the idea in the future when you have more time. 

Cheers,
M.

I can announce this, and it’s something that I won’t withdraw from, I’m developing an export XXX category to ebook plugin for WordPress. The table of contents will be generated in a similar way to my table of contents widget. I somewhat have ePub working although it’s not getting any data from WordPress at the moment. It’s not intended to export a finished product, but to offer web fiction readers a decent method which to read a story on other devices.

This is a much smaller project, and probably somewhat useful.

Quote:
But there’s nothing to stop you tackling the idea in the future when you have more time.

Certainly. I really want to do it, and will probably continue to code when I feel like it, but I don’t want to commit to a product that I may or may not be able to finish. If anything, I really should look into doing some paid freelance work before I tackle any significant open source projects.

Hi All. It’s my first time here. Hmm, how come everywhere I go it’s the same faces - really cool faces, mind :-) Hi Merrilee, Hi Graham!

Chris, as an author who’s in love with writing online, and experimenting, there are two things I’d really love to see you consider.

The first is a wiki-function so I could REALLY collaborate, and let others work on my story whilst I retained overall adminstration. This would be great for critiquing as well as collaboration, of course.

Second would be a publish to mobile app, so people could subscribe to my new chapters by phone. I think text2phone serialisation is going to grow significantly, and it would be great for me to send my writing straight to people’s phones from my own sight that does everything else as well, rather than having to use textnovel or similar as an intermediary.

If this works it could work really well. Great to meet you,

Dan

I think wiki would have to be an optional plugin. However, revision control of chapters should probably be in the core. WordPress has this, and I’m sure seeing the changes between revisions of a chapter could be useful.

When you say publish to mobile what do you mean? Send an SMS notification (difficult, Twitter has trouble enough as it is, although most phones these days seem to support email, my 2004 Sony Ericsson Z1010 supports it, so wouldn’t email work?) or a mobile version of the site? Or, a Web Fiction eBook reader app that automatically updates?

Your widget is a very cool idea, Chris.  I couldn’t make it work on my theme, though.

Does anybody here do much with Drupal?  I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff about it lately (hanging around the weblit.us crowd :-)  and people keep saying it’s this big time-committment and learning curve, but it’s worth it because it’s so powerful.

Well, what can it do that makes it worth all that effort, is what I’m wondering.  Can it really do all that much more than Wordpress running a theme like Massive News?

Just wondering.