Preamble

I originally got the idea to create a proper fanfic archive (one that’s part of my string of websites) from this example here: kingdra.net fanfic masterlist which was linked to by ArimaMary.

I currently use Dreamwidth as a place to archive my writing, and I’ve been using it to repost the text of any fics I’ve uploaded on AO3. It’s helpful when AO3 is down, but honestly I was feeling kind of dissatisfied with Dreamwidth. I’ve run into plenty of HTML issues on the site, where the HTML code I copy into their editor gets warped somehow, and messes up my spacing. Sometimes tables go awry, and even though it’s kind of dumb, I’m always worried about running into the 1000 tag limit even though that’s a ridiculously huge number of tags and I’m nowhere close.

And ever since I started archiving my blog posts on there too, I feel like it doesn’t really serve the purpose of a fanfic archive, since I blog way more then I write fanfics. I wanted a dedicated space for fanfics, and I was kicking around the idea of starting a new dreamwidth blog. However, I found Mary’s post, which got the gears turning.

I wanted something aesthetic and relatively easy to maintain. Since this is just a fanfic archive, I don’t have too many worries about updating it as frequently as a blog, so I’m okay with using hand-coded pages. I also wanted something with filtering or tag capabilities.

The solution I found is basically to customize a fanfic rec page template developed for tumblr.

How I Built It

1) Find a Fanfic Rec page I like

I searched around a few tumblr theme repositories, and any theme/page archives of coders whose work I’ve used before. Unfortunately, many of those resources have gone offline since the great Tumblr purge, but some are still around. I managed to find one that I liked, that had filtering capabilities. In the end, I decided to use Candlelight by Odeysseus. You can see a demo of it here.

2) Download all my fanfics as HTML files from ArchiveOfOurOwn

This one is pretty self explanatory.

3) Create a github repository and start customizing the page template

I uploaded the fanfic files into a subfolder, and then pasted the Candlelight code into an index.html file at the top level. From there, I performed a few customizations:

Added the filters I wanted using the code in the template
Made the fanfic cards bigger
Increased the size of the font in various places, since tumblr themes are notorious for small text for some reason.
Made it mobile friendly and dynamic (I’m not very experienced with coding, so I used Gemini to suggest the code changes that would achieve the final effect).

4) Start inputting fanfic information and linking to the fanfic files.

This is just manual, I started inputting the fanfic title, summary, wordcount, etc. into the correct spots on the template, which I repeated for each story. I also uploaded the html files I downloaded from AO3 into a subfolder on the repo, and then linked to the files on the site.

I also used kingdra.net’s AO3 CSS stylesheet on each fanfic’s page so that it looks nice.

5) Upload the end result and finish!

I linked the private Github project I created to Netlify and uploaded it. Any changes I make on Github will auto-deploy to the website. You can see the outcome here at Navi’s Fanfic Archive.

I’m not too comfortable sharing the source code since it’s cobbled together from a bunch of random parts that I didn’t create, but you can see what the code looks like by inspecting the page in your browser.

What’s Next?

I’m pretty happy with the way it looks right now, but I have a few other ideas that I think could be incorporated.

table of contents for the multi-chapter fics
“back to top” or “back to TOC” button
adding more navigation links between the fics and the main page

Honestly I was pretty happy with how non-fussy this project was. It was nice to work with regular html code rather than trying some complicated solution.

I use Publii to run my light novel blog, which is the blog I update the most. I really like using it since it has a user-friendly GUI, and I can use a WYSIWYG editor rather than writing in markdown.

Publii makes writing the blog posts pretty seamless, except for one problem. It’s a desktop application that only works on your computer. It’s not designed to be synced and used across multiple computers, since at its heart it’s just a static site generator with GUI. It’s not like wordpress where there is a database on the backend of the site where you can sign in from any computer and write your posts.

At first I was willing to just use my desktop at home when I needed to update my LN blog, but I found that the act of “sitting at the PC” felt like too much work after I had just finished reading a book. Sometimes I would delay writing a post for one reason or another.

I know making it possible to write from a different computer (like my laptop) isn’t going to solve any major writer’s blocks or laziness, but it’s just one more hurdle that could be removed, if only I could implement some kind of solution.

I tried using Publii’s own guides (one and two) but I couldn’t get it to work. I tried copying the folder into OneDrive at first, and pointing the Publii app at the correct folder in the drive. Unfortunately, OneDrive is temperamental and doesn’t sync the files as fast as I would need it. I tested writing some blog posts, but it was hit or miss when it would sync. Often times, Publii wouldn’t recognize the site in the folder, and I had to clear the settings and try again just to get it to work.

I could have tried Dropbox like the guide suggested, but honestly I wasn’t convinced that it would fare better (maybe it would, who knows).

Frustrated, I searched for a solution that would simply let me share a folder locally, and I found SyncThing. It’s an application that syncs folders on your computer when both devices are online. I bet if I had a home server or raspberry pi setup, I could make it always online or something, which would be really cool.

But honestly, I don’t need anything that complicated. Now I can type up drafts on my laptop, and sync them back to my desktop for publishing or vice versa. I already tested out some drafts using SyncThing, and the drafts show up on both computers with all the changes. No headaches necessary! And it serves as a backup too.

Edit: I feel a bit silly for not including the steps for what I did lol. Fixing that now!

Install SyncThing on my desktop using the Syncthing Windows Setup
Open the configuration window
Share my existing Publii folder
Install Syncthing and Publii on my laptop
Add my laptop as a device on my desktop’s SyncThing config
Add my desktop as a device on my laptop’s SyncThing config
Accept the shared Publii folder on my laptop.
Success! The folders should sync now anytime BOTH computers are on.

I've been interested in blogging and journaling for a long time, and I've locked down many of my early efforts, as they were a reflection of my childhood.

Now that I've used modern social media, I wanted a space of my own to post thoughts and musings. Whether it's on a specific topic (like my Ranobe blog), or a catch-all place like what I currently use this Dreamwidth blog for. There's no way to currently link my domain to this dreamwidth (right now, the url https://blog.pomnavi.net is setup to forward to this blog), so I think I may have found another solution, of creating a backup of the DW blog and posting it elsewhere.

Here is a brief explanation for how I setup these two blogs:

The Light Novel (Ranobe) blog
I struggled a lot of with the use of Static Site Generators(SSG), as they are not very user friendly. Even when I managed to get something setup with Hugo or Eleventy, it was annoying to have to type/think totally in Markdown, and to format the post data that way as well. I researched headless CMS for ages, and even managed to get Decap CMS to work briefly. But one post nuked the entire site (I don't know how that happened), so I was almost ready to give up and go ahead with managed hosting from somewhere like micro.one, Bear blog, or mataroa. Of course, these options don't have either the theme options or tag features that I needed, so I kept looking.

After doing some more research, I eventually found Publii, a user friendly static site generator and website builder.

Publii has an in-depth guide that I used: How to build a static website with Netlify

Following this guide, I use Netlify for hosting, and then setup the credentials for my Netlify site. Once I finished copying my old light novel posts into the blog posts on Publii, I made a simple About and Blogroll/Friends page. Once I was done making changes to the pages and/or the posts, I then I hit the "Sync Your Website" button. Publii uploaded the entire site to Netlify. From then on, any new updates or changes can easily be made on the desktop application, and synced to the live website using the "sync" button. You can also setup the Netlify site to use your own domain or subdomain in the site settings.

Writing posts or making new pages is really simple, and it even has pre-selected options. There is almost no coding involved if you just want to use what's available by default. I really like the fact that there's no barrier when it comes to writing blog posts, you can use an editor that works just like Word (WYSIWYG).

Since Publii is an SSG, it doesn't have an in-built comments system. I really wanted some type of comments, and eventually decided to use this javascript code: Mastodon-Comments. I used guides written by Bech and Enikofox in order to set it up. It's basically a javascript file that you upload to hosting, and then you enter some basic code into the header section of your website that references where it is. Then, for each post or page that you need comments for, you reference the mastodon post's server url, username, and post ID in the bottom of the post/page. This will then load any mastodon replies, and even display the number of likes.

I setup a draft blog template with some of this html code pre-filled in. You also have to make sure that you put this code (mastodon-comments[*]) into the exceptions for the advanced editor settings in order to stop it from wiping that particular HTML code from your post.

Since I use mastodon nowadays for my microblogging needs, this works just fine for me. And this feature will work with any federated app that uses or bridges with ActivityPub. That means replies from Bluesky, Pixelfed, etc, will also show up, as long as the main post is from mastodon.

I'm quite satisfied with how everything works now.

The Dreamwidth backup
Above works well for my light novel blog, but what about my current dreamwidth blog? I really like the nested tags for Dreamwidth, and some of my posts even use the comments feature to log mini reviews, like the Storygraph and HowLongToBeat posts.

This would all be solved if I could just register my domain to this blog, but that's not a feature that Dreamwidth offers, even with the paid services.

In the end, I found this free software: the LJ/DW Dump utility. It allows you to dump all the posts and comments from a Dreamwidth or Livejournal blog, and formats them as static HTML pages. All I had to do was setup the "ljdump.config" file with my login settings.

The output isn't as pretty or nice as Dreamwidth, but it does preserve the comments, which was important for me. I uploaded the entire backup to another Netlify site, which you can see here: ~~https://dwlog.pomnavi.net~~ (This was taken down due to various reasons).

I don't consider the DWlog backup to be a replacement for this blog, but I think someone who's more inclined with HTML could probably use the posts output from the dump on their own website. There are already some Neocities users who use the Dreamwidth blog feed to display on their own website, and I think this is a better alternative. It maintains some of the tag functionality of the posts as well, so it's really cool.

It also links to the original post, but the one downside of this software is that my masterlist posts would have to be manually updated since the original post obviously uses DW post links. For right now, I'm not going to bother since it's just a backup of this blog.

2025.02.25 Edit: I am now ~~using~~ suffering with Astro
2025.12.16 Edit: dwlog has been taken down, see this post.

The official way of wirelessly transferring epubs (other than buying them on the Kobo store) is through Google Drive or Dropbox. Certain higher-end Kobos (like my Kobo Libra Colour) have the option to login to either service, and create a special folder that syncs files to your Kobo. There is an unofficial KoboCloud mod that allows you to get the same function on devices that don't support the official Drive or Dropbox functionality. Some newer devices also have the Dropbox function "turned off", so there are ways to turn it back on. The downside is that none of these methods convert epubs to kepub, and for the official Dropbox/Drive integration, there are bugs reported where the device randomly loses all the files in Google Drive or Dropbox.

The easiest accepted method of wirelessly transferring epubs to Kobo is to use a website called https://send.djazz.se/ . All you have to do is open the website in the browser on your eReader, and on the device you're sending the file from. You can upload your epub, and then it converts the file for you and offers you a download on your Kobo or Kindle. This is by far the most user friendly method.

The problem with Send Djazz is it's run by a single individual, on a personal home server. Most people either don't have the technical skills, or don't want to go through the hassle of hosting their own private version of the Send2Ereader software that Send Djazz is hosting. So when they have to shut down their server for weather, power, or internet disruptions, the website is taken offline. You simply have to wait until they bring the website back up online.

What if there was a way to not only transfer epubs wirelessly, but convert them to kepub using the kobo itself? While searching for a solution, I found this mod, the KoboFileServer. You can enable this mod, and use your device browser to upload an epub. The device will then convert it to kepub, and save it!

It's not perfect, since you still need to be connected to AN internet connection, but the nice thing about it is that it isn't reliant on some 3rd party service. You can turn it off and on as necessary. Once I got it working, it worked flawlessly every single time.

If you'd like to try installing this mod, here are the steps I took to get it working on my Kobo Libra Colour:
( Read more... )

This is a repost of a guide I created for tumblr about formatting fan novels for on-demand printers. It's partially outdated due to the closure of Lulu Xpress, but the information is still good

( Read more... )

I just wanted to do a write up of my setup on my steam deck, since I had to look up sources in various places, but not one place documented the problems I ran into lol.

I used these two guides:

https://retrogamecorps.com/2022/10/16/steam-deck-emulation-starter-guide/

https://github.com/suchmememanyskill/steam-deck-addons/tree/main/Launcher-multiplatform-game-launcher#install-steam-deck

Emulation: Retrodeck

So for retro emulation, I used Retrodeck (since I didn’t want all the emulated games showing up among the main steam games, and it kept things simple).

I went into Desktop mode and then opened the “Discovery” app which is an appstore (or flatpack?) for the Linux OS, and looked up Retrodeck under “Emulators” or “Emulation”. I mainly wanted to run PS1 games.

I then used Warpinator (on the deck) and Winpinator (on my PC) to transfer the roms and bios files needed from my computer to the Steam Deck. For the BIOS folder, it’s important to put the bios files under the main folder rather than separating the files in sub-folder (i.e. PS1 bios, etc.). Unless there’s already a sub-folder that was created for it, like the Switch emulator.

After I made sure the bios files and roms were in the correct folders, just booting up Retrodeck from the Steam Library will load into the frontend, where you can access all your retro games.

Non-Linux/Steam Games

I have a ton of itch.io games from one of their charity bundles, and although you can download the official itch.io app, it only lets you download Linux games.

Since the Steam Deck runs all windows games through a Proton translation layer, Windows OS games should work as long as they’re launched through steam.

One method is to manually download itch.io games from the browser, and then manually add them to steam (like on PC).

Another way is to use the Alfae launcher for Linux. Once you download and install Alfae, you can log into itch (and other stores like Epic or GOG), and then use Alfae to download the games and push them to steam using the SteamExporter function of the launcher. It also has the nice function of using your SteamGridDB account to add artwork (albeit cropped) to steam. You can then go from “Desktop Mode” to “Gaming Mode” and the games should show up under non-steam games in your library.

One issue I ran into while using this program is that sometimes it doesn’t unzip the game files it downloads, so while it looks like the game should work, Alfae isn’t mapped to the right .exe game file since the whole folder is still zipped. When this happens, I usually go back into desktop mode, unzip the files, find the game.exe file, and then add that to the Steam library manually. It’s a pain in the ass, but you can then use SteamGridDB’s Boop function to add any art for the games that’s missing. This won’t mess with any of the previously added games.

I’m totally new to linux stuff, but this setup wasn’t too hard! Hopefully this write-up is helpful to someone else too.

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Page Summary

Building My Own Fanfic Archive
Using Publii on Multiple Computers with Syncthing
Creating my own space on the web (How I setup my current blogs)
KoboFileServer: Another Method of Wirelessly Transferring Epubs to Kobo
Guide to Turning your Writing into a Book with Print-on-Demand
Setting up Emulators and Non-Linux/Steam games on the Steam Deck

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Building My Own Fanfic Archive