Forum: Author Hangout

Scheduling Chaptered Works

Geek of Ages

I've been working on scheduling out posting chapters of my my current project, and I've again encountered a thing I've run into in the past. Notably, scheduling multiple chapters for different days feels awkward.

It appears to me that the only way to do it is to create a new post submission for each chapter—leading to what feels like a lot of repetitious work of "create post; make sure to remember to change posting time from ASAP; double-check chapter number and update because the auto-increment is for what's posted, not what's been submitted; upload to select particular file (which in my case means re-exporting just the one chapter) and double-check"

Which is fine; it's not too difficult, just tedious.

Is there a better way to accomplish this that I'm not aware of?

(To be clear about what I'm doing: I have a story that I posted the first 5 chapters of, and I wanted to schedule the next several chapters for successive Tuesdays/Thursdays, so chapter 6 on this coming Tuesday, 7 on this Thursday, 8 on the following Tuesday, and so on.)

Replies: Ernest Bywater Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

Ernest Bywater 🚫

@Geek of Ages

Is there a better way to accomplish this that I'm not aware of?

There is, I'm looking for the post where Lazeez set out the way to do it automatically by having a date with the chapter heading. It only works for completed sets of chapters uploaded at once, but they appear at later dates.

Ernest Bywater 🚫

just found it

https://storiesonline.net/d/s2/t5989/some-automation-for-those#po107333

I implemented automation for chapter posting deferral for serial stories.

So you can submit a serial story and have chapters posted at defined dates in one shot.

there is now a {date} tag for chapters.

How to use it:

Under the chapter title put the tag like so:

{date:2019-10-20a}

That makes the chapter appears on the site on the 20th of October, 2019 at 8am.

{date:2019-11-10p}

That makes the chapter appears on the site on the 10th of November, 2019 at 8pm.

You can schedule multiple chapters to show up at the same time, but each scheduled chapter must contain a tag.

Limitations:

1 - Works only on whole story submissions. The timing script will mark a story completed when it runs out of scheduled chapters.

2 - First text can't be scheduled with a tag. So the date tag will be ignore in the first part containing text. You schedule the first posting with the wizard's current scheduler.

3 - Format is rigid. No spaces inside tag. Any syntax error makes the system ignore tag and chapter end up on the site on the initial posting and the tag remains in the text.

4 - Dates earlier than processing time are ignored. If you schedule your story to post on the 20th of October and chapter 2's schedule is for the 18th, the tag is removed and the chapter is posted with chapter 1.

Example for a text file:

My first story

by my pen name

[optional cover text]

Chapter 1[: optional chapter title]

chapter 1 text....

Chapter 2: Merry Christmas

{date:2019-12-25a}

Chapter 2's text.

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

@Geek of Ages

Same thread, additional functionality

https://storiesonline.net/d/s2/t5989/some-automation-for-those#po110274

Replies: REP

REP 🚫

@Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

A couple of related questions:

1. I understand that the date tag must be in a paragraph that is identified as Heading Level 1. Is that correct?

2. Does the date tag have to be in the same paragraph that was identified as a heading level, or just before the first paragraph identified as text?

2. In Ernest's example, he specified specific dates and morning or afternoon. Is any valid date format acceptable or does it have to be YYYY-MM-DDa (or p)?

3. In your example, the relative number of days associated with Chapter 2 was also applied to Chapter 3. If a relative number of days is specified in/for a chapter heading, will it apply to subsequent chapter headings, until changed?

Replies: Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)
Updated:

@REP

1. I understand that the date tag must be in a paragraph that is identified as Heading Level 1. Is that correct?

Actually the tag can be anywhere in the chapter, as long as it's in a paragraph of its own with no other text. To be clear, that is after the header paragraph (chapter xx) and before the next header paragraph.

2. Does the date tag have to be in the same paragraph that was identified as a heading level, or just before the first paragraph identified as text?

No.

2. In Ernest's example, he specified specific dates and morning or afternoon. Is any valid date format acceptable or does it have to be YYYY-MM-DDa (orp)?

It has to be in the specified format.

3. In your example, the relative number of days associated with Chapter 2 was also applied to Chapter 3. If a relative number of days is specified in/for a chapter heading, will it apply to subsequent chapter headings, until changed?

No. If you skip a chapter or more, then they are release at the same time as the last chapter to have a tag. This is done to allow more than one chapter to be released at the same time.

So for each tag, the release date advances. No tag, no advance in the date.

Geek of Ages

Fantastic! While I consider the "only works on whole story submissions" to be a bit of an annoyance (though I can appreciate why it might be built like that), this will be very helpful.

Is there any chance information about this system could be added to the documentation on the site, rather than being buried in the forum? I'm sure there are a number of authors who never step foot in here that would love to know about it.

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Forum: Author Hangout

Scheduling Chaptered Works

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