Publishing¶

Now that your CYOA has been build, we need to discuss how to publish it to the world at large.

Merging Viewer files and project.json¶

It's a good idea before uploading your CYOA anywhere to merge the Viewer files and project.json, rather than having to upload them separately. It just makes it easier to work with.

Organizing your site¶

It's a good idea to organize your website. Only using the top-level index is fine if you only want to host one CYOA, but what if you want to host more? It is then recommended to create folders, and move the project files in them.

If you're only going to use your Neocities site for CYOAs, I recommend using the following structure (using Neocities as an example):

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yoursite.neocities.org/
├─────────────────────superhero-cyoa/
│                     ├── css/
│                     ├── js/
│                     ├── index.html
│                     └── project.json
├─────────────────────steampunk/
│                     ├── css/
│                     ├── js/
│                     ├── index.html
│                     └── project.json
├─────────────────────harem-interactive/
│                     ├── css/
│                     ├── js/
│                     ├── index.html
│                     └── project.json

If you decide to use it for more than just CYOAs (like say, for example, setting up a blog or posting your own creations), you could put all CYOAs under a cyoas/ folder:

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yoursite.neocities.org/
├─────────────────────blog/
├─────────────────────cyoas/
├──────────────────────────superhero-cyoa/
│                          ├── css/
│                          ├── js/
│                          ├── index.html
│                          └── project.json
├──────────────────────────steampunk/
│                          ├── css/
│                          ├── js/
│                          ├── index.html
│                          └── project.json
├──────────────────────────harem-interactive/
│                          ├── css/
│                          ├── js/
│                          ├── index.html
│                          └── project.json
├─────────────────────secret-stuff/

Where should I publish?¶

There are many possible sites to host and formats to publish your Interactive in, and we'll go over how to do so in this section.

There are quite a few sites that will publish your Interactive. In this tutorial we'll only be discussing options that cost no money whatsoever.

Many people use either Neocities or GitHub. For general use, I recommend using GitHub, as it allows you to make an unlimited amount of sites from the same account, with each site having a larger free size limit. This comes with a caveat, however, in that it can be confusing to beginners.

If you wanted to make or have made an NSFW Interactive however, I recommend using Neocities. GitHub's Sexually Obscene Content policy means that pornography (for the sake of pornography; educational and instructional use is fine) cannot be hosted there. Neocities, on the other hand, has no such policy.

In the end, it's up to you to choose whichever site works best for your use case.

Table of Comparison¶

Why can I not view it locally?¶

See here.

Versioning¶

It may be useful for users to have a consistent versioning scheme. I recommend reading about semantic versioning.

The basic summary is as follows:

Whenever a major or minor version is incremented, the following versions must be reset to 0: 1.2.3 → 1.3.0 → 1.3.1 → 2.0.0, and so on.

Initial development¶

Projects start at version 0.1.0 when being initially developed, and stay in major version 0 until ready for public release.

Anything goes in the initial development phase, but you could:

• Increment the minor number when making breaking changes: 0.1.3 → 0.2.0 → 0.3.0, and so on.
• Increment the patch number when adding either backward-compatible functionality or bug fixes: 0.3.0 → 0.3.1 → 0.3.2, and so on.

Post-release¶

When you are finally ready to release your Interactive CYOA to the public, the version becomes 1.0.0.

After adding only bug fixes and minor changes, increment the patch version: 1.0.0 → 1.0.1 → 1.0.2, and so on.

After adding new, backward-compatible changes, increment the minor version: 1.0.2 → 1.1.0 → 1.2.0, and so on.

After adding breaking, incompatible changes, increment the major version: 1.2.0 → 2.0.0 → 3.0.0, and so on.

Because of this predictable versioning, users can judge whether they would be able to use previous builds, or if they should either make a new one, or import their old one and try to pick up the pieces.

Changelog¶

On the note of versioning, it's a good idea to keep a "changelog": a list of what's new and changed since the previous versions. You can have this changelog be built into your Interactive or post it in the subreddit comments section, for example.

It's important for your users to know what has changed since the last time they played, so that they have a good idea of what to look forward to, and what may make their previous build incompatible.

You can see the changelog of the ICC in the Help and Instructions menu, and you can see the changelog of this tutorial in the About page.

Table of Contents¶

The follow pages include a step-by-step guide on how to publish your CYOA.

• Static
• Neocities
• GitHub

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