I'm having trouble understanding how to publish an html file that points to information stored on my local drive. When I Publish to File it gives me something like this:
file:///C:/Users/Me/Desktop/Story%20Star%20Alpha%20%282%29.html
But no one else on the internet can read that because it's on my computer. (I feel really dumb because I'm guessing I'm screwing up a simple concept.) Heck, when I link it in a Wordpress post it just shows up blank on my
own computer.
I sent a friend the html file. I think he'll be able to use it. But I want to end up with a nice, polished Twine story to attract readers online. I don't want them to have to download anything.
Does using
http://www.philome.la/ store the Twine story on their servers, allowing a smooth experience for readers? For final product purposes that would be great.
Additionally, I'm only in what might be called the alpha build stage and want test readers, so publishing to philome.la seems a bit extreme when I'm going to be editing and adding. What might be a good solution for test readers who will be on their own computers?
Forgive me for my obtuseness here, been trying to understand this for a few days now and ran out of options.
Comments
Some of your options are:
1. Send the HTML file to them as an email attachment.
If your story has images then you may want to create an archive of them as well as the HTML using something like ZIP.
2. Upload the HTML file (and images) to a file download site like Dropbox, Google Drive, 4share, etc...
3. Host your HTML file (and images) on sites like philome.la or even your only blog if you have one.
The two easiest ways if you want to have complete control to keep uploading new versions of the file (and a side-note: I haven't used Philome.la, so I don't know if you can keep uploading new versions) is to use Google Drive or if you own a url, to host the file by uploading it into file manager in the c-panel.
Let me know if you need step-by-step instructions.
Is there any way to publish with a 'clean' url? For example something like "www.[gamename].co.uk" or whatever without buying your own domain?
Thanks!
That said, if you're going to post a lot of Twine games/stories, it may be worth buying a domain.
1. While in Twine, go to Build and click "build story" or "rebuild and view."
2. Open Google Drive.
3. Create a new folder and call it Twine.
4. Make it public.
5. Use the red upload button (to the right of the create button) to put your HTML file (not the .tws file) in that folder and also mark it as public.
6. Look at the URL for the Twine folder. You will see a bunch of numbers and letters. Take out that chunk of letters and numbers after the backslash (eg. /0B4CcZqkGTOdUM296QXVqEklNa0B
7. Add that chunk of letters to this part of the url: https://googledrive.com/host/. The final version should look like this: https://googledrive.com/host/0B4CcZqkGTOdUM296QXVqEklNa0B
8. Cut and paste that URL into a new tab. It should take you to a screen where you will see a link to your file. Click that link and it will open as a file on the Web. Now copy that URL and that will be the one you send to people that you want to have play your game.