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Publishing: Having trouble understanding this concept with Twine

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

  • The main purpose of the Twine 2 application (both the on-line and download versions) is to help you create your story's HTML file via the "Publish to File" option, how you get the generated HTML file to your testers/readers is left up to you.

    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.
  • Excellent, thanks for clarifying.
  • Do you need help figuring out the how-to-host-the-story part?

    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.
  • Thank you. I'll try a few things first, but chances are I could use some help.
  • Let me know if you want to host on a website you own (you need to have a self-hosted site as opposed to a free Blogger blog) or if you want to use Google Drive and I can write up the directions.
  • Sorry to jump in here but I'd be interested to know about the Google Drive publishing...

    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!
  • No, you need your own domain in order to post a short url like that.  Google Drive will give you an enormously long URL.  You can shorten it with tinyurl in order to email it to someone, but when they click the link, they will see the long URL in their address bar.

    That said, if you're going to post a lot of Twine games/stories, it may be worth buying a domain.
  • Here's what you do if you want to host it with Google Drive.  They change things from time to time, but these directions worked a few months ago:

    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.
  • This is great, and I really appreciate it. My only problem is that I can't find an option to Build Story or Rebuild. All that pops up in the menu in the lower left are options such as change format and publish to file. Can't find the other options anywhere. You all have been very patient with me, and I appreciate that. Any tip on where to find this option?
  • Publish to File is what you want. That should download for you the HTML that you can upload to Drive/another website so that others can view it.
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