Modular Node tools for Uploading Webcomics
These are the tools I use to upload a comic for use with my front-end project Mobinge. There are two related tools: qtopanel and publisher. qtopanel finds all images in sourceDir and copies them to serve locally. publisher looks at the manifest to see what needs to upload today and pushes it live.
Both tools look for a settings.json in the src directory. There is an example-settings.json file that you can use as a guide. It needs these values populated.
manifest This is a path to where you keep a manifest. This is a JSON file that describes what panels and entries are in your webcomic.
convertPanelCommand Command to turn your images into final uploadable size. For me, it's this: "gimp -i -b '(mass-panel-export "%s%04d.xcf.gz" "%s" %1.2d "%s")' -b '(gimp-quit 0)'". The %04d is replaced with the current entry number (zero padded to four places), and the second %s is the imageDir.
bucket Name of the S3 bucket this goes to.
imageDir This is the directory where you keep all your images on local.
blogDir This is where you keep a local Jekyll blog.
comicUrl This is the URL for your final comic.
blogRemoteDir Relative to the remote bucket, where the blog goes, blank for root directory
remoteDir Relative to the remote bucket, where the images go, blank for root directory.
sourceDir Directory for initial panels for images.
postDir Directory for writing Jekyll posts.
manifestTmp Name for storing temporary manifest.
manifest Name and path for final manifest in the bucket
blogFormat Pattern for blog files. :year :month :day and :entryNum get replaced with appropriate values.
dayInterval Number of days between posts. Currently one higher than the number of days.
twitterApiKey Four different values that match up to twitter values. Go to developer.twitter.com to get these values.
Both queueing and publishing are done with module files that are dynamically read and included. You can add or delete modules at will, and they work without further configuration.
These are the steps that run when you queue up a panel to serve locally:
- gimp-panel - Coverts your GIMP panels to a final image.
- add-entry - Plans the entry and thumbnail to the JSON manifest.
- gimp-thumb - Converts your GIMP thumbnails to a final image.
- blog-entry - Creates text for the base of a Jekyll blog entry about the comic.
- photo-strip - Creates a vertical strip of your panels for posting on things like Reddit and Twitter.
- write-manifest - Store entry information in the manifest.
These steps run when you publish:
- upload-panels - Uploads panels for today's strip to S3.
- upload-thumb - Uploads thumbnails for today's strip to S3.
- temp-manifest - Builds a temp manifest that has the strips ready to go live from the complete manifest.
- upload-manifest - Uploads the temp manifest to S3.
- build-jekyll - Tells Jekyll to create the blog file and indexes.
- upload-atom - Uploads RSS feed of blog entries.
- upload-index - Uploads index of blog entries.
- upload-blog - Uploads the blog entry itself.
- invalidate - Tells Cloudfront to refresh its links to S3.
- run-tapas - Triggers Selenium script to update Tapas.
- run-webtoons - Triggers Selenium script to update Webtoons.
- upload-strip - Uploads photo-strip vertical version of panels to S3.
- post-twitter - Updates Twitter with the vertical strip.
This needs one argument, which is the final panel of the new entry. e.g. If you're at panel 152, and you want to add four more panels, you'd run "node qtopanel 156", and it'd at 153, 154, 155 and 156. It assumes the panels exist and that there's a thumbnail numbered for the entry. It runs all the q steps for the new panels.
This needs no arguments. It looks to see if something is supposed to go up today, and it sends it up.
There are command line arguments you can run to skip some modules or only run some modules.
--skip or -s Run all modules except the ones specified. For instance: node qtopanel -s photo-strip, write manifest
--only or -o Run only the specified modules. For instance: node publisher -o run-tapas