Changes are coming

We've been using Ikiwiki and some custom scripts to manage the site. While we're big fans of Ikiwiki in general, it's designed for Markdown-based websites, and this is a media-based website that has been coerced in to faking being something more.

More than that, we're looking at embracing the limitations of eventually making the site available via Gopher. The limitations focus on the content and down-play a lot of the flash.

Part of this process involves formalizing and cleaning up the scripts we've been using to manage the website. Part of this process involves rearranging the links in the site.

The relationships between the types of art I create are deep and convoluted. I thought I could deal with a "project" based approach, but the definition of what a project "is" is part of the convolution process.

Do I make cover art? Yes.

Do I make create LilyPond files? Yes. Release PDF scores, MIDI and source? Yes.

Do I use LMMS? Yes. Sometimes that means importing MIDI. I release LMMS project files, too.

Do I release FLAC and MP3 files? Yes. Ogg Vorbis files? Less likely, but the system supports it.

I really enjoy releasing WebVTT files supporting karaoke-style sing-a-long. I can get this from the MIDI generated by LilyPond, and I've experimented with generating this for other input sources as well. The WebVTT support in browsers is poor, and things that originally worked no longer work as well due to audio controls that can't be restyled and cover some of the lyrics. This means I'll be looking at burning it in to video instead.

Speaking of video, while I normally have one-page per song, I did do that whole "February Album Writing Month Squared" thing where I sang a whole 14-track album in a single sitting. None of that stuff has had a place on the site here, but it should. Those are YouTube links at this point.

Do I generate poetry books from the lyrics for albums? Yes. These are currently ODF files that can be imported reasonably in to Google Docs.

Which do I do first? Well, I can start from anything first.

What I have not done is release the stems and pells for the stuff I've crafted in Ardour. Why not? If I regularly uploaded it, I wouldn't have lost my work on "Not Crapcapella."

Sometimes I convert stories to songs. I've done this for H.P. Lovecraft's "The Cats of Ulthar."

Sometimes I convert songs in to stories. I did this for a dozen songs a few years back to practice my editing process.

I've tried my hand at a libretto, audio drama scripts, stories based upon one-page dungeons, short stories, novellas, novels, multi-part series. I like to organize my material in to a series-length "story bible" that can be mined for various types of output.

Basically, there's a whole mess of stuff I create, it is linked together in all kinds of crazy ways.

How do I do this? I want a static site without weird database stuff on the backend.

I'm already leveraging custom templates to generate Ikiwiki Markdown. The Atom/RSS feeds are nice, but limited when I want a sheet-music feed, an MP3 feed, and a FLAC feed and not have three different Markdown pages. (It would be easy to do it, but it would mess with the tag system.)

It shouldn't be a big deal to use templates to just generate HTML.

The cleanest way to group files in Gopher is a self-contained directory. There's also a concept of a blogging on both platforms. The way I've been using liner notes is basically as blog-style text.

So: Each chapter / short / song has its own folder. We're looking at multiple entries per day, so YYYY-MM/DD_HH switching to DD_HHMM when there are multiple songs an hour. (If there's no associated data file, I can use a DD_HH file instead of directory.)

Logical units are linked together using tags or additional custom script logic. (Tags are easy enough while keeping bits of Ikiwiki in place.)

Once I'm creating the compiled units myself, it will be easy to support all manner of overlap. One Atom feed for each major content type, including album, book, series, and universe compilations.

I am hopeful about the restructure.

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