The “Pages” tab of the “Options” section allows you to do global configuration of how pages behave in all your Ryuzine Press Editions.

Pages Set-Up

Binding

The Ryuzine webapp is designed to support virtualization of right or left bound books.  In particular right-hand binding was added to accommodate a realistic simulation of Japanese Manga style comics.

Page Fill

This option controls the size of the virtual Ryuzine magazine pages.

Magazine (Square) – is more like a traditional magazine in shape.  If you’re publishing a newsletter or magazine style Ryuzine use this setting.

Comic Book (Tall) – if you are publishing a webcomic consisting of pages drawn in a typical, traditional comic book format this option will best fit your artwork and provide a more “authentic” comic book reading experience.

Fill All (fluid layout) – causes the pages to literally fill ALL the available space in the browser window.  This should only be used for “fluid” layouts (i.e., those that use percentages instead of set widths and heights).

Bylines

Normally WordPress posts who the screen name of a post’s author and the date it was published.  If you’re doing more of a magazine-style publication it makes sense to include these, but if you’re publishing a webcomic where all the posts are by the same author and the publication date isn’t really important you can suppress display of the author and date.

Comic Post Body

If you are using the ComicPress, Webcomic, or Comic Easel plugin on your blog this option allows you to selectively show or hide any post text associated with a comic post.  If you want your Ryuzine Press Edition web comic to be more like a real comic you’ll probably want to suppress the text and just show the comic on each page.

Meta Data

Regular WordPress blog posts are usually accompanied by “meta data” such as the category or categories to which the post belongs, tags, comment counts, etc.  Some of which are links to blog post archive pages, but those links within a Ryuzine publication page will take your readers away from the magazine version and to the blog.  If you don’t want that to happen you can simply suppress display of all this meta data.

Comments

If the reader feedback to an article is important you can opt to show those comments right in the Ryuzine Press Edition pages.  You’ll also see a comment box, but (like the Meta Data links) submission will take your readers away from the Ryuzine edition and to the corresponding post on your blog.  For a cleaner, more magazine-like appearance and to prevent users inadvertently leaving the magazine format you can turn commenting off.

Page Slider

Ryuzine Reader normally uses a “Table of Contents” panel showing the titles of all the blog posts you included in the Edition.  If your content is something that doesn’t really need page titles (for example, a webcomic) the “Page Slider” navigation may be more appropriate.  Simply select which kind of navigation you would like to be set as the default (your readers can set their own preference in the Options Panel too).

Animate View Changes

Normally when a reader changes the View the webapps animate the current view sliding out and the new view sliding in.  When this is disabled the view “snaps” from one change to another (readers can set their own preference for this in the Options Panel too).

Zoom & Pan

Touch-enabled devices typically allow users to zoom in and out on web content and pan/drag the content while zoomed.  Mobile apps, however, often are not zoomable.  The Ryuzine webapp can do both and this option determines whether your magazines will have zooming enabled by default (like any other web page) or if they will have it disabled (like most mobile apps).  You can also set the maximum zoom factor between 0 – 10 (zero effectively disables zooming even if the feature is enabled, 5 is the default, 10 is the maximum).   End users, however, can selectively enable and disable this feature in the webapp’s “Options” panel, so this is just the initial setting the first time someone opens the magazine.

Default Bookmarks

The Ryuzine webapp includes an in-app multi-bookmarking and a Bookmark Management Panel to add, delete, and access those bookmarks.  There are also two “default” bookmarks which end users cannot delete that are configurable by publishers.  Normally they point to the Ryuzine User Forums and Ryu Maru Website, but you can change them to point to your own resources instead.

If you go to Ryuzine Press > Options you’ll see several tabs for global configuration of your Ryuzine Press Editions.

Cover Settings

Cover Headers & Footers

You have three options for what to do with the front and back cover Headers and Footers:

1. Hide and remove spacing – This is the default setting allowing for a more “magazine-like” appearance.
2. Hide but keep spacing – suppresses the display of the header and footer content, but keeps their heights as top and bottom margins.
3. Show both Header & Footer – if you prefer a more newspaper/newsletter style format, and especially if you are using a post as your cover, this will show both headers and footers.

Cover Source

The default setting is to “Generate Automatically” which takes your Masthead settings and Featured Articles posts to construct a cover page with a list showing the titles of the featured posts (if any) that are also active links to their page within the Ryuzine Press Edition.

Alternatively you can opt to show the oldest post (of those assigned to the edition) as the front cover.  This may be preferable for a more newspaper/newsletter type presentation.  You may also want to do this for webcomics if, for example, each volume/chapter/issue begins with a “cover art” style post.

If you set the Cover Source to generate the cover automatically for you then the settings in the “Splash Screen & Auto-Generated Cover Settings” section are used:

Update: New with version 0.9.6.8 you can select whether the auto-generated covers should prefer an image inside of the shortcode or if it should use the “Featured Image” attached to the Edition.  You can also change this in the Custom Configuration settings for each Edition.

Mastheads

The next section deals with the Masthead settings for automatically generated covers.  You can go with just plain text if you like, or use an image.

Text – If you do not opt to use a Masthead Image this will be the text on the cover of your Ryuzine Press Edition. Enter the text in the “Masthead Text” box (the Blog Title is automatically inserted for you).  This text is also used on the webapp’s “Spash” screen and in the footers of pages next to the page numbers.

Image – is optional and you can select anything in your WordPress Media Library with the button next to the “Masthead Image” entry field.  There is also a checkbox allowing you to use this image on the webapp’s “Splash” screen instead of text (note that if you set a “Splash Ad” it will over-ride the Masthead Image in favor of the advertisement).

None – means you do not need a masthead of any kind composited onto your cover.

Featured Articles

You can also have Ryuzine Press automatically generate a set of “featured” links on your cover.  Select the category from the drop-down list and then tick the “Show Links on Cover” box.  The FIVE most recent post in the selected category will have their titles shown on the cover as links to the page on which those posts appear within the Ryuzine Press Edition.

Cover Image

If you already have an image you’d prefer to use as your publication’s cover art you can tick the box.  Then, in the Ryuzine Press Edition post simply place the image you want to use in between the [ryucover]… shortcode.  If you are also using the optional Ryuzine Rack newsstand that same cover image is used for the thumbnail there.

The shortcode also accepts parameters that control the background color and coverage settings for the image without having to add it to your issue-specific stylesheets (see the section of this manual on “Shortcodes” for full details).

Powered By Splash Footer

If you would like the words “Powered By Ryuzine Press” to appear in the footer area of the Splash Screen “Enable” this option and show our webapp and plugin some love!

App Logo & Icons

The “App Logo” is an image used on Reader navbar on phones and on the Rack navbar for all platforms, which allows you to “brand” the navbar with your own logo or icon (note: Rack catalogs can over-ride this with catalog-specific branding).

The Ryuzine webapp is coded to use an “App Icon” if it is bookmarked to the home screen on iOS and Android devices.  Many other browsers will use the “favicon” in the address bar and if the Ryuzine publication is added to the browser’s bookmarks.

This section of the Options allows you to custom “brand” your Ryuzine Press Editions with your own icon or logo.  Select an appropriate image from your Media Library and “Save” the changes.  You will see previews of the images scaled to the required sizes (no App Logo is set so it is blank):

Reset to Defaults

You’ll also notice there is a checkbox at the bottom of the Options section that says “Reset to Defaults on Activation/Deactivation.”  If you check this box and then go to the “Plugins” section and click “Deactivate” and then “Activate” under the Ryuzine Press plugin in the list it will clear all custom settings in the database and replace them with the original default settings upon initial installation of the plugin.  Note: clicking the checkbox automatically submits the change to the database as well.

Important!  When you update the Ryuzine Press Plugin you do not usually need to wipe your settings.  However, if you don’t you’ll need to go through all the tabbed Options sections and make sure every options has some kind of selection, in case new options were added by the update they’ll need you to set them or the Ryuzine webapp may stop working until you do.

The third extra text box on the Ryuzine Press > Add New or post edit page is labeled “Issue Specific Styles.”  If you want to style something specifically for the currently selected Ryuzine Press Edition this is where you do it.

In the box enter styles without <style>….</style> tags.  Each element of the Ryuzine publication is already tagged with a unique ID and a general class.  For example, the cover is always ID=0 and the parts can be references as follows:

#folio0 – this is the container that determines page width and height
#page0 – the actual page.
#shadow0 – the shadow (if enabled) under the page as it turns.
#header0 – the header on the page.
#live0 – the “live area” is between the header, footer, and left/right margins.
#column0 – the actual page content ends up in this container.
#footer0 – the page footer showing the publication title and page number
#margin-left0 – page turn button in the left margin (disabled for the cover)
#margin-right0 – page turn button in the right margin

Each of these elements is also part of a generic class similarly named:

.folio, .page, .shadow, .header, .footer, .live, .column, .footer,
.margin-left, .margin-right

Let’s say you wanted the background of your cover to be green and didn’t want the headers or footers to show anywhere in the magazine, but you did want to keep their spacing.  Here’s what you’d put in that “Issue-Specific Styles” box:

#page0{ background: green; }
.footer, .header { visibility: hidden; }

If you wanted to style the back cover without having to figure out what the id number for it is you can reference it by the “covercorners-back” class, which is always attached exclusively to the back cover.  For example to set the back cover’s background:

.covercorners-back .page { background: lightblue; }

You probably also noticed the “Write Content Into Stylesheet” checkbox.  If that box is checked AND the ~/wp-content/plugins/ryuzine-press/generated_css/ folder is writable, the Ryuzine Press plugin will attempt to create an external stylesheet using whatever styles are in the “Issue-Specific Styles” box when you save or update the Edition post.

Beta Testers: note that the location has moved from ~/wp-content/plugins/ryuzine-press/ryuzine/css to -/wp-content/plugins/ryuzine-press/generated_css/ so updates to the webapps do not require regenerating stylesheets, only updates to the plugin itself.

If the directory is not writable or you did not tick the checkbox an external stylesheet is not generated.  In that case any styles in the “Issue-Specific Styles” box will be written directly into the Ryuzine webapp page.  When viewing a Ryuzine Press Edition it will check for the existence of an external stylesheet.  If it doesn’t find one it writes the styles into the page with the content.  This means you can also create the external stylesheet for an edition yourself and upload it manually to the Ryuzine webapp “css” folder.  Just name the file in the format of “issue_id.css” where “id” is the Ryuzine Press Edition’s ID number (which is shown on the Ryuzine Press > All Posts table).

Why external stylesheets?  The Ryuzine webapp has alternative viewing modes, one of which is labeled “HTML Only” and is intended to strip out all issue-specific styles and deliver just raw text and images.  When the styles are written directly into the page they cannot be stripped out.  So, the only downside if you don’t have the external stylesheets is if your readers want to use the “HTML Only” alternative viewing mode (which some may need if they are using low-end mobile devices).  If that’s not a huge concern to you, though, you can simply never check the “Write Content Into Stylesheet” box.

Note: If you accidentally move, rename, or delete issue-specific external stylesheets and your server is set up to allow auto-generating them there is a button in Ryuzine Press > Tools > Update Ryuzine “Regenerate Stylesheets” which will create/recreate the external stylesheets in a bulk process.  This is an easy way to make sure every Edition with issue-specific styles has corresponding stylesheet, but if you have published a lot of Editions it can take a while to complete the operation.

One of the best uses of the issue-specific styles is to tile a pattern or color into the background of a specific page, or do a “full bleed” background image.  Here is a sample stylesheet for something like that:

.page { background: tan url('https://www.myblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/parchment.jpg'); }
#page0 { background: #ccc url('https://www.myblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/covershot_medium.jpg') 0 0 no-repeat; }
/* Widescreen Monitor */
@media only screen and (min-width: 1600px) {
#page0 { background: #ccc url('https://www.myblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/covershot_xlarge.jpg') 0 0 no-repeat; }
}
/* Desktop Screen 1280 to 1600 px */ 
@media only screen and (min-width: 1280px) and (max-width: 1599px) { 
#page0 { background: #ccc url('https://www.myblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/covershot_large.jpg') 0 0 no-repeat; }
}
/* iPad in Landscape */
@media only screen and (min-width: 1024px) and (max-width: 1279px) {
#page0 { background: #ccc url('https://www.myblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/covershot_medium.jpg') 0 0 no-repeat; }
}
/* iPad + Android Tablet in Portrait */
@media only screen and (min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 1023px) {
#page0 { background: #ccc url('https://www.myblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/covershot_xlarge.jpg') 0 0 no-repeat; }
}
/* Android HVGA and WVGA in Landscape */
@media only screen and (min-width: 600px) and (max-width: 767px) {
#page0 { background: #ccc url('https://www.myblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/covershot_large.jpg') 0 0 no-repeat; }
}
/* iPhone + iPod Touch + Android Phone in Landscape */
@media only screen and (min-width: 480px) and (max-width: 599px) {
#page0 { background: #ccc url('https://www.myblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/covershot_medium.jpg') 0 0 no-repeat; }
}
/* iPhone + iPod Touch + Android Portrait */
@media only screen and (max-width: 479px) {
#page0 { background: #ccc url('https://www.myblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/covershot_small.jpg') 0 0 no-repeat; }
}

What that does is tiles a “parchment.jpg” image as the background of all pages (and uses a tan color if the image isn’t loaded).  Except on the cover where we load an image designed to fill the background of the page.  Since the page changes sizes depending on the screen size we need to “scale” our background image too by using “media queries” to send a differently sized image depending on the screen size.  The first declaration is a “fall back” image if the browser doesn’t understand media queries.  If our background images isn’t loaded the cover will be a light gray color, rather than tan.

Typically you don’t need a new image for every screen size.  If you are using background images that need to be scaled it is recommended you create them like so ( minimum width x height):

• xlarge: 768 x 1024 .  Used for large widescreen monitors in two-page spread view and for iPad in portrait single-page view.
• large: 600 x 800.  Used for “Desktop” two-page spread view and many Android tablets in portrait mode.
• medium: 550 x 750.  Used for iPad landscape two-page spreads and phone landscape views.
• small: 480 x 550. Used for phone portrait views.

Obviously if it’s not important that parts of the image be cut off you can get away with using even fewer images.

Creating a Ryuzine Press Edition with WordPress is really easy!  Once an “edition” has been set up you can assign new or existing posts to it, creating a curated magazine-style version of your blog content.  The posts will also still be available via your regular blog because the Ryuzine Press Editions exist alongside the blog, not in place of it.

Create an “Ryuzine Issue”

You need to create an Issue that defines each “edition” you want to publish.  You can either use an existing issue or (preferably) create a new issue for each edition. Go to:

Ryuzine Press > Ryuzine Issues > Add New Issue

Enter something descriptive like “Issue #1” in the box (or however you want to list this edition).  It can either be a top-level entry or the child of another entry, it doesn’t matter so organize things however you please.  You can also create these in the Edition post composition window.

Create A New Edition

Ryuzine Press > Add New Edition

You’ll see a familiar looking “Post” compose window.  Give this edition a title and, optionally, write a brief description or summary of what will be in this issue.  This text doesn’t show up in the edition itself, but is used for excerpts on the archive page and will also be cataloged by search engines.

As of version 0.9.6.6 you could assign an Edition to multiple Ryuzine Issues, creating a “Collection” that includes all the posts assigned to each issue.  Be careful with this!  You can easily create very large Editions that take a long time to load and will most likely exceed browser cache limits and crash mobile browsers.

You can also enter content wrapped in shortcodes to create “gallery” items to display with the Ryuzine webapp’s built-in lightbox feature (more on that in another section).

You’ll also notice two more text boxes below the main compose window.  One is labeled “Welcome Message” and the other “Thank You Message.”  When a Ryuzine Press Edition is viewed in a browser wider than 1024 pixels it enteres “two-page spread” mode.  With the magazine closed to the front cover there is space next to it (on the “table top”) where you can display a short welcome message to your readers.  When they finish reading and close the magazine to the back cover it reveals another adjacent space where you can put a similarly short “Thank You” message (this is also a good place for a quick “call to action,” sales pitch, or to tell them what the feature piece of the next edition will be.

The last text box does not have a rich-text editor option and is labeled “Issue-Specific Styles.”  This is where you add stylesheet classes specific to this Ryuzine Press Edition (this will be covered in the next section).

Featured Image Cover Art

You can also attach a “Featured Image” to use as cover art instead of using the ryucover shortcode (however the shortcode offers more control of how the image is displayed as a cover).

Custom Configurations

There is a metabox at the bottom of the Edition edit post page that allows you to over-ride the global configurations set on Ryuzine Press > Options with settings applied specifically to that Edition.  It doesn’t repeat all the options, but does offer you the ability to easily change the binding, page size, cover art source, language settings, and apply a theme that may be different from the rest of your Editions.

Assigning Content to Editions

This is where you get to select your curated content that will be assigned to the edition.  Go to Posts > All Posts to assign existing posts or Posts > Add New to create new content for this edition.

Either through the “Quick Edit” option, or in the Post editor assign each post to the same Ryuzine Press Issue you previously selected for the Edition.  If the “Ryuzine Issues” panel isn’t visible in the Post Editor you may need to press the “Screen Options” tab near the top of the window and tick the “Ryuzine Issues” box.

As you assign posts keep in mind that they will be displayed in the Ryuzine publication from oldest to newest (this is typically the opposite of the order in which Archive pages will display them).  Posts you assign can belong to multiple issues at once, but they must belong to the same issue as an Edition to display within that edition.  You can, of course, include a post in more than one Edition as well.

Now all these posts exist in two places – within your Ryuzine Press Edition AND within your regular blog.  If you’ve enabled discussion for a post you can decide in the Ryuzine Press Options whether or not to show comments and the comment box within the pages of your Ryuzine Press Editions or not.  However, if a reader does submit a comment they will be taken to the corresponding blog post page afterwards and away from your Ryuzine Press Edition.  The pages, however, look a lot more clean and magazine-like if you disable comments.

Just like a real magazine the Ryuzine webapp expects page counts to be even numbers (the minimum number of posts you can assign is actually one page – the plugin will automatically add blank pages to make the count even.  The added pages are dynamically generated code, not actual blog pages – so don’t worry the plugin does not add tons of blank pages to your blog.

Due to what is probably a bug in WordPress you are allowed to publish posts without titles.  The Ryuzine Press plugin has a built-in fix for any such post where it will dynamically insert “Page” and the page number as the title on the page within the Ryuzine Press Edition and in the Ryuzine webapp “Table of Contents” (or you’d have no text to click).  The actual post, though, remains unaltered.  The Ryuzine Press plugin does not alter post content in your database.

Note: If the posts you have assigned are “Drafts” rather than “Published” they will not show up in the Ryuzine Edition to which they are assigned, even if you’re only viewing a “draft” version of the Edition itself.  Posts MUST be published to be used in a Ryuzine Edition.

Managing Editions

Once you’ve created a bunch of Ryuzine Press Editions you may need to go back and change something, fix a lightbox gallery item, or whatever.  You manage your Ryuzine Press Editions in the same way as any other post, except you do so under Ryuzine Press > Editions.  You’ll see a familiar looking post management list, the only difference is each item references one of your editions.

As of version 0.9.6.6 the “Categories” column is gone because it is no longer used.  It has been replaced by the “Ryuzine Issues” column.  You’ll also see that “Tags” are now available for Ryuzine Press Editions and another new column for “Rack Categories.”

“Tags” work for Ryuzine Press Editions just like they do for any other blog post, but these tags are ignored by the Ryuzine Press Plugin itself.  The “Rack Categories” are used by the Ryuzine Rack newsstand (if it is installed to theme), because it uses it’s own non-hierarchical category system independent of WordPress categories.  If you are not using Ryuzine Rack you can just ignore this column.  If you are using Ryuzine Rack, though, there is now the capability to edit and add Rack Categories as easily as any other category in WordPress.

You’ll also notice there are two new drop-down selectors to filter your Ryuzine Press Editions by Issue and Rack Category.  The Issue drop-down filter also appears on the regular Posts page and, if installed, the Comic Easel post management page.

Install the Ryuzine Press Plugin

The Ryuzine Press plugin is currently only available as a download directly from www.ryumaru.com.  It is not currently available for automatic installation or updating from the www.wordpress.org official repository.

Download, unzip, and upload the “ryuzine-press” folder to your WordPress Plugins folder. Go to the Plugins section of your Admin menu and click the “Activate” link. There will be a “Ryuzine Press” admin menu under the “Posts” with several options.

Note: Once everything is installed, If clicking “View Ryuzine” shows a blank page you’ll need to manually flush the permalink rewrites by simply visiting your Settings > Permalinks page (you don’t have to change or save anything, just visiting the settings page will do the trick).

Updating the Plug-In

The plugin will tell you when an update is available from the Ryu Maru server just like any other WordPress plugin.  The only difference is that it is served from our private plugin server instead of the official WordPress repository.

IMPORTANT:  You may need to go through the Options and Tools and make sure every entry has a selection and save changes.  Especially if you are updating from the beta version to 1.0 the global options have changed so some entries were dropped and new ones added.  If your Ryuzine Press Edition is throwing an alert that the “config file could not be found” you need to re-submit your preference settings.

Migration Assistant Plugin (for Beta Testers)

If you have already been using the Ryuzine Press plugin and have published a number of Editions an update to 0.9.6.6 (or later) will break all of your existing, published Editions!  This is because the old system that used the standard WordPress “Categories” has been replaced with a custom “Ryuzine Issues” taxonomy.  If you have never installed Ryuzine Press before version 1.0 you do not need to use the Migration Assistant, you’re already good to go.

In order to properly update your existing Editions you will need to “migrate” them from the old Categories system to the new Issues system.  If you have a lot of existing Editions or Editions with a lot of post assigned to them that would be a lot of work to migrate them manually.

Which is why we created the Ryuzine Press Migration Assistant plug-in.  Download, unzip, and FTP this to your ~/wp-content/plugins folder and activate it.  You’ll see the “Categories” column restored to the “All Editions” management page, and the Bulk Processing drop-down list now has a “Migrate” option.  Simply tick the checkbox next to the Editions(s) to migrate, select “Migrate” from the drop-down, and press the “Apply” button.  The Edition, and all the posts associated with it, will automatically be transferred from the old system to the new.

You should probably migrate Editions in small batches or you might have errors.  You also should not manually create corresponding Ryuzine Issues entries, let the Migration Assistant automatically create them for you.  Once everything is migrated you can deactivate and delete the migration plugin.

Install the Ryuzine Webapp (for Developers)

If you have installed Ryuzine Press from the source code at GitHub it doesn’t come bundled with the Ryuzine Reader and Rack webapps.  As was the case with the beta versions, you will need to manually install the webapps to the plugin.

Once the “ryuzine” folder is properly installed, if your server is correctly configured, you will see a blue “Install Ryuzine WebApp” when you go to Ryuzine Press > Tools > Update Ryuzine.  If the server is not set up to allow it you will, instead, see a green “Download Ryuzine WebApp” button.

Development of the Ryuzine webapps and the plugin are not necessarily in sync so it is possible an update to the webapp may be available even when there isn’t one for the plugin.  You can press the “Check for Update” button on the Tools > Update Ryuzine screen at any time to see if there is a newer  version available, and if there is the button will change to a “Download” button again, giving you the option to update.  There are no automatic checks, downloads, or installations of webapp updates.

The automatic method will attempt to download the Ryuzine webapp from the Ryu Maru server (not GitHub) and install install it to the Ryuzine Press plugin folder.  If the automatic method does not work you will need to manually download, unzip, and then FTP upload the “ryuzine” folder into your wp-content/plugins/ryuzine-press/ path.  If you also want to use the source code versions of the webapps you’ll need to manually assemble the “ryuzine” folder, plus any add-ons or themes you want to use, and then FTP it into the plugin.

Ryuzine™ is a family of webapps built on HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript designed to deliver a rich “app experience” publishing platform to mobile and desktop browser. Because they run inside the web browser there is no native app to download and install, no app store needed, no DRM, and the “responsive” interface adapts to different screen sizes allowing you to publish once for multiple platforms. The Ryuzine family of webapps includes:

Ryuzine Reader – a publication format that doesn’t require a separate e-reader app because the browser you already use is the e-reader. It offers numerous features including multiple bookmarks, font size adjustment, high-contrast and sepia page color options, integrated “mobile style” advertising options, alternate views, and highly customizable User Interface through a simple “theme” file plus targeting different platforms with different themes. Ryuzine publications can be hosted “in the cloud” on any website, packaged into archives for distribution as downloads for offline reading, or packaged as a native Android app¹.

Ryuzine Rack – a “newsstand” style webapp designed to make it easy to promote your Ryuzine publications (or anything else you want to promote). The stand-alone version uses simple HTML files for the “catalogs” of items, can host unlimited additional catalogs organized however the publisher wants (different titles, years, languages – it’s up to you!), user defined “Reading List” feature, items which can be sorted by multiple aspects, and an animated “promotion” carousel. Building the data catalogs for the “stand alone” version is really easy with Ryuzine Writer and the Ryuzine Press Plugin (see below) also has a utility for WordPress-powered catalogs.

Ryuzine Writer – a powerful cross-platform, cross-browser “authoring” webapp for creating Ryuzine publications, custom configuration files, and Ryuzine Rack data catalogs. Compose from scratch in the rich-text editor, start with the Template Wizard, or import and edit existing files. There is also a multi-device “simulator” in which you can see how your publication will look and work across a variety of screen sizes. Ryuzine Writer works in most modern desktop browsers.

Ryuzine Press – a plugin for WordPress blog sites which “bridges” the blog content to a Ryuzine installation on the same server. Create unlimited “editions” from your blog content presented in the engaging Ryuzine format. Promote your editions – and other items – with the (optional) bundled version of Ryuzine Rack. The Ryuzine Press Plugin replaces Ryuzine Writer with the WordPress backend for creating, editing, and organizing your content. It is also compatible with the ComicPress, Easel, and Webcomic plugins for building dynamic online comic books and manga from your existing WordPress-powered webcomic archives.

This manual covers authoring with Ryuzine Press for publishers creating publications and newsstands created from curated selections of WordPress blog posts. This manual is not intended for end users of Ryuzine Reader, it is intended for authors and publishers. All of the Ryuzine products are now free, open source software released under either the Mozilla Public License 2.0 or GNU General Public License 3.0.

Copyright 2015 K.M. Hansen & Ryu Maru.

All rights reserved. Reproduction and adaptation of this manual is prohibited without prior written permission, except as allowed under copyright laws. Automatic translation through online methods or devices is allowed. The programs that control this product are copyrighted.

Software Release Information

Version 1.0
Released August 2015

This manual was created in Ryuzine format with Ryuzine Press & WordPress.

Notice of Liability

The information in this manual is distributed on an “As Is” basis, without any warranty, and subject to change without notice. Neither the author nor publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or dmange caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instruction contained in this manual or by the computer software products described in it. In the event that you do experience any undocumented problems with this software, we would like to hear about it and will do our best to fix the problem in a future release. You can let us know about bugs at www.ryumaru.com or on GitHub.

Trademarks

Internet Explorer® is a registered trademark of Microsoft® Corporation. iOS®, iPhone®, iPod®, iPad®, and Safari® are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Firefox® is a registered trademark of Mozilla Corporation. Opera™ is a trademark of Opera Software ASA. InDesign® is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Inc. Scribus Copyright 2001-2011 Franz Schmid and rest of the members of the Scribus Team. Ryuzine™ is a trademark of K.M Hansen & Ryu Maru.

Ryuzine Press Publisher’s Manual

First Edition (October 2011)

Second Edition (August 2015)