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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  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 “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.

The third tab of the “Options” section is where you configure any of the add-ons you may have may want to use.  If you set an Add-On or Theme for use and it isn’t working double check that the add-ons and themes are actually installed to your server (they should be since Ryuzine Press now installs a webapp package that contains them all).

Language Settings

HTML Natural Language is used by auto-translation services and web browsers to recognize the native language in which a document is written and also to use the correct International character set.  It does NOT automatically translate your document to another language, it is used to define the language in which the document was written.

UI Language Code is ignored unless you also load the “Localize” add-on.  That add-on translates the webapp’s user interface into the selected language.  Again, this does NOT translate the document itself, just the User Interface.  It is intended to allow authors publishing in languages other than English and easy way to alter language on the automatically-generated user interface to match the language in which they’ve written the document.  The UI translations were performed by Google Translate and may not be accurate.

Note: If you apply one language to the UI with the “Localize” add-on and the document is in some other language it can confuse auto-translation services.

Optional Add-Ons

The Ryuzine webapp has it’s own Add-On system.  Enabling and disabling these Add-Ons for your publications is very similar to Activating/Deactivating WordPress plug-ins.  The list of available add-ons in built from whatever is found in the /ryuzine/addons sub-folder and you can enable/disable them by ticking or un-ticking the checkboxes.  Below the list you’ll also notice a line that says “Add-On Load Order” with a comma-separated list.  The order in which you tick the checkboxes changes the actual Load order of the add-ons.  This way, if you have one add-on that is dependent on another, you can make sure they load in the correct order.

Ryuzine Theme Settings

The Ryuzine webapp has its own theme system (which is completely independent of the WordPress theme).  If you install the “Theme Pack” you can also configure different themes to be delivered to different platforms, for example, to give Android users and iOS users each a theme that gives a more “native app” appearance to the interface.

Page Shadows – As the page animations turn there is a “shadow” drawn under them to give a more realistic three-dimensional appearance.  Some browsers and devices, however, may suffer performance issues trying to animate the semi-transparant layers.  If you want to better accommodate legacy and low-end users turn the shadows off.  Note that end users can enable/disable this on their own in the webapp’s “Options’ panel.

Default Theme – This drop-down allows you to select a default theme for your publications.   If you are not using Swap Themes this is the only theme that will be used.

Swap Themes – Determines whether or not the Platform Themes will be used or not.

Platform Themes – You’ll see after each box it says what platform would receive that theme when “Swap Themes” is enabled.

If you leave a box blank that platform will get the un-themed interface (Platform Themes over-ride any Default Theme setting).  While you can, in theory, target different platforms with different themes you never know if a browser may be “spoofing” its user-agent string.

The fourth tab on the “Options” section is for configuration of any Advertising using the webapp’s built-in ad areas.

Ad Display Settings

This is where you really enable each of the built-in ad areas by setting how long the ad(s) will display.  Setting the duration to zero will disable them, any other values will be the number of seconds to display the ad before automatically moving on, entering a letter “p” will make the add “persistent” (meaning the reader will have to manually close the ad).  Readers can always close an ad sooner than the duration you’ve set.

Ad Content Settings

Each of the built-in advertising areas has a similar method of configuration.

Type – You can select whether to use an image from your WordPress Media Library or some other type of advertising content.  If you select “Other Type” the image URL box is replaced by a text area box into which you can enter any kind of code.  In particular this means you can add “ad rotator” scripts, code to embed a Flash ad, or a code snippet for some third-party ad service.

The “Disable this Ad” checkbox will keep the ad content (whatever it is) from displaying in your Ryuzine Press Editions.  This option means you can set up various ads and have them ready to go and simply uncheck to box to make them go “live” in your magazines, for example, as part of a promotion or marketing campaign.

Ad Content – as noted above this will either be an image from your Media Library with or without a corresponding link entered in the “Ad Link URL” box or some other type of advertising code.

Keep in mind the available space for these ads within the webapp.  While images are automatically scaled to fit by width, other ad types may not auto-adjust.

Ryuzine Press no longer requires the use of the shortcodes detailed below, but they were retained for backwards compatibility for anyone who had been using the beta releases.  They were used to customize the Edition cover art and create lightbox links and embedded content.

Lightbox Links

The new lightbox link method doesn’t require a shortcode, so you can enter links similar to this in your body text:

<a href=”your_url” rel=”lightbox” class=”lb_video“>…link text or thumbnail image…</a>

If the old format “lightbox” add-on is used, or no lightbox add-on is loaded at all, direct links to media will simply open in a new tab or window, while anchor links will be opened in either a lightbox or the standard Dialog box if no lightbox add-on is in use.  The new “ryulightbox” add-on can also open direct links to media in a lightbox.

If you still want to use the shortcode, though, (for example to hide the links on your regular blog front-end) you can enter them like this:

ryuboxlink url=”your_url” type=”video“. . .link text or thumbnail image. . ./ryuboxlink

Whether you use the <a> tags or the shortcode, you have a number of additional parameters you can enter:

<a rel=”lightbox”>	ryuboxlink	Description
href	url	Use “#” for embedded lightbox content, or just enter any URL if not embedded.
data-linkid	id	“id” maps to href=”#[id]” (for backwards compatibility with existing links using old method)
data-layout	layout	whether image is “landscape” or “portrait” orientation which may or may not be used by the lightbox script.
title	title	Revealed on mouseover of link, some lightbox scripts may use it for the caption
class	type	Entered as class=”lb_video” in <a> tags, type=”video” in ryuboxlink shortcode. Valid types are: 3d, document, info, larger, magnify, movie, photo, video, website, minus Supplying no link type will use the standard plus icon.
data-caption	caption	Some scripts will use this to generate a caption. Useful for scripts that will lightbox offsite content.
data-gallery	gallery	An arbitrary name for the gallery to which this link content belongs (if any).
data-aspect	aspect	square (or omit) = 4:3 | wide = 16:9 | book = 3:4 | tall = 9:16

IMPORTANT: If you wrap a thumbnail image in a ryuboxlink shortcode make sure that image does NOT have a link set for it! If it does it will try to nest an <a> tag inside another <a> which will prevent the wrapped content from being shown.

The “type=” parameter is completely optional, but allows you to control what kind of icon appears in the lower corner of the link.  The valid types are:

• larger
• magnify
• photo
• video
• movie
• info
• 3d
• website
• document

If you are using the new <a> tag method simply prefix these with “lb_” (for “lightbox”) as the link’s class.

Normally any ryuboxlink content will not be visible in the post when viewed in your regular blog theme. However, if you want them to appear in the blog as well (for example to trigger a regular WordPress plugin’s lightbox effect) change the setting on this Options setting  to “Show Lightbox Linkis content on blog.”  Lightbox links using the new <a> tag will always appear on your blog as well (and are much easier to tie into many WordPress lightbox plugins so they work both in your Ryuzine Press Editions and on your regular blog).

The “ryulightbox” add-on will look for “data-caption” text to display under non-embedded lightbox content.  If no “data-caption” is present it will then use any text in the “title” attribute for the link (not the image!), and if there is no title it will fall back to displaying the URI of the content as a link below the lightboxed content.

Note: the “ryulightbox” add-on allows you to customize what string it uses in the link “rel” attribute to identify it as a link to lightboxed content.  You have to edit the file at ~/wp-content/plugins/ryuzine-press/ryuzine/addons/ryulightbox/ryulightbox.config.js under the “reltxt” configuration setting.  The default is “lightbox” and even if you are using other lightbox plugins/scripts on your site it most likely won’t conflict (the “ryulightbox” add-on only looks for a match to the “rel” text string, and ignores anything else in the “rel” attribute value).

Built-In Lightbox

Even if you are using a lightbox plugin or script elsewhere on your blog it probably won’t work in your Ryuzine Press editions because they do not use the standard WordPress headers and footers (where the lightbox plugins typically enqueue their scripts). So Ryuzine Press has its own lightbox add-on, which is accessible through two WordPress shortcodes. Note that these only produce a lightbox effect if you also enabled a lightbox add-on in Ryuzine Press > Options > Add-Ons, otherwise the content will be displayed in a simple dialog box.

When you go to Ryuzine > Add New you can create your “lightbox gallery” in the post compose textbox. Define each item with the shortcode:

ryubox id=”your_id” orient=”land|port. . .whatever content you want in the lightbox. . ./ryubox

You can use anything you want for the “id” value, you’ll just need to know what it is when you create the link to open it. The “orient” attribute is optional for landscape orientation content (“land” is automatically assumed), however if the content in the lightbox is portrait orientation set the value to “port” so it will fit by height, rather than width, in the webapp.

The lightbox is primarily intended for displaying images, but it can also be used to showcase other content. However, if you use non-image content either code it with max-width and max-height or percentages so it can scale, or add scaling by media-query in the issue stylesheet. If you don’t the content may not fit in the browser window on smaller screen devices.

Note: The ryubox shortcode ONLY works inside Ryuzine Press posts

Lightbox Links

In order to trigger the built-in lightbox you’ll need to add special links to your posts with this shortcode:

ryuboxlink id=”your_id” type=”video”. . .link text or thumbnail image. . ./ryuboxlink

Match the “id” value to the same “id” value of a ryubox item.

The “type=” parameter is completely optional, but allows you to control what kind of icon appears in the lower corner of the link.  The valid types are:

• larger
• magnify
• photo
• video
• movie
• info
• 3d
• website
• document

Normally any ryuboxlink content will not be visible in the post when viewed in your regular blog theme. However, if you want it to appear in the blog as well (for example to trigger a regular WordPress plugin’s lightbox effect) change the “Lightbox Links” setting to “Show” the links elsewhere on your blog.

Cover Images

Featured Image: The simplest, preferred method for creating a cover image for your Ryuzine Press Editions is to use the “Featured Image” function.  However, that doesn’t give you fine control over how the cover is displayed, in which case you may want to use the shortcode.

Shortcode: Surround an image placed from your Media Library with the “ryucover” shortcode. This image is used by the optional Ryuzine Rack newsstand webapp (which replaces the auto-generated Archive page) and is also used if you have set “Use ryucover shortcode image” as the Cover Source under the “Covers” tab above.  Syntax:

ryucover bleed=”0|1|cover|2|contain|3|width|4|height” color=”white|blue|#ccc” shift=”Xpx Ypx”…../ryucover

The ryucover shortcode now accepts up to three optional parameters, “bleed,” “color,” and/or “shift.” The “bleed” option accepts the following settings:

• 0 | null : Set it to zero or no value (or omit the parameter entirely) and any image wrapped by the shortcode will be embedded in the page content, rather than set as the cover’s background.
• 1 | cover : Fits the image, maintaining the aspect ratio, to the LARGEST size it can be that fits BOTH the width and height.
• 2 | contain : Fits the image, maintaining the aspect ratio, to the SMALLEST size that will fit BOTH the width and height.
• 3 | width : Will take any image wrapped in the shortcode and set it as the cover’s background, center it, and scale (maintaining the aspect ratio) by width. Any part of the image that does not fit spills beyond the borders of the page.
• 4 | height : Will scale the background image (maintaining aspect ratio) to fit by height with any parts of the image that do not fit spilling beyond the borders of the page.

Generally the “cover” and “width” settings are similar and “contain” and “height” are similar, but they may render with slightly different bordering if they are not an exact fit for the space.

The “color” parameter, if omitted or left empty, defaults to “white.” Otherwise you can set it to any valid HTML color by name (such as “blue”), hex code (“#cccccc”), hex code shorthand (“#ccc”), or rgb/rgba color set. If you set an invalid value your background image also will not show

The “shift” parameter allows you to adjust the positioning of the background image. The default position is “center 0” if you omit this parameter, which is what you most likely want. However, if you want to change the positioning the syntax is “Xpx Ypx” with a space between the values, which need to be set in pixels. Other valid values include “center center” (may move top of image out of view), “0 0” (does not need “px”), “left top” (same as “0 0”), “right bottom” (or similar word combinations).

Promotions (Ryuzine Rack)

If you include a promotional image it is used by the optional Ryuzine Rack in the animated carousel at the top of the webapp. Ryuzine Rack will always grab the newest item and promote it (if there is no promo image it automatically builds a promotion using the catalog info). Additional promotions (if any) are displayed by date, newest to oldest, up to the maximum number of promotions you set on the Ryuzine Rack Options tab. The ryupromo shortcode has no additional parameters:

ryupromo…../ryupromo

Cover & Promo Hints

Here are things to keep in mind when including a “ryucover” and “ryupromo” shortcodes:

Only the first instance of the shortcode will be used. Any additional ones for the same Edition are ignored by both Ryuzine Press and Ryuzine Rack. However they may still be displayed if you are using the auto-generated Archive page and a theme which displays full content in archive search results.

The shortcode-wrapped images are automatically scaled to fit their respective spaces. If they are too small or low resolution they’ll look terrible when scaled up.

Ideally place at least a “Medium” sized image that links to the full-size image. Ryuzine Rack will prefer the thumbnail, Ryuzine Press will prefer the full-size image. If you place an image without a link both will end up using the same image.

Cover images should be in “portrait” orientation, not “landscape.” The cover images are distorted to fit the aspect ratio of the cover thumbnail. Images used as Edition covers, though, are scaled to fit by width while maintaining the original aspect ratio of the image.

Promotional banners should be in “landscape” mode, not “portrait.” The promotional images are scaled to fit the carousel by width while maintaining the aspect ratio (i.e., they are not distorted).

The maximum display sizes are 150×230 pixels for Ryuzine Rack cover thumbnails and about 640×800 for Ryuzine Press Edition covers.

All promotional images should be 640×300 pixels. If you do not want to create one simply do this: ryupromoauto/ryupromo and Ryuzine Rack will automatically construct a promotion for that item.

For better image quality on high-density displays (like on the iPad 3 and iPhone 4 or 5) you need to use images around 2x larger than the dimensions given immediately above.

To make Ryuzine Rack load more quickly you can sacrifice image quality and use smaller images that will load faster. You can also reduce the maximum number of promotions and promotional images.

Embed Ryuzine

This shortcode allows you to easily embed any Ryuzine Press Edition in a blog post or page (similar to how you can embed videos) by just using the Edition’s title.

ryuzine title=”Ryuzine Press Edition Title”

The shortcode accepts the following parameters:

• title: The actual title of a Ryuzine Press Edition or “ryuzine-rack” to embed the newsstand (assuming it is installed to the current theme).
• url: Allows entering a raw URL (over-rides any “title” setting) but is restricted to YOUR site and only Ryuzine Press Editions*
• page: On load flip the Edition to a specific page number.
• height: The height of the embedded publication in pixels or percent (add “%” sign if percentage)
• width: The width of the embedded publication in pixels or percent (add “%” sign if percentage)
• size: small|medium|large|spread enter one of these preset sizes (if present over-rides height and width)
• class: a stylesheet class name to apply to the iframe
• style: inline styles to apply to the iframe

Everything other than the “title” is optional. You can also style the different elements of the embed by the following classnames:

• ryuzine_embed – the DIV container for the embed
• ryu_embed_tab – the links below the embedded Ryuzine
• ryu_embed_tabbox” – the main container for the “Embed Code” form (div container not form tag)
• ryu_embed_input – the Height and Width text inputs

* Embedding off-site Ryuzine URLs is blocked by design. Because you do not control a third-party site embedding represents a security risk. If you want to cross-promote with other Ryuzine publishers use the Ryuzine Rack Catalog Builder to create an entries for their content and install Ryuzine Rack to your theme.

RyuzineRack is an optional newsstand webapp you can use to showcase your own Ryuzine Press Publications and other online content. If you are not using it you can safely ignore this settings tab. Otherwise this is where you can define the Media Types, Button Label text for each type, and the media categories.

Promo Animation – if there are at least 5 promotions in the carousel at the top of the newsstand they will auto-rotate on whatever interval you set in seconds.  If you want to disable the animation set it to zero.

Maximum Promotions – it obviously doesn’t make sense to make a promotion for everything.  Ideally you only want it to promote your most recent and/or best content.  Select the maximum number of promotions in the drop-down list.  Note that the newest item in your catalog will always automatically be promoted.

Link Opens –  option sets how linked content from Ryuzine Rack opens when a user presses the buttons below a cover thumbnail or in an information card. The default behavior can vary, for example:

1. Within the web browser the default is to open links in the same window. This replaces Ryuzine Rack with the linked content. If a user goes back to
   Ryuzine Rack it needs to reload the webapp.
2. Within iOS “app view” (when bookmarked to the Home Screen and run from there) the default is to open links in a new window within Mobile Safari. iOS
   will switch from the “app view” Ryuzine Rack to the opened content in Mobile Safari.

The linkOpens option accepts a value corresponding to the following:

• 0 = default – usually within the same window, except as noted above.
• 1 = _self – forces link open in the same window, even in iOS “app view”
• 2 = _blank – forces link open in a new window.
• 3 = _parent – same as _self unless Ryuzine Rack was inside a frame in which case it opens in that frame’s parent frame.
• 4 = _top – same as _self unless Ryuzine Rack was inside a frame in which case it opens in the window holding the frame.
• 5 = an in-app experimental method that opens content within Ryuzine Rack

Older versions of Ryuzine Rack, and newer versions linked to an old configuration file, will simply ignore this setting and open content in the same window. On iOS devices if “native scrolling,” “iScroll,” and “Zoom & Pan” are all disabled a javascript method for linking is substituted.

The experimental “in-app” method (setting 5) builds an IFRAME within the Lightbox Gallery and then opens the linked content in that IFRAME. It also adds an overlay control at the center top allowing users to “Go Back to Rack” which closes the lightbox, unloads the IFRAME, and returns to the Ryuzine Rack list. If the document at which you are currently looking is not on your “Reading List” there is an “Add” button to do so. In tablet and desktop views it will also display thumbnail images of the covers of items that are on your “Reading List,” allowing you to click the cover images to load those items in the “in-app” window. Known problems include:

• May break some secure sites that will not work inside an IFRAME
• May require different touch gestures for interaction (depending on the device)
• Using the browser’s bookmark/favorites control will likely only mark Ryuzine Rack – not the opened content (though the in-app Bookmarking and Sharing will point to the correct document)
• The browser’s “Back” button will will load the site before Ryuzine Rack, not return the user to Ryuzine Rack from opened content.
• On low-end devices there may also be a serious performance hit because it is still running Ryuzine Rack underneath the other content
• May crash some mobile browsers by exceeding the cache limit
• It attempts to shift user focus to the opened content, but it is still possible in-app keyboard shortcuts will be controlling Ryuzine Rack (underneath) instead of the loaded Content (on top) until the user interacts with the opened content by mouse or touch

This method does, however, keep users at your web domain regardless of where the content you are linking to is hosted, and it also means returning to Ryuzine Rack doesn’t require reloading the entire webapp (as it was never closed). But the aforementioned possible issues are why we’re calling this method “experimental” right now. As with all the linkOpens options, earlier versions of Ryuzine Rack will simply ignore this setting.

Items Per Page – this sets the default number of items to show per page.  The more items you show the longer it will take the app to load, but too few items may cause your catalog to have too many pages.  End users have the ability to customize this to their own liking in the Options panel, you’re just declaring the starting number of items to display.

Media Types – the “Media Type/Button Label” pairs determine what types of media appear on the drop-down list in the “Rack Catalog Builder” and the button label determines what text appears on the button under the cover thumbnail for that type of media when it is shown in the newsstand’s sort results.  The media type also appears as a link in the item details which users can select to search the catalog for only items of that type.

Rack Categories – You can define as many Rack Categories as you want (it’s under Ryuzine Press > Rack Categories).  These will automatically appear as a drop-down list on the Rack Options page where you can set one of them as the default media category.  These same drop-down options appear on the Rack Catalog Builder for each row, and as a meta-box with radio button selectors on the Edit page for Ryuzine Press Editions (but only if you’ve actually installed Ryuzine Rack to your current theme).

The RyuzineRack newsstand is an optional webapp which replaces the standard Ryuzine archive page in WordPress. It will automatically include all your published Ryuzine Press Editions. However, you can also include additional content by appending the main catalog and/or creating additional catalogs.  There will always be one Catalog you cannot delete, but it doesn’t need to have anything in it either.

Adding and Deleting catalogs is as easy as anything else in WordPress.  Just press the “Add Catalog” or “Delete Catalog” buttons.  The default catalog will always be appended to the end of the automatically generated entries for your Ryuzine Press Editions.  However, any catalogs you manually add offer the option to “append” them or make them a “separate” catalog:

If you want to delete a catalog you’ve added press the “Delete” button at the top of the Tools section and a small box opens up with a list of all the extra catalogs by whatever names you gave them.  Select the checkbox(es) for the one(s) you want to get rid of and press the “Delete Checked” button – and heed the warning that it cannot be undone!

If you “append” the tables to the main catalog the items listed in them will just be added to that main catalog.  If you set them as a “separate” catalog, though, they will appear in the newsstand app’s “Sort List” panel.  If an end-user selects them the main catalog is unloaded and the selected catalog is loaded.  Users can only search or sort across a single catalog at a time.

Note: there is also a text link that reads “Hide Intro Text” which will hide the large block of explanatory text above the default Catalog table.  Once you start adding items and catalogs it can be annoying to have all that text taking up space so just go ahead and hide it.

What goes into a Catalog?

A catalog might contain links to store pages for print publications, or downloadable PDF files, and you can divide up the content into individual catalogs focused on a single year, title, media type, etc. Each catalog can also have an optional “masthead” image, which is displayed above the first page of newsstand items.

Additional items might include links to other websites, Ryuzine publications on other websites, links to store pages for print publications, downloads, etc.

Below you can see the Data Builder for the default catalog (which is always appended to the Ryuzine Press Edition archive data). The Catalog Names appear in the reader’s “Sort List” panel, as do the sortable column names (in bold black text in the table headers).

The drop-down lists for “Category” and “Type” are defined in the Options panel, as they are part of the Configuration File.

The ▶ arrow button in the table item rows will open the “Media Library” to select an image for the Cover Thumbnail or a Promotion Banner. You can also simply enter the word “auto” and RyuzineRack will automatically build a promotional layout for that item. However, to prevent too many items from being shown as promos it will always show the newest item as a promo, and then up to five additional items with promos, selected newest to oldest (or however many promos you set as minimum in Options > Ryuzine Rack.

Note that the Catalog files do not contain any actual image or document files.  Much like any database they can only hold text string data such as the URL to an image or a document type or category.

Cover and Promo images are scaled to fit the Ryuzine Rack layout, but they are scaled preserving the original aspect ratio.  Cover thumbnails are scaled to 150 pixels wide and Promo Banners are scaled to 600 pixels wide (75px and 300px for mobile portrait view).  If you are using the shortcode that cover image will be automatically used for the cover thumbnail of that Ryuzine Press Edition in Ryuzine Rack.  The Rack Catalog Builder is for adding content that is not a Ryuzine Press Edition.

List Widget

Ryuzine Press has it’s own custom WordPress widget for displaying a list of Editions. It can also display a link to the Ryuzine Rack Newsstand (if you’ve installed it to the theme) and highlight the cover art for you latest Edition.  You’ll find it under:

Appearance > Widgets > Ryuzine Press Editions

Just add it to the sidebar in which you want the list of published Editions to appear.

It has a few options:

• Heading: It normally has the header “Ryuzine Press Editions” but you can customize it to say something else here (particularly if you need it in another language).
• Hide widget if there is no content? If you don’t have any Editions published yet, or have deleted all your Editions for some reason checking this box will prevent it from showing an empty widget.
• Display only on the home page? – If you want to restrict this list so it is only shown on your blog’s home page tick this checkbox.
• Order Oldest to Newest (default) – determines if the list is ordered “ascending” or “descending”
• Show n Editions – Enter “-1” to show all Ryuzine Press Editions in the list, or some other specific number of them to show.
• Cover Art Thumbnails – determines which Editions show cover art thumbnails (if any):
  • “Newest Only” will only show a cover for the most recent Edition (of those displayed).
  • “All Cover Art” will show cover thumbnails for every Edition (of those being displayed).
  • “No Cover Art” will show only text links for however many Editions are displayed.
• Restrict Cover Thumbnail Size? – if “Show Cover” is checked and this is checked too it will use the settings in the next row:
• Thumbnail Size (in pixels) either “High” or “Wide” – (NEW in 0.9.6.7) if size restriction is enabled the image will be scaled to whatever pixel size you set.  If you size by width the height is automatic, if you size by height the width is automatic, to maintain the image aspect ratio.  Note that this can be over-ridden by any CSS classes you might have set for images in your sidebar.

The following options only appear if you have “Ryuzine Rack” enabled on your blog:

• Ryuzine Rack Heading: Normally this says “Ryuzine Rack” but you can customize it to say something else (for example “Library” or “Store”).  This becomes the link to your newsstand.
• Show link to Ryuzine Rack? – Tick this box to determine if the link to the Ryuzine Rack webapp is shown or not (over-rides any Ryuzine Rack Heading you set).

Note: If you restrict the size of a cover thumbnail but type non-numeric characters in the box it will use the default size (125 pixels).  If you leave the box empty it ignores the restriction and uses the actual image size (unless CSS image classes for your sidebar over-ride it).  The cover thumbnail is also given the class “ryucover” if you want to create custom styling for it.

Social Widget

The Ryuzine webapp has a built-in option for your readers to share your publications on social networks or via email in the “Share Panel.”  If you don’t configure anything it will use the default “Social Widget” add-on which provides the social media sharing features you most likely want.

However, you can use any WordPress plugin social media widget instead.  The “Share Panel” is set up as a “sidebar” in the WordPress Appearance > Widgets section and you can just drag and drop a social network widget into the Ryuzine Share Bubble box (technically you can put any widget you like in the bubble, but it was intended for social networking).  In particular the share bubble works with Marijn Ronge’s Social Sharing Toolkit widget.

You can also paste social-networking code snippets into the box, for example those from Add This or Share This,  and they should work.  The “Share Bubble” will expand to contain whatever you drop into it, but you may not like the spacing or background color, etc., in which case you can also drop the “Text” widget into it and add <style>….</style> code to alter the appearance of the bubble or the widget content inside of it.

Note: you could also use other social media add-ons for the Ryuzine webapp itself, however at the time of this writing the default “Social Widget” add-on is the only one available.  How to create your own Ryuzine add-ons is beyond the scope of this manual.

ComicPress posts in a Ryuzine Press Edition, adapting to different screen sizes and orientations on mobile devices.
(Artwork by Jon Sloan, www.sa-bomjimcomic.com) 

The Ryuzine Press Plugin was created from the start with ComicPress integration in mind.  ComicPress is a popular theme system for WordPress which makes it easy to publish and manage a webcomics blog.

Upload your comic pages and (optionally) create a post to go with them as you would normally do with ComicPress.  It is recommended you use ComicPress Manager plugin to help, but is not required.

Assigning Comics to Editions

Once your comic posts are in place assigning them to a Ryuzine Press Edition is as simple as categorizing any regular blog posts – in fact you can mix them in the same edition.  Create your Ryuzine Press Edition and assign it to an existing Ryuzine Issue (or create an Issue specifically for this Edition).  Then simply go to Posts > All Posts and find the comics you want to assign in the list.  Using the “Quick Edit” link and tick the box for the Issue corresponding with the Ryuzine Press Edition.  Do the same for all the comics and/or blog posts you want to assign to the edition, remembering they will be displayed oldest to newest.  This is usually the preferable order since most people using ComicPress to post ongoing stories will have posts in that chronological order, and the WordPress archive pages usually show them newest to oldest, but in “comic reading order” they need to be oldest to newest.

Note that this all works much better if you are posting comic PAGES rather than comic STRIPS.  If your work is in strip format you may want to consider creating images with multiple strips and posting them as “pages” or there may be a lot of white space below a relatively small bit of artwork.  Ryuzine Press now explicitly excludes ComicPress Flash/Motion comics and galleries.  Single pages are the only thing that works.

Covers & Pages

If you want to use the oldest post assigned to an Edition as the cover you will need to configure “Cover Source” under Ryuzine Press > Options > Covers.  Realize that this is a global setting affecting ALL your Ryuzine Press Editions.

Under the “Pages” tab you can also decide whether or not to show or hide bylines and dates, meta data, and/or comments.  There is also an option specific to ComicPress posts that will suppress any related post text.  Use this option if you want a cleaner appearance more like reading a real comic book.

You can also add Issue-Specific styling to the Ryuzine Press Edition (in the last custom box) to hide all the headers, leaving just an empty top margin, which makes it look even more like a real comic book.

If you are not using the oldest post for the cover you can use the auto-generated covers.  You may find these are more flexible in that you can have a single image to overlay on all covers as a masthead and use CSS and media queries to place “full-bleed” cover artwork, and you can tag back-up stories or non-comic content with your “featured” category as well and have them automatically turned into clickable links on the cover.

Webcomic is another popular WordPress plugin for creating and managing web comics.  After downloading, installing, and activating the Webcomic plugin you will see a new admin menu item named “Webcomic” appear.  In Ryuzine Press it doesn’t matter if you are using a Webcomic-compatible theme or if you have ticked the “Integrate” option in the Webcomic Settings.  Remember that Ryuzine Press exists alongside of and independently of any WordPress theme you are using.

Assigning Comics to Editions

Once your comic posts are in place assigning them to a Ryuzine Press Edition is as simple as categorizing any regular blog posts – in fact you can mix them in the same edition.  Create your Ryuzine Press Edition and assign it to an existing Ryuzine Issue (or create an Issue specifically for this Edition).  Then simply go to Webcomic > Webcomics and find the comics you want to assign in the list.  Using the “Edit” link open the comic post and look for the “Ryuzine Issues” list on the right.  If it isn’t there you may need to go to “Screen Options” at the top and enable it.  Once you’ve got it, tick the box for the Issue corresponding with the Ryuzine Press Edition.  Note that doing this may unlink the comic image from the post.  If that happens use the “Webcomic” sub-section (below the main post box) to re-link the correct image to the post.

Do the same for all the comics and/or blog posts you want to assign to the edition, remembering they will be displayed oldest to newest.  This is usually the preferable order since most people using Webcomic to post ongoing stories will have posts in that chronological order, and the WordPress archive pages usually show them newest to oldest, but in “comic reading order” they need to be oldest to newest.

Note that this all works much better if you are posting comic PAGES rather than comic STRIPS.  If your work is in strip format you may want to consider creating images with multiple strips and posting them as “pages” or there may be a lot of white space below a relatively small bit of artwork.

If you are switching from either ComicPress or Easel to Webcomic as your platform Ryuzine Press Editions can simultaneously display mixed posts from Webcomic and either ComicPress or Easel.

Covers & Pages

If you want to use the oldest post assigned to an Edition as the cover you will need to configure “Cover Source” under Ryuzine Press > Options > Covers.  Realize that this is a global setting affecting ALL your Ryuzine Press Editions.

Under the “Pages” tab you can also decide whether or not to show or hide bylines and dates, meta data, and/or comments.  There is also an option specific to comic posts that will suppress any related post text.  Use this option if you want a cleaner appearance more like reading a real comic book.

You can also add Issue-Specific styling to the Ryuzine Press Edition (in the last custom box) to hide all the headers, leaving just an empty top margin, which makes it look even more like a real comic book.

If you are not using the oldest post for the cover you can use the auto-generated covers.  You may find these are more flexible in that you can have a single image to overlay on all covers as a masthead and use CSS and media queries to place “full-bleed” cover artwork, and you can tag back-up stories or non-comic content with your “featured” category as well and have them automatically turned into clickable links on the cover.

These additional Ryuzine resources are also available:

Official Stable Releases

The official stable releases of the Ryuzine web apps are available for download from the Ryu Maru website. These are pre-configured, bundled versions suitable for general users.

Ryuzine Publisher Distribution Kit

Ryuzine Press Plugin for WordPress

Source Code

The source code may have fixes and features not found in the stable releases, but are neither preconfigured nor bundled. You can’t just download the repositories and have a functioning version of the Ryuzine web apps, as some assembly and configuration is required first to make them work. These downloads are suitable for developers, not general users.

Ryu Maru on GitHub

Other Documentation

Ryuzine Writer 1.0 Publisher’s Manual – how to use the stand-alone Ryuzine Writer authoring webapp.

Ryuzine 1.0 Add-Ons Wiki – details on how to create optional add-ons for the Ryuzine webapps.

Ryuzine Document Specification Wiki – details on the document structure required to convert into a Ryuzine Reader publicaiton.

Feedback/Bug Reports

If you discover an issue with any of the Ryuzine web apps you should report it in the appropriate Ryu Maru GitHub repository for that web app.

Social Media

Connect to and follow Ryu Maru on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

The Ryuzine web apps are designed to work in modern web browsers on current platforms. They are typically backwards compatible a browser version or two but generally will not work in legacy browsers or on obsolete platforms.

Ryuzine Press Plugin

The Ryuzine Press plugin is compatible with:

• WordPress 3.5+
• ComicPress 2.9+
• Webcomic 3.0.10+
• Easel 2.0.7 (with Comic Press Lite)

Ryuzine Reader & Ryuzine Rack

• Apple Safari 5 (Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later)
• Google Chrome 30+ (Windows XP or later, Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later, Linux 3.0+)
• Firefox 20+ (Windows XP or later, Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later, Linux 3.0+)
• Opera 20+ (Windows XP or later, Mac OS X 10.7 or later , Linux 3.0+)
• Internet Explorer 9* or later (Windows XP or later, Internet Explorer 10+ recommended)
• Microsoft Edge (Windows 10)
• Mobile Safari (iOS 7.1 or later)
• Android Browser (Android 2.3 or later, Android 4.0+ recommended)*
• Chrome Mobile (Android 4.0 or later)
• Internet Explorer Mobile (Windows Phone 7.5+)*
• Silk Browser (FireOS 4.1+)

* Browser does not support some of the features or functionality but web app is usable.

The Ryuzine webapps may still function in earlier versions of the browsers than those listed, but earlier versions are no longer targets for functionality and future webapp releases will not be tested in them.