BookWyrm is still a young piece of software, and isn't at the level of stability and feature-richness that you'd find in a production-ready application. But it does what it says on the box! If you'd like to join an instance, you can check out the [instances](https://github.com/mouse-reeve/bookwyrm/blob/main/instances.md) list.
You can request an invite to https://bookwyrm.social by [email](mailto:mousereeve@riseup.net), [Mastodon direct message](https://friend.camp/@tripofmice), or [Twitter direct message](https://twitter.com/tripofmice).
Please feel encouraged and welcome to point out bugs, suggestions, feature requests, and ideas for how things ought to work using [GitHub issues](https://github.com/mouse-reeve/bookwyrm/issues).
Code contributions are gladly welcomed! If you're not sure where to start, take a look at the ["Good first issue"](https://github.com/mouse-reeve/bookwyrm/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22good+first+issue%22) tag. Because BookWyrm is a small project, there isn't a lot of formal structure, but there is a huge capacity for one-on-one support, which can look like asking questions as you go, pair programming, video chats, et cetera, so please feel free to reach out.
If you have questions about the project or contributing, you can set up a video call during BookWyrm ["office hours"](https://calendly.com/mouse-reeve/30min).
Do you speak a language besides English? BookWyrm needs localization! If you're comfortable using git and want to get into the code, there are [instructions](#working-with-translations-and-locale-files) on how to create and edit localization files. If you feel more comfortable working in a regular text editor and would prefer not to run the application, get in touch directly and we can figure out a system, like emailing a text file, that works best.
BookWyrm is an ad-free passion project with no intentions of seeking out venture funding or corporate financial relationships. If you want to help keep the project going, you can donate to the [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/bookwyrm), or make a one time gift via [PayPal](https://paypal.me/oulipo).
BookWyrm is a platform for social reading! You can use it to track what you're reading, review books, and follow your friends. It isn't primarily meant for cataloguing or as a data-source for books, but it does do both of those things to some degree.
BookWyrm is built on [ActivityPub](http://activitypub.rocks/). With ActivityPub, it inter-operates with different instances of BookWyrm, and other ActivityPub compliant services, like Mastodon. This means you can run an instance for your book club, and still follow your friend who posts on a server devoted to 20th century Russian speculative fiction. It also means that your friend on mastodon can read and comment on a book review that you post on your BookWyrm instance.
Federation makes it possible to have small, self-determining communities, in contrast to the monolithic service you find on GoodReads or Twitter. An instance can be focused on a particular interest, be just for a group of friends, or anything else that brings people together. Each community can choose which other instances they want to federate with, and moderate and run their community autonomously. Check out https://runyourown.social/ to get a sense of the philosophy and logistics behind small, high-trust social networks.
Since the project is still in its early stages, the features are growing every day, and there is plenty of room for suggestions and ideas. Open an [issue](https://github.com/mouse-reeve/bookwyrm/issues) to get the conversation going!
If you edit the CSS or JavaScript, you will need to run Django's `collectstatic` command in order for your changes to have effect. You can do this by running:
Text in the html files are wrapped in translation tags (`{% trans %}` and `{% blocktrans %}`), and Django generates locale files for all the strings in which you can add translations for the text. You can find existing translations in the `locale/` directory.
The application's language is set by a request header sent by your browser to the application, so to change the language of the application, you can change the default language requested by your browser.
#### Adding a locale
To start translation into a language which is currently supported, run the django-admin `makemessages` command with the language code for the language you want to add (like `de` for German, or `en-gb` for British English):
``` bash
./bw-dev makemessages -l <languagecode>
```
#### Editing a locale
When you have a locale file, open the `django.po` in the directory for the language (for example, if you were adding German, `locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/django.po`. All the the text in the application will be shown in paired strings, with `msgid` as the original text, and `msgstr` as the translation (by default, this is set to an empty string, and will display the original text).
Add your translations to the `msgstr` strings. As the messages in the application are updated, `gettext` will sometimes add best-guess fuzzy matched options for those translations. When a message is marked as fuzzy, it will not be used in the application, so be sure to remove it when you translate that line.
The `production` branch of BookWyrm contains a number of tools not on the `main` branch that are suited for running in production, such as `docker-compose` changes to update the default commands or configuration of containers, and individual changes to container config to enable things like SSL or regular backups.
- Add your domain, email address, SMTP credentials
- Set a secure redis password and secret key
- Set a secure database password for postgres
- Update your nginx configuration in `nginx/default.conf`
- Replace `your-domain.com` with your domain name
- If you aren't using the `www` subdomain, remove the www.your-domain.com version of the domain from the `server_name` in the first server block in `nginx/default.conf` and remove the `-d www.${DOMAIN}` flag at the end of the `certbot` command in `docker-compose.yml`.
- If you are running another web-server on your host machine, you will need to follow the [reverse-proxy instructions](#running-bookwyrm-behind-a-reverse-proxy)
- Run the application (this should also set up a Certbot ssl cert for your domain) with
`docker-compose up --build`, and make sure all the images build successfully
- When docker has built successfully, stop the process with `CTRL-C`
- Comment out the `command: certonly...` line in `docker-compose.yml`, and uncomment the following line (`command: renew ...`) so that the certificate will be automatically renewed.
- Uncomment the https redirect and `server` block in `nginx/default.conf` (lines 17-48).
- Run docker-compose in the background with: `docker-compose up -d`
- Go to the site settings (`/settings/site-settings` on your domain) and configure your instance name, description, code of conduct, and toggle whether registration is open on your instance
The application is set up to share book and author data between instances, and get book data from arbitrary outside sources. Right now, the only connector is to OpenLibrary, but other connectors could be written.
-`Book`, an abstract, high-level concept that could mean either a `Work` or an `Edition`. No data is saved as a `Book`, it serves as shared model for `Work` and `Edition`
-`Work`, the theoretical umbrella concept of a book that encompasses every edition of the book, and
-`Edition`, a concrete, actually published version of a book
Whenever a user interacts with a book, they are interacting with a specific edition. Every work has a default edition, but the user can select other editions. Reviews aggregated for all editions of a work when you view an edition's page.
The db service has an optional script for periodically pruning the backups directory so that all recent daily backups are kept, but for older backups, only weekly or monthly backups are kept.
BookWyrm has multiple services that run on their default ports.
This means that, depending on what else you are running on your host machine, you may run into errors when building or running BookWyrm when attempts to bind to those ports fail.
If this occurs, you will need to change your configuration to run services on different ports.
This may require one or more changes the following files:
If you are already running a web-server on your machine, you will need to set up a reverse-proxy.
#### Running BookWyrm Behind a Reverse-Proxy
If you are running another web-server on your machine, you should have it handle proxying web requests to BookWyrm.
The default BookWyrm configuration already has an nginx server that proxies requests to the django app that handles SSL and directly serves static files.
The static files are stored in a Docker volume that several BookWyrm services access, so it is not recommended to remove this server completely.
To run BookWyrm behind a reverse-proxy, make the following changes:
- In `services` -> `nginx` -> `ports`, comment out the default ports and add `- 8001:8001`
- In `services` -> `nginx` -> `volumes`, comment out the two volumes that begin `./certbot/`
- In `services`, comment out the `certbot` service
At this point, you can follow, the [setup](#server-setup) instructions as listed.
Once docker is running, you can access your BookWyrm instance at `http://localhost:8001` (**NOTE:** your server is not accessible over `https`).
Steps for setting up a reverse-proxy are server dependent.
##### Nginx
Before you can set up nginx, you will need to locate your nginx configuration directory, which is dependent on your platform and how you installed nginx.
See [nginx's guide](http://nginx.org/en/docs/beginners_guide.html) for details.
