If you haven’t heard, AO3 is currently down for emergency maintenance and they’ll be down for at least 2 weeks! It’s a reminder that our current reliance on the archive is too precarious. I’m sure the volunteers at OTW will get it back and running in due time, but in the meantime I wanted to talk about the steps I’ve taken to save my favorite works, and create a place where others can read my own fics.
Creating a Stash
I self host a really cool tool called Readeck to save long fanfic reads, but I might need to save shorter ones too after this incident. I like using it because it has really neat tagging and collection features, which makes it easy to search and collect works from different fandoms. I also use it to save articles as well, since it’s actually a read-it-later tool. It integrates nicely with my ereaders, which makes it super convenient to download saved fics.
If you’re looking for an offline option, I recommend Calibre with the FanficFare.
Honestly, you could even just hit save on your browser and save everything as a PDF or HTML file. What’s important is saving it somewhere so you can access it when things go wrong. Organization of your saved fics will also depend on your preferences. I mainly organize by fandom, but some people might need more detailed organization like tags, pairings, etc.
Make a Website to Post Your Fics
I decided to make my own site to host my fanfics, at fanfics.pomnavi.net. It’s been rewarding to rework it as I come up with new ideas (as I have two iterations so far which are listed down below).
There are plenty of cool templates online designed to help you make a functional website that will let you host your fanfiction. Some are more complicated than others, but most of these require some minor HTML editing. Here’s a few options:
- My Old Template (based on a tumblr page theme) [Example]
- My Current Template (using Astro SSG) [Example]
- Kingdra’s Masterlist Template and CSS stylesheet
- Coyote’s Archive of Your Own template
- How To Make Your Own Fanfiction Archive, In Just 10 Easy Steps by Melannen
There are also lots of cool examples listed on the Fan Archives Directory and the Fanfic Webring.
You could honestly even use google docs or word and output it as a webpage. It doesn’t have to be amazing! It’s rewarding just to have your works hosted on your own site and available just in case something like this happens. There are lots of resources to help people get started.
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