Hi there. I’m wanting to add my Twine stories to my website. I use Squarespace and they allow HTML if I upgrade. But I’m thinking that random people can’t play them without having Twine themselves. Is that correct? How do I create a way to have anybody show up and play my adventure stories?
AND, can you explain like I’m in 5th grade if you know? I can write stories, but I’ve never set up Twine hosting before. Thank you for your time. I do appreciate it.
Thanks again.
It is not correct that your players will need Twine themselves to play through your story. Once you’ve written your story and published it to a host that supports what Twine needs, people can play directly from their web browsers, without needing to install anything else. You can always also distribute the HTML file itself for people to download and then open manually in a web browser from their hard drive, which also doesn’t require that they have Twine themselves.
Twine’s documentation says that “you can publish your story anywhere an HTML file can be published.” I have not worked with Squarespace myself, so I can’t vouch for how well that works. “They allow HTML if …” is a pretty weak endorsement of what Squarespace actually allows. The question will really boil down to “what does Squarespace allow you to do with HTML?” or “How much of the HTML specification does Squarespace allow you to take advantage of?” If Squarespace allows you to upload and host arbitrary HTML pages, you’re probably good. If “pay extra for HTML” means you get an advanced HTML-capable editor, but Squarespace then rewrites your HTML before serving it, it will probably break your Twine story.
Lots of free-to-the-site-designer web hosts do in fact rewrite their users’ HTML for one reason or another. Common reasons include security (they don’t want you using HTML that [they think] is unsafe), consistent presentation (they’re inserting your content into a template and want to make sure you don’t do something that breaks the template), and a general desire to exercise control over what their users can do. If your web host is rewriting your HTML to enforce security or control how your web page presents, it’s virtually certain that one of the concerns they have is preventing you from running JavaScript.
Internally, the story file you publish from your Twine project uses JavaScript in addition to HTML, and that’s necessary for the story to work. So if your web host interferes with JavaScript in your Twine-exported HTML, they’ll break your story.
All of which is to say: I don’t know for sure, but I’m not optimistic. Before deciding to pay extra for the HTML-capable version of SquareSpace, though, I’d do more research, or straight-out ask them whether you can effectively publish Twine stories on their service.
On Twine’s “Build” page there is a link titled “Publish to File”. When you select that, Twine lets you choose where to put the story’s HTML file on your own computer. You can then upload that HTML file from your computer to a Web site.
If you have trouble getting your Twine story to run on Squarespace, you can put it on another site and link from Squarespace to that other site. Here’s a Web page which explains two different ways to create that link: https://www.websitebuilderinsider.com/can-you-redirect-squarespace-page-to-another-website/
I think if you select the “Redirect” method, it will look like the story is part of your Squarespace site.
There are several sites where you can put your Twine story for free. I think the site https://borogove.io probably is the easiest one to use.
Warning: I have never used Squarespace myself, although I have put a Twine (actually Tweego) story on borogove.
I hope these comments help a little.
A lot of Twine games are on Itch.io (which then lets you add a playable iframe to your website) and I’ve seed a handful being uploaded on Neocities (I’ve done both).
Thank you greatly. I’ll investigate further. So appreciated.
So very helpful. Thank you for the suggestions.
Awesome. Good to know! Thank you!