Hello there,
What's up in the Hive!
Here are the most recent updates on Inkito!
You can read more about the project in the Hive proposal in which I explain all of it.
But what is Inkito ?
Inkito is a new platform based on the Hive blockchain build specifically for the long form episodic content like comics or novels. It makes the reading experience better with an infinite loop and organises content as series throughout the site.
What about the new stuff?
Hive Keychain Login
Clicking the login button now opens up a login pop up with the options of Hive Keychain or the Hivesigner link.
The speedy login with username works with hivesigner chrome app as well.
Please note that the popup header image is not final. Just wanted to test the layout and transparency. I'll rework this once I reach logos and illustration for the site. I was thinking I could use a medley of characters in different styles. Maybe a collaboration? any thoughts?
Profile Edit
The site now has a profile edit page to change avatar and various information. This updates the posting_json_metadata of your account so it would not require active password to complete.
I know this feature wasn't fundamental, and could have easily been done after content publishing, but as you'll see next that was a good testing ground for the image upload feature.
Image Upload on IPFS
I must admit this part took a little longer than I expected. I researched a long time before finding the right solution for me. Here was my dilema...
Uploading images through the Hive.blog proxy required asking users their private key. I wasn't comfortable with that. For me, security is the most important and I wished to stay with third party login like Hivesigner.
As a user I'd feel more at ease with that anyway.
So the solutions left were using a regular cloud storage like AWS or Firebase, using IPFS with a pinning service, launching my own IPFS node to host content.
I chose the option of a pinning service for now. Images are uploaded to IPFS but a third party is making sure the content is always available. Temporal.cloud was easy to set up and not so expensive.
The first 3GB pinned are free which leaves me with enough time to see if Inkito grabs users' attention. I'll consider launching my own node if the project grows further.
So as you can expect, you can now browse for your avatar image, upload content to IPFS making api call through Inkito's server and get the hash and address back. Might not seem much, but I worked hard on this and I'm quite happy with the result.
With the upload feature all set, I can finally get to the crucial part of the alpha version... Content publishing. I've been teasing it for a while, but now is time!
Stay tuned for more.
For any interested Hive creator out there!
You can already add your content to the platform using the right tags.
Adding the series id on all corresponding posts, writing it as follows "author-seriesname" (example: "jrej-shadesofmen") The series name is for you to choose but must be the same for all episodes.
Adding the tag "inkito-comics" or "inkito-novels" on your most recent post for ranking.
Optionally you can add categories as tags in your first episode. The categories could be any of the following. "action, comedy, drama, fantasy, horror, mystery, romance, scifi, sliceoflife"
The first post would include some of the main series info. The first image would be your series cover image and the title, the series title. Hope to see some of you over there.
Thanks for your support.
You can check out the alpha of Inkito at www.inkito.io
Any suggestions are welcome! Feel free to tell me about any feature you'd love to see.
See you on the other side.
Jrej
Looks interesting? Please consider approving the project to help me in developing the Inkito platform faster. Click here to Approve the proposal
@spottyproduction Just a heads up. As I changed the avatar address from hive.blog to the posting_metadata your profile image failed to load. Something with the link you provided which returns as not found. Not sure how Hive.blog loads it... I'll look more into this.
Thanks, I'll have a look at it too. I've had to delete & reupload all the strips in the posts I tagged so far, because I believe I originally linked them to my own site hosting. Hive seemed to pick them up in the copy over from Steem image hosting, but Inkito couldn't pull from my original links.
Oh-- I'm sorry to hear that. I hope it's not the same for others. It worked fine for me. I'm guessing it is because of Hiveblog's proxy which redirects images through its site. It must have a copy of the files uploaded.
It's no big deal and probably won't be an issue for others. I know some of my earliest posts were made before Steem even had an image server! Yeah, I'm pretty sure Steem cached the images eventually, Hive was able to copy them over, but pulling straight from my original markdown the image links are currently invalid.