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Installing a space

This page describes how to set up your own Waytale space as fast as possible using one of the official premade spaces.

Overview:

How-to guide

  1. Download. Get the latest release of a space template you want to use.

    • Download from the releases page.
    • Unzip the downloaded archive (e.g. ZIP file) into a directory on your computer.

  2. Personalise. Open the provided space.template.json file, add your desired details, and save it as new space.json file.

    • Add information about the space, like the name or description.
    • Add information about the owner (yourself), like your name or how to contact you.

  3. Test. (Optional.) Open your space in a local web server.

    • Start a local web server for the directory that holds space.json.
    • Open a browser and navigate to the URL the web server tells you.
    • Navigate through the space and verify that everything works as expected (e.g. gadgets, collisions).

  4. Upload. Upload the complete directory to a web space of your choice.

  5. Use. Open the URL of your space.

    • Verify you can access the space as expected.
    • Open a second browser tab to check whether peers can see each other.

That's it, ready to go! Your space is ready to be linked to on your website. You can invite other people to your space simply by sharing the URL like you see it in your browser.

Requirements

If you want to host a Waytale space publicly, you don't need to bring much:

  1. A computer or device to work from.
  2. Static web space publicly accessible via a domain. (More info in the next section.)

If you currently do not own public web space or just want to try out things locally on your computer first, the needed ingredients become:

  1. A computer or device to work from.

All set? Continue with the Guide.

On compatible web space and providers

A Waytale space only requires statically hosted files, which is the simplest form of hosting files through a web server.

If you have purchased virtually any package from a web hosting provider, very likely you can use that one as well. For example, if you could install the popular Wordpress blogging platform, then you are good to go to put a Waytale space there as well.

More generally, even any static host will very likely do well, if they serves your files as-is. For example, this includes the following popular services (among many):

  • Codeberg/Gitlab/Github using the Pages feature (see note below)
  • Netlify
  • Neocities
  • many more!

Please be aware that it's not enough to just put files on a generic repository (e.g. Github etc.) or any web storage that only allows you to view your files through the browser (e.g. Nextcloud, Google Drive, etc.). Those services do not provide file hosting as a web server would do and this will not suffice to host a Waytale space.

Using waytale init

The waytale toolbox can help with setting up a Waytale space. It simplifies the steps to choose and download one of the official spaces, and make specific changes to them before uploading.

(Please note that there is continuous development also on the toolbox and more features are planned.)

  1. Install the waytale program from the toolbox repository
  2. Create a new Waytale space by typing waytale init <space-directory>.
    • This will ask you which of the official spaces to download and then set up the specified <space-directory> as a new space.
  3. Continue with the guide above from step 3 or 4 (testing/uploading).

The waytale toolbox provides a set of commands in the form of waytale <command>. If you feel lost, unsure how to continue, and/or just curious, you can try waytale --help or waytale <command> --help to learn more.

Ways to host a space

Serving only a Waytale space on a website

Let's say you have web space accessible via https://example.com/ and want to install a Waytale space there. All you have to do is place the files (index.html etc.) as mentioned above into the root directory of your file host.

Adding a Waytale space to an existing website

This section assumes that you have a website running somewhere and you want to include a Waytale space in addition to that. In that case you probably want to create a sub-directory and place all relevant Waytale files in there.

For example, let's assume you have your website accessible on https://example.com/. Then you can create a sub-directory like my_waytale_space (you can choose the name) in the root directory of your file host and place all files (index.html etc.) in there. Your Waytale space will be accessible on https://example.com/my_waytale_space/.

Hosting via Github/Gitlab/Codeberg Pages

Coming soon.