Once you're done, make sure to transfer all the 741.5 System files to your wb server. Be sure to maintain the current directory structure.

Converting your strips

First, telnet to your web server and create two new directories: import and strips. These two directories should be in the same parent directory as encodulate.pl.

Next, Get your strips ready to FTP over to your web host. Make sure that they all have date-based filenames in YYYYMMDD.EXT format (for example, 20041001.jpg). When you're done, dump all your strips in the import directory.

Finally, telnet to your web server and run encodulate.pl by typing perl encodulate.pl. The script will rename all of the files in import and move them to strips.

Check everything out

Go and visit index.php. You should see the most current strip. If you have any older strips, you should be able to navigate back to those as well. If you can, congratulations! If not, make sure you didn't deviate from any of the steps listed above.

Make everything look pretty

Now that you're done you can edit index.php to include your site shell.

How do I add new strips?

Just dump them in import and run encodulate.pl. It'll take care of the rest.

I don't want to secure my filenames.

Just throw away encodulate.pl and replace includes/date.php with includes/date_noencrypt.php.

I want to add individual notes for the strips on my site. Can the 741.5 System handle this?

You bet! Everything you need to do this is included in the standard distribution in the file includes/notes.php. To add this functionality your site, you just need to follow a few simple steps.

First, edit includes/notes.php so that the $notetypes array contains all of the file formats you use for making notes. You'll probably only want to use one - either .html or .txt. Second, give all your notes date-based names in YYYYMMDD.EXT format (for example, 20041001.html) and dump them on your web server in a directory called notes. Finally, open index.php and add the following code where you want your notes to appear:

<?
require "includes/notes.php";
while (!noteswitch($Current)) { $Current = rollback($Current,1); }
?>

The above code will display the last note written before the current strip display. If you don't want a note to appear when there isn't a note for a specific date, just replace the while statement with noteswitch($Current);.

I want to display a calendar with links to all my strips!

Sure thing! The standard distribution includes a file called calendar.php that does that very thing. One thing this calendar doesn't do is break things up nicely into weeks - because that takes a lot more work.

Can you do other things with the 741.5 System other than web comics?

You bet. The code's pretty simple - playing around with it is a snap. I used a variation of it to create my own blog, Different Package.

I'm having problems with the 741.5 System that aren't covered in this list of questions. What do I do now?

Well, you can always e-mail me with any questions or post a message on the 741.5 System message board. A question asked on the message board is more likely to be answered in a timely fashion.

I've used the 741.5 System to do something that's not covered by this page, or extended it in a novel new direction!

Great! E-mail me your code and I'll either add it to the standard distribution or make it an optional package.

I think the 741.5 System is swell! What can I do to thank you?

Well, at the very least you can always drop me a line and say you liked it, and I can add your name to the list of strips that use the 741.5 System. You could also add some HTML on your site that mentions the 741.5 System and links back to this page. Or, if you really, really like it you can always make a small PayPal donation of a few bucks...

• The Japanese Beetle!
• Different Package

October 7, 2004: Removed references to "encryption" for the sake of pedantry.
October 1, 2004: First release.