Book Club Manager
This is a third-party script/app and is not created by the WaniKani team. By using this, you understand that it can stop working at any time or be discontinued indefinitely.
What is this?
A tool for streamlining the management of running a book club.
Screenshots
Note: These screenshots are from version 0.4.6.
Volumes > Volume section
Volumes > Chapters section
Vocabulary section
Why was this written?
My book club posting duties used to be as follows:
- Create a vocabulary spreadsheet by:
- Find an older vocabulary spreadsheet.
- Save a new copy.
- Spend time removing the content from each of the weekly tabs.
- Spend time fixing any errors in the formatting of the sheets.
- Copy or remove tabs until there is the correct amount.
- Create a volume thread by:
- Find an older book club’s main thread post.
- Quote-reply to get the post’s content to copy and paste into a new thread.
- Spend time editing all the parts to match the new book club.
- Make various mistakes, especially in the schedule table.
- Find and fix mistakes after posting.
- Create each week’s thread by:
- Find an older book club’s weekly post.
- Quote-reply to get the post’s content to copy and paste into a new thread.
- Spend time editing all the parts to match this book club.
- Make various mistakes.
- Find and fix mistakes after posting.
Today, my book club duties are:
- Fill out series/volume information in the Book Club Manager.
- Create a vocabulary spreadsheet by:
- Click a button.
- Create a new Google Docs spreadsheet.
- Run a macro.
- Create a volume thread by:
- Click a button.
- Click the Create Topic button.
- Create each week’s posting by:
- Click a button.
- Click the create/reply button.
When I’m running multiple clubs, what used to be half an hour of tedious work each Friday is now a few minutes of clicking.
How do I install this?
Install a UserScript extension such as Tampermonkey.
Install the UserScript itself from GreasyFork: Book Club Manager
Usage Instructions
To open or close the Book Club Manager, click on the book icon located on the navigation bar:
Creating a new book club entry
- In the Series section, enter the title of the book/series in the Title field.
- Select “Save to Browser”.
Note: If you have another series selected already, you cannot add a new series. Please reload the page to clear the current selection, then you can create a new entry.
Populating Series fields
Title: The title of the book being read. The title should be generic to the series for a multi-volume book club.
Emoji: Appears after the Title in post titles.
Note: At the time of this writing, templates are not supported for titles.
Club: If the book is being read as part of one of the main clubs, select it here. This determines the thread ID used when linking to the parent club in a template.
Home Thread: The thread ID of the club’s home thread. This is used in templates for weekly threads to link back to the home thread.
Short date format: A shorter date format that may be used in templates where space is limited, such as in a schedule table. Recommended value: MMM D.
Long date format: A longer date format that may be used in templates. Recommended value: MMMM D.
Chapter # prefix: Text to prepend to chapter numbers via a template.
Chapter # suffix: Text to append to chapter numbers via a template.
Populating Volumes fields
Add a volume: Creates a new volume entry.
Populating Volumes > Volume fields
Volume
Volume number: The number of a volume in a series.
Note that while you can change the Volume Number, it currently breaks parts of the interface. If you change a volume number, select Save to Browser and then reload the page to ensure smooth operation.
Note: Support for non-numeric values has not been tested and may not be supported.
Populating Volumes > Chapters fields
Add a chapter: Adds a new chapter row.
Number: The chapter’s number.
Title: The chapter’s title.
Select the minus (
) image to remove a chapter.
Populating Volumes > Weeks fields
Add a week: Adds a new week row.
Note: If there is a prior row with a Start Date, the new row auto-populates the Start Date to one week later.
Week: The week number in the reading schedule.
Thread: The thread ID that this week’s thread was posted as.
Note: Templates may use this to add a link to the prior week’s thread.
Start Date: The date that this week’s reading begins.
Chapters: A comma-separated list of chapters to read this week.
Start Page: The first page number for this week’s reading.
End Page: The last page number for this week’s reading.
Note: Templates may use the Start Page and End Page to display the number of pages in a week’s reading.
Select the minus () image to remove a week.
Populating Templates fields
Add a template: Creates a new template. You will be prompted to name the template. Templates currently cannot be renamed.
Recommended template names:
- Volume Thread
- Week Thread
Suggested templates:
Offshoot Volume Thread
# Volume {Volume Number} Discussion Thread
**Start Date:** {Volume Start Timestamp}
{Book Image}
[{Book Title} Reading Club Home Thread]({Series Home Link})
## Vocabulary Lists
{Vocabulary List}
## Reading Schedule
|Week|Start Date|Pages|No. of Pages|Chapter|
|---|---|---|---:|---|
{Week}|Week {Week Number}|{Week Start Date}|{Start Page}–{End Page}|{Page Count} pages|{Week Chapters}|{/Week}
## Discussion Rules
* If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
* Please mention the chapter and page number.
* Please use spoiler tags for ***major*** events.
* If you read ahead, please hold questions until during or after the appropriate week.
Offshoot Week Reply
# {Chapters}
**Start Date:** {Week Start Timestamp}
PLACE CHAPTER IMAGE HERE
## Participation
Mark your participation status by voting in this poll. (You can change your answer later if you'd like.)
[poll type=regular results=always public=true chartType=bar]
* I'm reading along.
* I have finished this part.
* I will catch up later.
[/poll]
<small>*If you've read it before but will join in the discussion (or have read ahead), please select "I'm reading along"!*</small>
Remove selected template: Removes the selected template.
Note: At the time of this writing, adding or removing a template does not update the template selection dropdowns for individual volumes. Please use the “Save to Browser” button and then reload the page to see the volume template dropdowns reflect the change.
Populating Vocabulary fields
Show title row: Adds a title row to tabs. This row contains the chapter number and title.
Note: This is for vocabulary sheets with chapter tabs. When weekly tabs are implemented, this functionality may not apply as some book clubs may read multiple titled chapters in one week. For a club reading at this pace, chapter tabs are recommended.
Alternate row colors: Adds row striping, alternating vocabulary sheet rows between colored and white.
Color unsure and unknown: Allows readers to add a vocabulary word they don’t know the meaning of or add the text “unsure” when they are not confident in the meaning they’ve entered. These cause the rows to have a red or yellow background, respectively.
Color page numbers: Adds a background color to the page color, changing the color for each incrementing page number. Can be used as a visual clue to which vocabulary words as on the same page.
Main Buttons
Save to Browser: Saves the entry to the browser’s local storage.
Save to File: Downloads the entry to a JSON file.
Delete from Browser: Deletes the entry from the browser’s local storage.
Load from File: Loads an entry from a JSON file.
Create Volume Thread: Creates a new thread and populates the text area with the volume thread.
Create Week Post: Creates a new thread or reply and populates the text area with the weekly thread or post.
Note: If you are viewing a thread, these buttons will create a reply to the thread you are on rather than creating a new thread.
Note: These replace the text in the new thread or reply draft. If you have already typed text into a reply and have not submitted it, selecting one of these buttons may overwrite the content of your draft.*
Creating a Vocabulary Spreadsheet
Note: Spreadsheets currently can only be created with one tab per chapter. One tab per week is not supported at this time.
Before creating a vocabulary spreadsheet, you’ll want to populate the series Title, create a Volume, and populate a Chapter row for each chapter, and add at least one Week to the volume with a Start Date. Select any options you prefer from the “Vocabulary” section.
Note: The Start Date is how the script knows which volume to create a vocabulary sheet for. In the future, I may move this button into the Vocabulary section.
-
Create a new Google Sheets spreadsheet. (You can use this link to do so.)
-
Select the “Extensions” menu, then the “Apps Script” submenu.
- The Apps Script opens in a new tab.
- You should see an empty function:
-
Select the “Copy Sheets Macro” button from the Book Club Manager and paste it into the function:
-
Select the Save button. This is required to enable the Run button.
-
Select Run.
-
Select “Review Permissions”.
-
Select your Google account.
-
Select “Advanced”.
-
-
Select “Go to Untitled project (unsafe)”.
- Disclaimer: Normally, you should not run random code you find on the Internet without checking over it first. If you don’t understand code, or if you do trust the person who wrote the code (me), you can be more lax in accepting to run such code.
-
Click allow.
- Switch over to the Sheets tab and watch the magic happen.
Posting a Volume Thread or Week Post
Select “Create Volume Thread” or “Create Week Post” to create a new topic or reply.
The volume and week used are determined by the Start Date set for the first Week of each Volume entry.
If you are on a forum thread list page, the buttons will create a new topic.
If you are viewing a thread, the buttons will create a reply.
Misc Q&A
Do I need this if I don’t plan on running a book club?
No.
Does this work for book clubs on Natively as well?
Maybe. I haven’t tested it yet.
Does this work on mobile devices?
Probably not. It was designed and tested on a desktop computer but not tested on a mobile device.
Are users of this script essentially guinea pig testers while it’s still below version 1.0?
Yes.
Priority To-Do List:
- When adding/removing a template, auto-update all template dropdown lists.
- Improve the buttons so the active section and subsection buttons are in a different color/shade.
- For any field that takes a thread ID, add a link to open that thread.
- Support easily updating a volume/weekly thread to include a link to a new week’s thread.
- Support generating a vocabulary sheet with tabs per week rather than per chapter.
Misc
Update History
- Version 0.5.0: Public release as a User Script.
- Version 0.5.1: Quick fix for volume selection dropdown not working.
