[FanFicFare] Metadata Management for Fanfiction

[storybrookebooks]

I've been following the instructions from this website to set up my FFF.

https://maelstrom.quest/2026/02/24/calibre-fff-guide/

[culytera]

Originally Posted by storybrookebooks

Is there anyway for me to look into why it's not downloading for me? I'm not using any VPN.

If it makes a difference, every time it shows it's downloading, my mouse turns into the spinner and the application is marked as not responding.

EDIT: got the third error again

AO3 still has issues, you'll just have to wait. You can monitor its status here.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by storybrookebooks

I've been following the instructions from this website to set up my FFF.

https://maelstrom.quest/2026/02/24/calibre-fff-guide/

Came from Reddit's AO3 subreddit, I presume?

Sadly AO3's still having issues so it'll be weird until ts resolved.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by storybrookebooks

Hello, this is my first time using FFF and I've been running into a bunch of errors.

I checked the ao3 status page and it says the outage is resolved now so I believe the issues I'm running into is unrelated to it.

Every time I try to download by URL (with only one URL) I'm given one of these 3 errors:

HTTP Error in FFF '525 Server Error: <none> for url: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44...igate'(525)

HTTP Error in FFF '403 Client Error: Forbidden for url: https://archiveofourown.org/users/login'(403)

HTTP Error in FFF '403 Client Error: Forbidden for url: https://archiveofourown.gay/users/login'(403)

This is best posted in the FFF plugin thread and not here.

[ownedbycats]

If you use Generate Covers, this will adjust your cover profile based on the length of a title - no need to regenerate when the text runs off the image

[archiveofourown.org]
generate_cover_settings:
 ${title} => .{1,18} => AO3-ShortTitle
 ${title} => .{60,} => AO3-SmallText
 ${title} => .{30,} => AO3-MediumText

[WinterPhoenix]

I’m trying to configure FanFicFare to automatically add a "View Discussion" link to the end of each chapter when downloading from XenForo-based forums (like Sufficient Velocity, Spacebattles, or Questionable Questing).

These forums have a native feature where adding #post-footer-[post_id] to the end of a thread URL takes you directly to the discussion immediately following that chapter's post.

For example, if the story URL is: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.co...-title.114834/
And the chapter post ID is 27101733, the discussion link looks like this: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.co...ooter-27101733. In the thread url, it doesn't technically need the title, just the id number, like so: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/114834/.

Currently, I use chapter_start to add a standard chapter link, which works perfectly:

[epub]
chapter_end:<p class="skip_on_ffdl_update"><a class="small" href="${url}">Chapter Link</a></p>
 </body>
 </html>

However, I am struggling to format the discussion link. I tried using replace_metadata to turn the chapter URL into a footer link like this:

[forums.sufficientvelocity.com]
add_to_replace_metadata:
 url=>#post-(\d+)=>#post-footer-\1
chapter_end:<p class="skip_on_ffdl_update"><a class="small" href="${url}">View Discussion</a></p>
 </body>
 </html>

This doesn't work because FanFicFare's per-chapter url variable outputs a direct post URL (e.g., https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/posts/33848687/). Even if I extract the post ID via regex, I cannot find a way to append it to the base story URL rather than the post URL. Attempting to use storyUrl inside the chapter_end like so:

[epub]
chapter_end:<p class="skip_on_ffdl_update"><a class="small" href="${storyUrl}">Chapter Link</a></p>
 </body>
 </html>

just results in a broken link that points nowhere, as follows:

<p class="skip_on_ffdl_update"><a class="small" href="">Chapter Link</a></p>
 </body>
 </html>

I say some promising leads on adding new variables that might be able to combine here:

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

snip

Couldn't quite fit them together in a way that was working.

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated! A pointer towards a list of valid metakeys might be helpful too, couldn't find one anywhere.

[WinterPhoenix]

It seems like this isn't actually possible to do with 100% accuracy, as posts which aren't on the first page of a thread require a page number which can be changed by individual user settings or an author moving things around.

[Athenano]

I have noticed that if the ao3categories is empty from ao3.com, FanFicFare seems to fill the field/column with the fandom(s). Does anyone know how to stop this? I have not made any changes to the personal.ini other that point ao3categories to a custom column.

[culytera]

Originally Posted by Athenano

I have noticed that if the ao3categories is empty from ao3.com, FanFicFare seems to fill the field/column with the fandom(s). Does anyone know how to stop this? I have not made any changes to the personal.ini other that point ao3categories to a custom column.

You can check plugin-defaults.ini, maybe the default settings have something to do with that behavior?

## Some adapters collect additional meta information beyond the
## standard ones.  They need to be defined in extra_valid_entries to
## tell the rest of the FanFicFare system about them.  They can be
## used in include_subject_tags, titlepage_entries,
## extra_titlepage_entries, logpage_entries, extra_logpage_entries,
## and include_in_* config items.  You can also add additional entries
## here to build up composite metadata entries.
## archiveofourown.org, for example, fills genre (a standard
## entry) as the composite offreeformtags, ao3categories in
## include_in_genre.  If there's ever more than 4 series, add
## series04,series04Url etc.

## AO3 doesn't have anything it calls 'genre'.  The adapter used to be
## hardcoded to include the site specific metadata freeformtags &
## ao3categories in the standard metadata field genre.  By making it
## configurable, users can change it.
include_in_genre: genre, freeformtags, ao3categories

[Aliandry]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

For Archive of Our Own: here is my method for copying collections and collection URLs to the series column. I use an Mass Effect fic exchange as an example.

Notes:

- This requires a version of FanFicFare released after April 4, 2023 (as of posting date, the latest test version) to make use of a static value in 'include_in.'

- If there's both series and collection, you'll need to pick which one you want. Use exclude_metadata_pre to remove the unwanted one using a storyUrl conditional.

[archiveofourown.org]

## This creates an additional 'collectionUrl' entry.
add_to_extra_valid_entries:,collectionUrl

## Copies collections to series
include_in_series:series,collections

## Creates a placeholder collectionUrl. I chose to use 'abc' for easy replacement (no escapes!).
include_in_collectionUrl:"abc"

## Adds collectionURL to series.
include_in_seriesUrl:seriesUrl,collectionUrl

include_metadata_pre:
## Include specific collections as series. Here, I've included both an exact version (==) and regex (=~). 
 collections==Spectre Requisitions 2023
 collections=~(Spectre Requisitions \d{4}|Spec Recs|Spec Recs \d{4})

add_to_replace_metadata:
## I apply transformations to 'collections' but applying them to 'series' should also work
 collections=>Spec Recs=>Spectre Requisitions

## Here, change the placeholder 'abc' urls to the collection URLs based on a conditional. 
 collectionUrl=>abc=>https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SpecReqs2023&&collections==Spectre Requisitions 2023

exclude_metadata_post:
## If the placeholder isn't changed during replace_metadata, this then removes it to prevent general breakage
 collectionUrl==abc

I've gotten mine a different way I use series and I'd like to keep those two separate (I've been Frankensteining this without knowing how any of this works). This will show all Collections on Columns, up to 213 of them, at least. I unfortunately don't know if it's possible to put the links to collections inside the book itself. I was wondering if you could help me?

The red part inside extra_titlepage_entries will show extra series (on Columns) with links (inside the book) in case there are more than one. I previously had collections01HTML through 03 there but the words simply showed up without being the collections (and without any link).

[defaults]

extra_valid_entries:fandoms, chapterslashtotal, freeformtags, freefromtags, ao3categories, comments, chapterslashtotal, chapterstotal, kudos,  hits, bookmarks, collections, byline, bookmarked, bookmarktags, bookmarksummary, bookmarkprivate, bookmarkrec, restricted, collections00, collections01, collections02, collections03, series00, series01, series02, series03, collections00Url, collections01Url, collections02Url, collections03Url, series00Url, series01Url, series02Url, series03Url, collections00HTML, collections01HTML, collections02HTML, collections03HTML, series00HTML, series01HTML, series02HTML, series03HTML
collections_label:Collections

Collections00HTML_label:Collections 
Collections01HTML_label:Additional Collections 
Collections02HTML_label:Additional Collections 
Collections03HTML_label:Additional Collections  

make_linkhtml_entries:collections00,collections01,collections02,collections03

titlepage_entries: seriesHTML,collectionsHTML,category,language,characters,ships,status,datePublished,dateUpdated,dateCreated,rating,warnings,numChapters,numWords,site,description 

extra_titlepage_entries: fandoms,chapterslashtotal,freeformtags,ao3categories,comments,chapterslashtotal,chapterstotal,kudos,hits,bookmarks,bookmarked,bookmarktags,bookmarksummary,series01HTML,series02HTML,series03HTML,byline

custom_columns_settings: 

collections=>#collections,a
 collections00=>#collections,a
 collections01=>#collections,a
 collections02=>#collections,a
 collections03=>#collections,a