How To Add To This Site
Walter Davis
29 Aug, 2008
ActionsForge is designed to be a complete list of all available Actions for Freeway. Over time, this will become true, but right now, it’s going to take some repetitive work on your part to help it become that universal resource.
This site is organized around Projects, which contain one or more Actions, which have one or more Versions. The reason for this level of abstraction is simple: different types of Actions may be bundled together, either by adding them to a single text file (Freeway 2 and up) or by adding them to a bundle (Freeway 4 and up). In either case, you may have a single logical file which contains Actions with different names and which act on different types of content. And when you update one Action in such a bundle, you might not update all of them.
Confused yet? I know I was when I started pondering how to solve this riddle in code.
So let’s get started. To begin, decide on a name for your project. You may have a bundle of Actions that all work together as a suite. You may also have a loose collection of Actions that work together for a certain type of content or construction technique. You may also just want to have a separate project for each Action. That’s up to you. It’s best if the name of this project is descriptive and short, and it must be unique (you won’t be able to save a project with the same name as any other project in the system).
Now add each Action to the project. Enter a unique name, add a description of the Action and what it does, choose what type of Action it is, and if you have a demo or a link to your Actions store, enter them as well. You may enter any value in the Price field, or leave it blank. If you do enter a price, be sure to also fill in the URL to your store so you will get a purchase link on this site.
At this point, each Action has an ID number, which you should make a note of if you plan to use Version Checking in your Actions.
Next, you will want to enter some versions. (If you didn’t add any Actions to your project yet, then stop and go back. You won’t even see the controls to add versions if you don’t do that first.)
There are two ways to go here, and the only difference from your perspective will be whether or not the actual download files are on this server or one you control. If you sell your Actions, then this is a pretty obvious choice. Make a note of the individual version numbers of your Actions, then choose either Upload a File or Add a Version to get started.
Upload a File: Locate your file and upload it using the form. Remember to Zip any folders or Action Bundles, as only single files may be uploaded using a Web browser file input. After the file is uploaded, you will have the option to delete it (if you made a mistake) or to add versions to it. Each version you add binds this file to one of the Actions in your project. This is where it is handy to have notes of each Action and its version.
Add a Version: You will need to manage your own downloads if you use this method. In each Action’s edit screen, there are two fields for URLs — either the purchase or the demo URL will be used (in that order) for any downloads for this Action. Enter the version number, leave the File picker set to Hosted Elsewhere, and save the version.
Repeat, adding versions as necessary.
That’s it! Now repeat for each Action you’ve written (ugh!).
