How to Build a Novel Website Without Coding Skills

If you don't know code, have little computer basics, but really enjoy reading novels, can you build a novel website yourself? The answer is yes. This article teaches you how to build a novel website from scratch.

Preparations for building a novel website yourself

To build a novel website, we need to prepare two basic things:

1. A domain. If you don't plan to make it publicly accessible, you can also skip registering one;
2. A server is essential.

Register an inexpensive domain from another country; it costs only a few dollars per year. It's recommended not to skimp on this—just register one. Tutorials are available below:

• Tutorial for Registering a Domain with the Foreign Domain Registrar Namesilo
• How to Purchase and Resolve a Domain Name with the International Domain Registrar Dynadot Tutorial
• Domain Registration and Usage Topic Articles

It is recommended to purchase a server from abroad because domestic servers require ICP filing, and personal filing for a novel website might not be approved. For beginners practicing, simply follow the tutorial below. It offers $50 credit. Once you're familiar and if you're unsatisfied with the server, you can switch to another.

• Tutorial for Purchasing Vultr VPS Server Abroad

Note: In the above tutorial, only focus on purchasing the server, activating management, and installing the website environment—specifically the Baota Panel section. After completing that, return to this article to continue.

Install Tomcat

The tutorial above covers installing Baota Panel. However, to install our own novel website, we also need the tomcat software, so we need to install it separately in Baota Panel. 1. Log in to the Baota Panel Admin Dashboard. 2. Switch to the App Store, search for tomcat, and install it. 3. Select tomcat8 as the installation version. 4. After installation, click on Tomcat and choose to stop it.

Install the novel website

Next, we will start building the novel website. The novel website we are building here uses Novel Boutique House.

Novel Boutique House is a multi-platform (web, Android app, WeChat mini-program), fully-featured responsive novel barrage website. It includes premium novel zones, light novel zones, and comic zones. Features include novel/comic categorization, novel/comic search, novel/comic rankings, completed novels/comics, novel/comic ratings, online novel/comic reading, novel/comic bookshelves, novel/comic reading history, novel downloads, novel barrages, automatic novel/comic collection/updates/error correction, automatic sharing of novel content to Weibo, automatic email promotion, and automatic link submission to Baidu search engine.

1. Download the installation fileDownload LinkOn the download page above, select the latest zip archive to download. For example, at the time of writing, the latest version is novel-install-v2.1.2.zip. 2. Extract the downloaded zip folder.3. Upload the novel-front-2.1.2.beta.jar installation package and configuration files to the website's www directory. (This is a demo without a bound domain. If you have bound a domain, upload it to your domain's folder.) The specific steps are: log in to the Baota Panel Admin Dashboard, select Files, then click the www folder under the root directory, and click Upload. 4. Modify the port number and database configuration in the configuration file. (If you don't have a database, create one first.)5. Open the console and execute the command to start the service: setsid java -jar novel-front-2.1.2.beta.jar.6. Go to the Security interface in Baota Panel and add port 8080 to the firewall rules. Finally, you can access your own novel website via http://ip:port. Building your own novel website is quite simple, right? If you still have questions, you cango to the project homepageto check or ask questions.