Launching Community Lorebooks subdomain service + stellapent.wiki project

Written by Andrei Jiroh Halili ( @andreijiroh.dev / @ajhalili2006@tilde.zone ), our founder and lead dev/maintainer at @recaptime.dev

After months of preparation work from writing documentation to setting up automation tooling for the registry repository, we are officially launching Community Lorebooks’ subdomain service (powered by octodns for IaaC-based DNS management) and the stellapent.wiki community link shortener and wiki for the Gildedguy Stories series (by Gildedguy the animator (Michael Moy) ) and its online community (mostly on the animator's official Discord server and the wider Hyun's Dojo community if you will).

That means we're going to start the new year with a blast via this launch. While I planned to do the launch earlier this year, I am technically cooked between school and other life chores while hauling (or should I say bulldozing), so apologies for the delay then.

So what's in the domain?

The main spotlight of Community Lorebooks is that you can get your very own subdomain under a .wiki TLD (top-level domain) for you, your project or organization, for free. It's intended to use on wiki and documentation sites, as the domain name suggest and by design of the TLD in question, but you do you whatever you want ( see the AUP/ToS first ). If you do want to use a custom nameserver than the usual Cloudflare DNS (it's just two NS records for your DNS nameserver of choice plus any DNSSEC specifics if you have to choose deSEC and friends), we may ask if you want to chip in at least 2 US dollars to keep the domains and its auxiliary services (like our own Caddy-based proxyparty setup ) running.

We're in the works of having lorebooks.wiki and stellapent.wiki officially part of the Public Suffix List in the future, so for Cloudflare users, hold tight for now (or temporarily switch to Pages as a workaround if you deploy your static site to Workers).

The project origins

The initial idea behind the project itself within Recap Time Squad boils down to at least two to three parts:

the home of documentation and archival projects within RecapTime.dev HQ

a wiki hosting service (a la Miraheze but we can do static site hosting) technically scrapped due to possible budgetary risks and headaches on managing infra

free subdomain service on a .wiki top-level domain for digital gardens and communiity wikis

The second part might be possibly feasible if we handle the hosting infrastructure setup ourselves while the wiki maintainers take the rest of their responsibilities (i.e. administrative tasks, moderation, etc.) in form of pulling a Miraheze but not just doing MediaWiki hosting. But it's costly, so I scrapped that (but if you beg, look around at free-for.dev ).

If you also wondering about the name origins, I initially started as Community Lores as a combination of community + lores (now lorebooks, because why not? [also to minimize confusion]), so that's it on the backstory.

Fiscal sponsorship

So far, we have until at least around August 2030 to worry about domain renewals for both lorebooks.wiki and stellapent.wiki while I am cooking through free Azure credits under the Azure for Students plan (via GitHub Education's Student Dev Pack) for the Caddy server we're running for redirects, parking pages and proxy stuff somewhere in Central India. While I could do the funny business of using Merchant of Record services to lessen the admin burden of running this as I accept donations but you will be still on the hook by the BIR here in the Philippines (coughs in half-assed systems and the government focus on literally banning international platforms over fixing its own issues, here's the bloody Google Gemini chat thread if you dare). If you ask how did I afford the domain(s) in question, read on the side note below. (tl;dr: it's the High Seas Cloudflare credits/HCB grant all along from Hack Club)

Like Recap Time Squad HQ itself, the Community Lorebooks project is fiscally hosted under HCB (for those reading " the Ghostty blog post that blew up the feeds " from Mitchell Hashimoto earlier, it was previously called Hack Club Bank at its 2019 launch until around 2022 for legal reasons ), Hack Club 's 501(c)(3) non-profit fiscal sponsorship program + open-source platform based in the US. That means if you donate today, you may opt to write it off as a tax-deductible donation for those filing US taxes after issuing you a receipt.

Prior art

We also want to acknowledge projects like js.org, is-a.dev and even eu.org (where we initially got recaptime.eu.org and lorebooks.eu.org) as both reference and inspiration on making this a reality. If you use ours, let them know we recommend them if you do for your projects or consider donating to them too to keep the lights on.

What about stellapent.wiki?

The Gildedguy Stories / Stellapent Cier -themed domain would be used as a shortlink and community wiki of sorts for his Discord community as well as the usuals on the main lorebooks.wiki domain. If you do want a subdomain there, I may ask for your Discord user ID and/or handle (I'm going to share this at the Discord server and in the Hyun's Dojo Community soon, so hold up) as an alternative contact method alongside email in case issues arise.

Getting started

Our setup uses octodns as mentioned earlier, but you don't essentially edit the dns/lorebooks.wiki.yaml file directly since we chop into different YAML files at dns/partials/<domain>/<slug>.yml and then merged into one via script/merge-zonefiles shell script using yg-go utility to avoid the merge conflicts pain. Here's a example YAML config that you can base off for your first project, just tweak it to your liking.

When you done adding the records you need for your subdomain, just send us a merge request. We may ask questions about its purpose and the intended usage, check if it is properly formatted, and when everything is green it will be merged and applies changes on your behalf.

So what?

Not necessarily go nuts with the DNS records, but I will be working on updating the website this January to improve the docs and then some, so keep your eyes peeled here and on our socials for updates. See you on the other side ( or its GitHub mirror ) for all of your wiki-related projects or just your own little space in the interwebs.

Until then, I am @andreijiroh.dev of @recaptime.dev and happy new year to everybody! (We gone ahead publishing this at the default lorebooks-wiki.leaflet.pub subdomain while firefighting over at DNS propagation issues for blog.lorebooks.wiki on Vercel side, so here's the "I love back[end] pain" post lately, as embedded below.)

About the author: Andrei Jiroh Halili (he/they, 19 y/o) is the founder and lead developer + maintainer at Recap Time Squad, an all-remote open-source organization based in the Philippines and Community Lorebooks' parent organization. He initially joined Hack Club in July 2024 during Arcade (the 2024 edition of the Summer of Making YSWS program ) as part of his research on fiscal hosting (legally called fiscal sponsorship in the US) and setting up GitHub Sponsors for the organization . Outside of being the Autistic Filipino middle child open-sourcerer (the art and practice of being an open-source developer and/or maintainer) in the family, he is currently taking BS in Information Technology at STI College Meycauayan and graduated from A.F.G. Bernadrino Memorial Trade School under the Technical-Vocational-Livelihood track holding a National Certification II in Computer Systems Servicing from TEDSA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority).

About Recap Time Squad: Recap Time Squad is founded in 2018 under numerous codenames initially as home of Andrei Jiroh's software and non-software projects, sometimes experimental. In its current form since 2022, it is operating as an all-remote open-source organization based in the Philippines under Hack Club's fiscal sponsorship program (HCB) since November 2024, with Community Lorebooks (this one) as its hub for the documentation projects we've building alongside providing a free subdomain service for community wikis and digital gardens.