Gazette Builder

Feature: ZIP Import

A developed world can contain hundreds or thousands of locations, characters, organizations, documents, events, and other Entries. Creating all of that material again by hand in WordPress can turn migration into a project of its own.

Gazette Builder’s ZIP importer is designed to move structured worldbuilding into the Gazette efficiently while preserving the information that makes the Entries useful.

An import package can contain multiple Markdown Entry files together with optional images and supporting metadata. Each Entry can carry the same information that would otherwise be entered through the GazetteBuilder editor, including:

  • Entry ID and Entry Type;
  • Summary;
  • Campaign Date and Timeline Sort value;
  • publication and Release Date information;
  • Story ID and Sequence Position;
  • semantic references;
  • semantic relationships;
  • Derived From information;
  • Featured Media and inline images.

A package might look conceptually like:

my-world/
    manifest.yml
    entries/
        syrtis-major.md
        dorchester-hotel.md
        major-harcourt.md
    media/
        syrtis-major-map.jpg
        dorchester-hotel.jpg

The Entry source remains intended for humans to read and edit. For example:

---id: LOC-DORCHESTERtitle: Dorchester Hotel
entry_kind: Location
summary: A respectable colonial hotel in Syrtis Major.
relationships:  
- "Located In: Syrtis Major"  
- "In District: Hotel District"
---
The expedition established itself at the[[Dorchester Hotel]] shortly after arriving in[[Syrtis Major]].

The import format is meant to make bulk creation easier, not to replace straightforward editing with complicated configuration. Metadata is kept as simple and readable as practical.

Preview before committing

Gazette Builder does not have to create the Entries immediately.

The Preview / Validate step examines the package first and reports what it finds, including such things as:

  • Entries discovered;
  • new or existing Entry IDs;
  • missing required fields;
  • invalid Entry Types;
  • Story and sequence structure;
  • duplicate sequence positions;
  • missing packaged media;
  • semantic references that resolve;
  • unresolved or ambiguous semantic references;
  • Relationship Definitions and targets that do not resolve correctly;
  • other blocking errors or nonblocking warnings.

That lets a large import be inspected before it changes the Gazette.

Structural errors can stop the import rather than leaving a partially imported body of worldbuilding behind, while deliberate future references can remain as warnings and resolve later when their target Entries are added.

Bring the images with the content

Images can be included in the same ZIP package as the Entries that use them.

Gazette Builder imports those files into the normal WordPress Media Library and associates them with their Entries, rather than requiring the source package to know WordPress’s eventual upload paths.

This makes ZIP import useful not only for initial migration, but for assembling and transferring coherent batches of worldbuilding material—text, metadata, relationships, chronology, Stories, and supporting media together.