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201206030/novel-plus

4,576JavaAudience · developerComplexity · 4/5Setup · hard

TLDR

Novel-plus is a ready-to-deploy website platform for hosting and reading online fiction, with reader portals, author tools, admin dashboards, and optional AI writing assistance.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((novel-plus))
    What it does
      Online fiction platform
      Reader and author portals
      Admin console
    Tech stack
      Spring Boot
      MySQL and Redis
      Docker
    Features
      AI writing assistant
      Content crawler
      Paid subscriptions
    Audience
      Platform operators
      Java developers
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Code map

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Launch a complete online fiction reading website with reader portal, author backend, and admin console.

USE CASE 2

Let authors use built-in AI tools to expand, shorten, or continue their story chapters.

USE CASE 3

Automatically collect and update novel content from external sources using the built-in crawler.

Tech stack

JavaSpring BootMyBatisMySQLRedisThymeleafDocker

Getting it running

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1h+

Requires MySQL, Redis, and a third-party AI model API key for the writing assistant feature.

License details not mentioned in the explanation.

In plain English

Novel-plus is a content management system for running an online fiction reading website, written in Chinese and aimed at the Chinese-language market. It covers the full workflow: readers browse and read stories on a public-facing portal, authors manage their own works through a separate author backend, and administrators run the platform through an admin console. A built-in web crawler system can automatically collect and update novel content from multiple sources. The platform includes novel recommendations, search, rankings, reading pages, personal bookshelves, comment sections, a member center, an author zone, paid subscription options, and a news publishing section. It also generates real-time statistical reports. Content storage is flexible: chapters can be kept in the database with table sharding for large volumes, or stored as plain text files. Multiple reading themes are supported, and operators can apply custom front-end templates. Version 5 added AI writing assistance through Spring AI, which connects to a third-party model API compatible with OpenAI's interface. The default setup uses free models: a DeepSeek reasoning model for text tasks and a Kolors model for image generation. In the author backend, writers can use AI to expand, shorten, continue, or polish passages. The system can also automatically generate a cover image for a novel if the author has not uploaded one. The README notes that free AI model output quality is limited and suggests paid models for higher-quality results. The technology stack includes Spring Boot, MyBatis for database access, Spring Security and Apache Shiro for authentication, Redis for caching, MySQL as the database, and Thymeleaf with Layui for the front end. Docker is supported for deployment. Installation documentation is linked from the README, along with a demo site and a Bilibili video walkthrough. The README includes a disclaimer that the crawler tools are intended only for collecting test data during initial setup and should not be used for commercial purposes.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
I want to deploy novel-plus using Docker. Walk me through setting up the MySQL database, Redis cache, and starting the application containers.
Prompt 2
How do I connect novel-plus's AI writing assistant to a paid OpenAI-compatible model API instead of the default free DeepSeek model?
Prompt 3
Explain how novel-plus handles large chapter storage, when should I use database table sharding vs plain text files?
Prompt 4
I want to customize the front-end theme of my novel-plus site. Where are the Thymeleaf templates and how do I apply a custom design?
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