Replies: 17 comments
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Good news — this is done. Since the 0.7.29 cycle Pinakes ships a bundled Book Club plugin (activate it under Settings → Plugins), and it covers what you described here:
Because it all runs on your own catalogue and Pinakes is fully localized (German and Danish included), the "books published in Denmark" limitation you hit with bookclubs.com doesn't apply here. Your instance is on 0.7.28 — update to 0.7.29 (just released) and the plugin will be available to activate. Once you've set your club up, tell me where the flow doesn't match how your club actually works; I'd rather tune it against a real book club than guess. |
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I have updatet to version 0.7.29 without problems, but when I try to activate the new plugin - which I really look forward to test - I get an error: pinakes-web-server | [Wed Jul 08 13:22:39.459395 2026] [php:notice] [pid 1853:tid 1853] [client 172.29.0.1:47104] Failed to send email to benedicte.frederiksen@gmail.com: SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host. Failed to connect to server, referer: https://samling.myqnapcloud.com/login?error=auth_required |
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That's on me — I pointed you at the plugin before it had been activation-tested against a database like yours, and it failed on the very first table. I'''ve found the cause, fixed it and reproduced both the failure and the fix on MySQL 8.0 (the engine your Docker image runs). What went wrong: one book-club table ( The fix: I removed that foreign key (the column and its uniqueness stay, so nothing about the reviews feature changes) and audited every other plugin — this was the only fragile plugin→core foreign key. It'''s merged, and I'''m cutting a patch release 0.7.30. Once you update to it and click Activate again, book-club will install cleanly. (Separately, the I'll note here when 0.7.30 is published. |
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0.7.30 is out and the Book Club activation is fixed — give it another go, it should work now. Let me know! (The SMTP errors in your log are a separate thing: your server just can't reach its mail host. Shout if you want a hand with that.) |
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Now, there is no problem in activating the plugin. I have just started setting up a book club and will report on this topic later. |
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Here follows my first comments on the Book Club plugin. Book Club - Propose a book Book Club - Next meeting 
I'm missing a button to edit this event. Book Club - Open affinity and suggestions 
Clicking on the "Open affinity and suggestions" buttons gives me this error:
Slim Application Error
The application could not run because of the following error: #0 /var/www/html/storage/plugins/book-club/src/AffinityRepo.php(74): mysqli->prepare('SELECT l.id, l....') Book Club - admin The Meetings section is missing the possibility to edit a shown meeting |
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Good news on all five points — here's where each one landed. "Open affinity and suggestions" crash. Fixed. The Proposing a book that isn't in the collection yet. Done, and built the way you hoped: external proposals live in their own Book Club table and never touch the library catalogue. They go into voting like any other proposal; only when a manager clicks Acquire into catalogue is the real catalogue record created — authors, publisher, cover and all — in a single transaction that rolls back if any step fails, so you never end up with a half-created book. The catalogue stays clean: nothing appears in the library until you deliberately acquire it. Editing a meeting + the "Next meeting" card. Added. Every scheduled meeting now has an inline Edit meeting form, and the "Next meeting" card has an edit button that jumps straight to it. Editing a member. That one is already there — on the club's admin page (Book Club → your club), the members table has inline Role and Status dropdowns for each member, and changing either saves immediately. If you meant editing something else about a member, tell me and I'll add it. All of this is on the way to the next release rather than something you can pull today; I'll note here when it's published. Once it's out, I'd really like to know whether the external-proposal → acquire flow matches how your club actually decides on and buys books. |
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This is now released in v0.7.31. Everything from the previous update is in it: the "open affinity and suggestions" crash fix, the Update from the admin panel, or grab the release: https://github.com/fabiodalez-dev/Pinakes/releases/tag/v0.7.31 |
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I have updated my installation with the zip file and the update process ran without any problems. But when I try to access my book-club, I get this error: Slim Application Error The application could not run because of the following error: #0 /var/www/html/storage/plugins/book-club/src/Repo.php(35): mysqli->prepare('SELECT cb.,\n ...') |
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Fixed in v0.7.32. The upgrade left Update to 0.7.32 and open the Book Club page once; there is no manual step. https://github.com/fabiodalez-dev/Pinakes/releases/tag/v0.7.32 |
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Editing a meeting + the "Next meeting" card. 
But the added informations are not visible on the top of the right column. 
The edit version is visible on the page: book-club/tysk-laesekreds in the section "Meetings" Proposing a book that isn't in the collection yet Would it be possible to add a field: "Proposed by", where you can select a book club member from a drop down list. The club's books Printing I will take a closer look at: Affinity and suggestions and Advanced polls later. Overall, I’m impressed by the implementation of the book club feature in Pinakes. |
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v0.7.33 is out with everything from your last round of feedback:
About the question-mark help texts — the brief explanations openable from a "?" next to functions and fields for less experienced users: I have not implemented that yet. I think it's the right idea, and rather than doing it only for the Book Club I'd like to roll it out across the whole app as a consistent contextual-help system. That's a lot of short texts to write well, and here I could use your help: would you be willing to help draft them, starting from English? A good starting point would be the Book Club pages you know best — a short sentence or two per field/function, plain language, aimed exactly at the "less experienced IT user" you describe. I'd then translate them into the other languages and wire them into the UI. If you're in, I'll open a dedicated discussion/issue where we can collect them section by section. Update from the admin panel, or grab it here: https://github.com/fabiodalez-dev/Pinakes/releases/tag/v0.7.33 |
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I would like to help, but I cannot do before fridag next week. Can you wait for that? On the page: /admin/book-club/1 I'm missing the possibility to edit club meeting or at least a link to the page, where you can edit the meetings. I would like to close the generel access from Italy to my Pinakes site. If this access is of any use for you, maybe you could send me your IP-address, to put it on the white list. |
I added 3 books to The club's books.. These books are marked "External proposal". That was correct, when I entered these books. In the meantime I have bought the books and added them to the catalog. I would expect, that the status "External proposal" would change automatically. But it does not. How can we change the "status" of the books from External proposal to "part of collection" or "added to the catalog? |
Would it be possible to have a function to se closed polls? Sometimes it could be useful to see, what books have been part of a poll. |
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I would like to have a function, where the book club members can see a list of books, which have been proposed earlier and which not have been choosen during a poll. |
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All three points from your last round are handled (they'll ship in the next release): 1. "External proposal" status + "Acquisition failed, please try again." Now it reconciles instead of duplicating: if the proposed book is already in the catalogue with the same ISBN-10/13, the proposal is linked to that existing book. And it's automatic — you no longer need the button: when you (as a manager) open the club page, any external proposal whose book you've since entered in the catalogue is linked on the spot. The "Add to catalogue" button also works again for the one-off case. So the three books you described will resolve themselves the next time you open the club page. 2. Seeing closed polls / which books were part of a poll 3. Books proposed earlier but never chosen If any of these doesn't behave the way you'd expect once it's out, tell me the exact page and I'll adjust. |
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I am a member of a book club (German fiction in the original language and/or in Danish translation).
The book club meets once a month (except in July and August), when we discuss one book. At the book club’s meetings in December and June respectively, suggestions for books for the upcoming meetings (autumn or spring) that have been submitted in advance are discussed.
Each book club member has three votes. The books that receive the most votes are selected.
Previously read books are kept on a list. Previous suggestions for new books are also kept for the next vote.
I have looked at the Bookclubs software solution (https://bookclubs.com), which has all the features a digital book club needs. However, Bookclubs is very US-centric and offers only limited scope for handling, for example, books published in Denmark.
It would be fantastic if Pinakes could be expanded with a plugin to manage one or more book clubs.
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