FICTBASE turns any WordPress site into a self-hosted serialized fiction platform — a free Wattpad alternative and Royal Road alternative that runs on infrastructure you control.

Publish your web novel or serialized story chapter by chapter. Own your readers. Keep 100% of your revenue. No platform fees, no algorithm changes, no lock-in.

Why Self-Host Your Fiction?

Platforms like Wattpad and Royal Road give you discovery, then take everything else. When you self-host with FICTBASE:

You own your audience — collect email subscribers directly on your story pages
You own the SEO — Google ranks your domain, not the platform’s
You control monetization — Patreon, subscriptions, ads, or anything else
You set the rules — no content policy changes, no sudden demonetization

Free Features

Stories and Chapters

Create and manage stories with title, cover image, description, genre, and status
Add chapters with a full rich-text editor
Automatic word count and estimated read time per chapter
Chapter reading page with scroll-based progress bar
Previous / Next chapter navigation
Optional author bio block at the end of each chapter
Clean URLs: /story/my-story/, /story/my-story/chapter/1/

Reader Experience

Light, Dark, and Auto (follows OS) reader themes
Adjustable font size and reading width
Story archive at /stories/ with genre and status filters
Content rating and content warnings shown before the blurb and before chapter one

Feeds

RSS feed per story at /story/my-story/feed/ — readers follow new chapters in any reader app
Site-wide feed of your latest chapters at /stories/feed/
Discovered automatically by browsers and reader apps, no configuration
Members-only and paid chapters appear as a teaser and a link, never as full text

Search

Search your stories and chapters at /stories/search/ — a search box sits on the story archive
Finds stories by title and blurb, chapters by title and by the words inside them
Results show the matching sentence with your term highlighted
Members-only and paid chapters are found by title only — their text is never quoted in results
Uses a MySQL full-text index where the server supports one, and works without it either way
A theme search that finds nothing sends the reader here instead of to an empty page

Tags

Tag a story with as many labels as fit it — “slow burn”, “found family”, “enemies to lovers”
Every tag gets its own page at /stories/tag/slow-burn/ listing the stories that carry it
Tags are typed into the story editor; ones you have already used are offered as one-click chips
Spelling does not fork the tag — “Slow Burn”, “slow burn” and “Slow-Burn” are the same one
Tag pages are in your sitemap and are meant to be indexed, so readers can find you by what you write
Rename a tag anywhere it is used from the Tags screen; the web address never changes, so nothing breaks

Comments

Readers discuss a chapter under the chapter itself, using WordPress comments
Moderation, spam filtering, threading and email notifications work exactly as they do on posts — Akismet included
Off until you switch them on, site-wide, from FICTBASE Settings
Any single story can override the site setting: always on, always off, or follow the site
Comments on members-only and paid chapters are visible only to readers who can read the chapter — they stay out of feeds, the REST API and search
Closing comments keeps the conversation that is already there; it just stops new replies

Developer and Site Tools

Shortcodes: [fictbase_list], [fictbase_story id="5"], [fictbase_chapters story_id="5"]
REST API: GET stories, GET chapters, POST view tracking
Works with any WordPress theme — injects CSS only on fiction pages
Optional switch to drop sidebars and footer widgets on fiction pages only
A fictbase-page body class on every page FICTBASE renders, for your own CSS

Pro Features

Pro is an optional paid upgrade available at fictbase.com. The free plugin is fully functional without it.

Drip scheduling — write chapters in advance and release them on an automatic schedule
Reader bookmarks — logged-in users save their exact reading position across devices
Analytics dashboard — total chapter views, 30-day chart, top chapters by reads
Email notifications — subscribers receive an email the moment a new chapter publishes
.docx import — bulk-import a Word manuscript; chapters detected automatically from headings
Custom CSS editor — per-page scoped CSS for story listing, story landing page, and chapter reader

The Self-Hosted Web Novel Platform

FICTBASE is built specifically for serialized fiction authors who want the features of Wattpad or Royal Road without giving up ownership of their work. Whether you write fantasy, romance, LitRPG, progression fantasy, sci-fi, or any other genre — if it’s chapter-based and ongoing, FICTBASE is built for it.

External Services

This plugin makes no external HTTP requests of any kind. No data is transmitted to any third-party service. All data (stories, chapters, settings) is stored in your own WordPress database.

Privacy and external services

FICTBASE does not contact any external server on its own. It sends nothing on
activation, on upgrade, on a schedule, or when a page is viewed.

There is exactly one exception, and it only happens if you ask for it. On the
FICTBASE admin screens you may see a box inviting you to leave your email
address for setup tips and release notes. The field starts empty and is never
pre-filled. If, and only if, you type an address and press the button, the
following is sent to fictbase.com:

the email address you typed
this site’s address (home_url)
the FICTBASE version you are running

That is the whole payload. It is used to email you setup tips and release
notes, and nothing else. We do not sell or share it. You can dismiss the box
permanently with “No thanks, do not ask again”, and no request is ever made.

To stop receiving mail later, use the unsubscribe link in any email we send, or
ask us at https://fictbase.com/support and we will delete the address.

Service: fictbase.com. Privacy policy: https://fictbase.com/privacy