CONFIGURE YOUR BOOKSONIC SERVER

To start configuring Booksonic, visit “Settings > Media folders” to specify where your audiobooks are stored. This is where you can take advantage of Booksonic’s support for multiple users, dividing up your library into subfolders, then creating separate libraries for each. Click “Save” to enable your changes, and “Scan media folders now” to start populating Booksonic with your books.

Once done, switch to the “Users” tab to create individual profiles for other people in your household (or further afield if you’re opening access to the Internet). Configure individual levels of access – including which libraries they can use – and set a bit rate if you’re worried about bandwidth. Finally, click “Save.” Users can then log into Booksonic with their own account, and configure things via the “Personal,” “Players,” and “Shared Media” tabs.

To see how your library is shaping up, click the “Home” link, where you’ll eventually see them appear in all their glory, artwork intact. Click one to view it up close – here you’ll find “No description available” and “Narrated by: Unknown” fields appearing above the artwork. To fix this, place your descriptive text in a file called “desc.txt” and the narrator’s name in a file called “reader.txt” – both of which you store in the book’s folder.

Finally, your Booksonic server is accessible anywhere on your home network, but you can open it up for Internet access, too. You need a dynamic DNS address, such as the free options offered at www.noip. com, then configure your router to forward port 4040 to your server’s IP address. If UPnP is enabled, visit “Settings > Network” in the Booksonic web interface to try automatic configuration; you’ll also find a link to https://portforward. com if you need router-specific instructions for setting up port forwarding manually. Once done, point your mobile app at http://yourname.ddns. net:4040 to access it from anywhere.