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VoxVera Flyers

VoxVera provides scripts and templates for producing printable flyers with QR codes. These flyers link to content hosted through Tor and can also include a Nostr page. The project automates building the HTML, generating the QR codes, and copying all assets into a directory under host/ so they can be served statically.

Prerequisites

  • Node.js and npm
  • jq
  • qrencode
  • ImageMagick (convert)
  • javascript-obfuscator and html-minifier-terser (installed via npm)
  • pdftotext (optional, used when extracting fields from a PDF form)

Installing Dependencies

On Debian or Ubuntu systems you can install the required packages with:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y jq qrencode imagemagick poppler-utils nodejs npm

macOS

With Homebrew you can install the same dependencies:

brew install jq qrencode imagemagick poppler node coreutils

The obfuscation scripts attempt to use mktemp --suffix when creating temporary files. If that option is unavailable for example on macOS without GNU coreutils the scripts automatically fall back to a portable mktemp command that yields the same result.

The obfuscation scripts also rely on a pair of Node modules. Install them globally:

npm install -g javascript-obfuscator html-minifier-terser

A helper script setup.sh is provided to check for these dependencies and install anything that is missing.

Windows

These scripts rely on a Unix-like environment. The recommended approach on Windows is to use WSL2 with a Debian distribution. Install WSL and Debian with:

wsl --install

Launch the Debian terminal and run setup.sh from this repository or the apt commands shown above to install all prerequisites. Alternative environments such as MSYS2 or Git Bash can also be used, but they must provide the same command-line utilities.

Generating a Flyer

Run the helper script from the repository root:

# interactive prompts
./src/create_flyer.sh

# use an alternate config file
./src/create_flyer.sh -c path/to/custom.json

# use answers from an existing PDF form
./src/create_flyer.sh --from-pdf path/to/form.pdf

When run interactively you'll be prompted for details such as the flyer title and headline. The script now also asks for a URL and a Tear-off link. These values are written into the configuration file (src/config.json by default) and determine the QR code targets.

The script updates the chosen config file, regenerates QR codes, obfuscates index-master.html and nostr-master.html, and copies the resulting files plus PDFs and QR images into host/<subdomain>. The resulting src/index.html and src/nostr.html files are generated automatically and excluded from version control via .gitignore. The contents in that directory can then be hosted.

Additional documentation is available in the src/ directory; see src/README.md for more details on the obfuscation scripts and additional usage notes.

Step-by-Step

  1. Edit src/index-master.html or src/nostr-master.html if you need custom content.
  2. Run ./src/create_flyer.sh and follow the prompts, or use ./src/create_flyer.sh --from-pdf path/to/form.pdf.
  3. Host the generated host/<subdomain> directory. The index.html file fetches config.json, so the flyer must be served via a local or remote web server rather than opened directly from disk. For a quick test you can run python3 -m http.server inside the folder and then visit the provided address.

Batch Import

Place configuration files in an imports/ directory at the project root. Run

./src/import_from_json.sh

Each JSON file is copied to src/config.json and processed with create_flyer.sh --no-interaction. Existing folders under host/ with the same subdomain are removed before new files are written.

Hosting Options

The folder under host/<subdomain> contains all of the files needed to serve the flyer as a static website. A few easy ways to make it publicly accessible include:

  • GitHub Pages Create a new repository or use GitHub Pages from this one and push the contents of host/<subdomain> to a branch called gh-pages.
  • Netlify Drag and drop the folder onto Netlify or connect it to a Git repository. Netlify will automatically deploy the static files and provide a public URL.
  • OnionShare For a privacyfocused option, you can host the folder from an old laptop running OnionShare. OnionShare shares the files over Tor, allowing others to access them using the provided onion address.

index.html fetches config.json dynamically, so the flyer should be viewed through a local or remote web server. For quick testing, run python3 -m http.server in the folder and open the provided address instead of loading the file directly.

This project is licensed under the MIT License.