output format : small group of HTML files

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I’d like to produce a book that is published on a website.
I don’t need a “web site creator” please don’t send me there.
I just want my book to produce a small group of HTML files
hopefully with cross links?

I know I can select sections and produce a single html file,
so that allows me to produce one html file at a time for
different parts of the book. But that’s klunky.

  1. Is there a way to produce multiple HTML output files?
  2. Is there a way to cross-link between the files, and possibly even have a TOC
    that points to multiple different HTML files?
2

You could create individual XHTML files in one shot by compiling to the EPUB file format and using a section break to separate each of the book parts that should be its own file. If you use the default “Ebook” compile format, for instance, you’ll see a number of the available layouts show a “Section Break” at the top; assign one of these to the section types for documents that should begin a new webpage.

After compiling, change the .epub extension to .zip, then double-click the file to extract the contents. You’ll find the XHTML files within the OPS folder as “body”, “body1”, “body2”, and so on. If you’ve enabled “Convert document links to HTML links” in the compile settings (the gear icon at the top of the right-most pane when you open compile), links you’ve created in Scrivener’s editor from one document to another will be preserved as relative links. Compiling as an ebook will auto-generate a table of contents, or you can create your own following the instructions in section 22.1 of the user manual. You’ll also get the stylesheets to either use as is or modify as you like to fit your webpage. (You can also modify the CSS within Scrivener by double-clicking the compile format and choosing “Duplicate & Edit”, then tweaking the formatting there, including directly editing the custom stylesheet.)

I think that will be the best option for what you’re trying to do. You can create individual HTML files for each of the documents by selecting them in the binder and using the File > Export option to export as HTML (the specific file type can be set in File > Preferences: Sharing: Export), but this won’t give you any of the fine tuning possible with compile, nor will the links between the documents be preserved.