Advanced - appendItem vs appendItemCreate

More details on both of these can be found in the API docs here.

Frequently we might find ourselves in the position of trying to append a record to an NFT that has not received any records from that writer key yet. To do this we need to create a new writerHead PDA. Because this takes up space on the blockchain, it incurrs a small fee. Aside from off chain data storage this is the primary cost of utilizing Solstory, and as a developer providing a service to NFT creators, it's important to make a conscious choice whether to bear the cost.

appendItem will append an item, but will not create the writerHead PDA if it does not yet exist. Instead, it will return an error.

appendItemCreate will create the PDA, and more importantly will do so in a single API call so you do not need to wait for blockchain confirmation from the manual head creation function in order to append the item.