What's the tool of choice for building a web-comic site?
April 23, 2013 4:13 PM Subscribe
I've built many a web site over the years, for corporate use and private individuals and small business, etc -- but never one for a web comic. How do I get started?
I'm involved in creating the web comic, as the art talent, and an attendant graphic novel. I pitched my services as a web designer, and got hired for that, too. I'm confident I can handle the task, but I don't know what the best software package for this project would be. I think that my client wants to use Wordpress as his platform. There's something called ComicPress that a lot of people on Wordpress seem to use. If you're a MeFites who uses it, can you give me the skinny -- learning curve, ease of use... Plus, my client wants to be able to update the site himself, which is fine by me as long as it won't be too hard for me to tutor him. If it matters, this will be a sci-fi project with all the usual hardware and stuff, plus and action and violence. So the art will probably be relatively detailed.
I'm involved in creating the web comic, as the art talent, and an attendant graphic novel. I pitched my services as a web designer, and got hired for that, too. I'm confident I can handle the task, but I don't know what the best software package for this project would be. I think that my client wants to use Wordpress as his platform. There's something called ComicPress that a lot of people on Wordpress seem to use. If you're a MeFites who uses it, can you give me the skinny -- learning curve, ease of use... Plus, my client wants to be able to update the site himself, which is fine by me as long as it won't be too hard for me to tutor him. If it matters, this will be a sci-fi project with all the usual hardware and stuff, plus and action and violence. So the art will probably be relatively detailed.
Two more things:
1) the learning curve will be relatively steep.
2) someone will have to monitor Wordpress/ComicPress updates. Wordpress NEEDS to be kept up to date (believe me, I suffered when I let my WP install get old. It was compromised and I had to rebuild the whole site. Whoops.) and someone will need to monitor ComicPress's compatibility with new Wordpress versions and keep it all fresh and clean.
posted by TangoCharlie at 10:11 PM on April 23, 2013
1) the learning curve will be relatively steep.
2) someone will have to monitor Wordpress/ComicPress updates. Wordpress NEEDS to be kept up to date (believe me, I suffered when I let my WP install get old. It was compromised and I had to rebuild the whole site. Whoops.) and someone will need to monitor ComicPress's compatibility with new Wordpress versions and keep it all fresh and clean.
posted by TangoCharlie at 10:11 PM on April 23, 2013
I am someone who has developed and maintains a webcomic through comicpress.
Building and customizing the look is by far the hardest part. You'll have to experiment with templates and with editing the actual css/html code within wordpress, messing around with widgets and image files. Wordpress is super customizable but admittedly somewhat opaque, so give yourself a bunch of time to mess around and see what does what.
In terms of actually putting comics up and uploading content, the site is very easy to use and can be taught to anyone who is basically somewhat competent with computers. It's a matter of uploading an image file, selecting a date for it to publish, and optionally adding a quick blog post/tags/whatever.
You do have to keep up to date on the various plugin and wordpress/comicpress updates, but this is generally as easy as pressing the 'update' button when the site prompts the admin to do so (though always always keep a backup in case it messes up, of course).
Finally, wordpress sites have been taking a bit of trouble lately from attackers using brute force approaches to crack admin passwords, so if you do end up installing it, make your admin login something other than 'admin', choose a really good password, and enable a set number of login attempts before a lock-out.
posted by robot-hugs at 10:35 PM on April 23, 2013
Building and customizing the look is by far the hardest part. You'll have to experiment with templates and with editing the actual css/html code within wordpress, messing around with widgets and image files. Wordpress is super customizable but admittedly somewhat opaque, so give yourself a bunch of time to mess around and see what does what.
In terms of actually putting comics up and uploading content, the site is very easy to use and can be taught to anyone who is basically somewhat competent with computers. It's a matter of uploading an image file, selecting a date for it to publish, and optionally adding a quick blog post/tags/whatever.
You do have to keep up to date on the various plugin and wordpress/comicpress updates, but this is generally as easy as pressing the 'update' button when the site prompts the admin to do so (though always always keep a backup in case it messes up, of course).
Finally, wordpress sites have been taking a bit of trouble lately from attackers using brute force approaches to crack admin passwords, so if you do end up installing it, make your admin login something other than 'admin', choose a really good password, and enable a set number of login attempts before a lock-out.
posted by robot-hugs at 10:35 PM on April 23, 2013
Response by poster: Hmmm. This might be more hassle than it's worth. But thanks, folks. I know enough HTML and CSS to make it doable, and I've worked with PHP before. But I wasn't wanting to do a whole lot of code wrangling at the expense of the art chores. *sigh*
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 11:03 AM on April 24, 2013
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 11:03 AM on April 24, 2013
Are the comics in a static panel type format?
If they are image files, perhaps a photo gallery system would work... ?
There are a lot out of them there, even just the list at Wikipedia.
You may end up with something similar to Wordpress+Comicpress, but without the big hacker target on your site.
I have setup ZenPhoto in some unusual ways in the past, but never for comics.
posted by Leenie at 2:38 PM on April 24, 2013
If they are image files, perhaps a photo gallery system would work... ?
There are a lot out of them there, even just the list at Wikipedia.
You may end up with something similar to Wordpress+Comicpress, but without the big hacker target on your site.
I have setup ZenPhoto in some unusual ways in the past, but never for comics.
posted by Leenie at 2:38 PM on April 24, 2013
Response by poster: Leenie, that's interesting, and looks easy enough to implement. I have used Lightbox, too, which seems similar. I hadn't thought of adapting Lightbox to a web-comic, but it's certainly a thought.
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 4:25 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 4:25 PM on April 26, 2013
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So good options include customizing ComicPress or building your own WordPress template (as that is what ComicPress is - just a facelift for Wordpress). Either way, you'll need to learn enough PHP, CSS and/or HTML to get it to do what you want. It's tough, but it's satisfying if you can get it working how you want.
In the end, once I finished updating the comic, I switched from Wordpress to straight-up static HTML to keep things simple, static, and conceivably more reliable.
All that said, i think ComicPress is the thing that best balances the web comic functionality with beginner updating friendliness. I think most people who are using backends other than ComicPress are using proprietary or custom setups, though that's speculation.
posted by TangoCharlie at 10:06 PM on April 23, 2013