Tuesday, October 6, 2009

ComicPress Vs. Webcomic Inkblot

Last night, as an experiment, I tried switching my website from ComicPress to Webcomic. These are both Wordpress themes for hosting webcomics, in case you don't know. Well, actually, I guess Comicpress is a theme and Webcomic is a plugin, if you want to get technical. The main impetus for my experiment was the fact that Webcomic makes it easy to host multiple comics on your site. While there are ways to do this with ComicPress, it's probably a bit beyond my rudimentary knowledge of CSS, and with Webcomic it's already done for you. So I made the switch, then quickly realized I was in over my head, couldn't get the site to look how I wanted, and changed back. (Basically, I just wanted the site to look like it does now, but with maybe a different homepage with links to multiple comics instead of just sporting Humdrum Heights. A task which I'm sure would be ridiculously simple for even the most fresh-faced of web designers.) Well, changing from ComicPress to Webcomic was incredibly simple, and there is even a video tutorial to show you how to go about doing it. (The only thing you really have to worry about is moving your comics from one folder to another in your webhost and updating your transcripts.) Now, for a simpleton like me, I need a few more tutorial videos - namely, one that talks about customization, setting your background, etc. And more tutorials are on the way, so the likelihood of these being offered in the near future is relatively high, as is the likelihood of me switching back to Webcomic.

So perhaps, a bit down the road, there will be more comics showing on Rebeldog Comics, but for now all the extras will be solely available in the Assetbar Store.

If anybody has any experience with Webcomic, or has an opinion regarding its benefits or deficiencies as compared to ComicPress, drop a comment. I haven't seen too much coverage of Webcomic, though I'm sure it's just a matter of time, so I'd love to hear what people are saying.

UPDATE:
I finally did switch over to Webcomic with Inkblot as the theme. It was just too good not to! I decided I shouldn't let a little coding deter me. So, I waded into the stylesheet and finally got the site looking (mostly) as I wanted. Though, I should mention this, and I don't know if there is an easy workaround, but when I switched to Webcomic, all my links got wiped out. Well, not wiped out exactly. They're still there in Wordpress, they're just not on the Links page where they used to be. I suspect this has to do with the fact that Inkblot doesn't have a custom links template for Page Attributes as some themes do. So, I haven't got that sorted out yet. But otherwise, I will say that I am well pleased with Webcomic and its many features. If Comicpress isn't suiting your needs and you're feeling stuck, you definitely ought to give Webcomic a shot.

UPDATE UPDATE:
I managed to get the links working. I wrote a links.php file and uploaded it to my webhost. Basically I just used the old Comicpress links.php and tweaked it, since Webcomic and Comicpress don't work in the same ways. But, anyway, it took about ten minutes and I actually learned something in the process. So proud of myself!

2 comments:

googlyblogger said...

I tried using ComicPress for running multiple strips and it was quite difficult.. seems to work fine using categories though (Wonkie CartOOns) - the newer version 2.8 of ComicPress handles it much better actually - but the thought of upgrading after the mass of customisation is a bit scary!

I also tried WebComic and Inkblot on an alternative site Wabber Fun - handling the multiple strips was definitely much easier but customising the site and the stylesheets etc I found got really messy!

King AdBeck said...

Cool sites! Keep us posted on your goal of making one million people laugh.

Also, it may be worth noting that when you use WebComic with the Inkblot stylesheet, most of your customizations can be made in Inkblot-Child, so you don't lose them with future upgrades.