ComicPress is a WordPress theme and must be installed in the WordPress folder on your server. You must already have WordPress installed, it is recommended that you install WordPress in the root folder of your domain or website.

Using FTP software, copy the entire "comicpress" folder to the "/wp-content/themes" folder where WordPress is installed.

From your WordPress Admin Control Panel (located at http://yoursite.com/wp-admin/), click on "Presentation", you should see a list of themes you can select for your blog, click on the one that says "ComicPress". If it is not there, you did not copy the ComicPress folder to your server correctly, go on and give it another try.

Next you need to create a folder to keep your comics in. By default this folder is named "comics". Create this folder in the folder WordPress was installed in. If you installed WordPress in your root folder, your comics should be at this location:

http://yoursite.com/comics

Or if your WordPress is installed in a subfolder of your domain then it should be like this:

http://yoursite.com/subfolder/comics

If you don't want to use the folder named "comics", click here to learn more about customizing this option.

Your comic files can be GIF, JPG or PNG. The beginning of filenames must be in date format:

Year-Month-Day Filename Format:
YYYY-MM-DD

This will be the date you are posting that comic, it can even be in the future. After that part of the filename you can add anything you want, the title of the comic, a comic number or even just a random code so that people can't try looking ahead at future comics.

So for a comic of the following date:

June 1, 2007

Any of these filenames will work:

2007-06-01-funny_day.gif
2007-06-01-0043.jpg
2007-06-01XWERIU.png

Next just upload your comic files to your comics folder on your server. You will not need to upload the comic files using WordPress' built in upload feature (ComicPress works differently for your comic images). You may use it if you like, but you will need to set the upload directory to be your "comics" folder.

ComicPress sees every post as either a news/blog post or a comic post and handles them differently. By default, ComicPress treats the WordPress default category, "Uncategorized" (ID 1), as your news/blog category. You may want to go to your WordPress Admin Control Panel select "Manage/Categories" and change the name of that category to "Blog" or "News". To post news, just click "Write/Write Post" and make sure to check the news/blog category box from the Category dropdown in the right sidebar.

Any other categories you make will be treated as a comic category. Make sure to create one before trying to post a comic. To post a comic just select one of your comic categories from the category menu when posting, as you did with the news/blog post. Make sure the date of the post matches the date of the comic's filename (one that you have previously uploaded, the comic area of the theme will automatically grab the right comic based on the date of the comic post). You can expand "Post Timestamp" from the sidebar and enter in any day you want, far into the future, and those comic posts will not show up until then. This is called a comic buffer, it is a strange concept to many Webcomic creators. ; )

Click here if you want to learn about changing which category is your news/blog category (perhaps you are converting from ComicPress 1.5 and all your comics are posted in the default category).

ComicPress already features an assortment of archiving options, a calendar, a recent comics list and archives by month or category. But you may choose to create a main archive that lists all your comics by title on one convenient page (in ComicPress 1.5 this was done with the narchives.php file but now it is built into the template).

Go to your WordPress Admin Control Panel and select "Write/Write Page". From the right sidebar, expand the "Page Template" menu and from it select "Comic Archive". Now name the page and you can write in anything you would like to appear above the archive list, or leave it blank. A link to the page will be added under "Extras" on your site.

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First of all, I strongly suggest using "Date and name base" Permalinks. Instead of a specific comic page URL appearing like this:

http://yoursite.com/?p=123

It will look like this:

http://yoursite.com/2007/06/01/bob-discovers-velcro/

Not only does it look nicer and make more sense for linking to specific comics, the search engines really like this format. Also when you create that archive page if you just title it "Archive" then the link to the archive will be:

http://yoursite.com/archive/

And that's just nice.

In the WordPress Admin Control Panel, you can set the number of posts per page under "Options/Blog Pages". The default is 10 but if you were using ComicPress 1.5 then you might have it set at only 1. This is the number of posts that will show at a time when you click archives by category or month, when you do a search or when you click "more" under the news/blog post section of the front page. The news/blog posts on the front page is set by ComicPress to 10, click here for info on changing that.

To change your comments settings, in the WordPress Control Panel, select "Options/Discussion". If you want to encourage commenting, you need to make it as easy as possible. I suggest under "Before a comment appears:" checking ONLY the center box - "Comment author must fill out name and e-mail" and making sure the other two boxes are unchecked. There is nothing more annoying than a reply being held for moderation.

This of course also makes it easy for blog spammers. To stomp out spam, go to "Plugins" and activate "Akismet". You will need to create a free account at WordPress.com but it is totally worth it, this is an excellent free spam filter service. If it's annoying posters that are a problem, you can easily paste their name or IP into the "Comment Moderation" or "Comment Blacklist" boxes under "Options/Discussion".

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By ComicPress default this is the WordPress default category, which is ID number 1. When you create categories in WordPres it lists off what the ID number is for each of them. Find the ID number you want to be your blog/news category. Now open the "functions.php" file in the ComicPress folder using a text editor. At the top you will find this line:

$blogcat = "1";

Simply change the 1 to the category ID you want for your news/blog posts. If you wanted it to be 5, change the line to:

$blogcat = "5";

By ComicPress default, the comics folder is named "comics". You can change this if you like again you need to edit the "functions.php" file. You will see these four lines at the top:

$comic_folder = "comics";
$rss_comic_folder = "comics";
$archive_comic_folder = "comics";
$archive_comic_width = "380";

The first line sets the folder where your comics are located. You can change "comics" to your own folder name.

The second line sets the folder where the RSS feed will grab comics from, this can be the same, but you might want to have smaller comics in your RSS feed than appears at your site, so you have the option here. Or you might only make teaser images for your RSS feed. You would name them the same as the actual comics, by the date, but then at the end of the filename you could add "-rss" or something so that you did not mix the files up.

The third line sets the folder where your thumbnail comics will appear, these are the ones that show up on the archive pages. Again it can use the same comic images. But you have the option of making your own thumbnails for each comic, perhaps you will just want to show the first frame. The final line sets the width of these archive comics, by default it is set to "380" which would be half the size of the width of ComicPress, 760 pixels. If you are not making your own thumbnails you are counting on the browser to render small images of your comic, by making it exactly half or even a quarter the width of your actual comics it should allow browsers render it a bit better visually.

The post count per page setting in WordPress will not effect the number of news/blog posts on the main page. This you can control separately for what you feel would look best for your main page. You may not want your main page to go on and on for 10 posts. Again, in "functions.php" you will find the following line at the top:

$blog_postcount = "10";

Simply change the "10" to any number you desire.

A quick way to get your own look going is to customize the title bar, or the page header. You can simply replace the text there with an image of your comic's logo/title. First create an image that is 760 pixels wide. Next open up the "header.php" file from the ComicPress folder. Find this section:

<div id="header">
<h1><a href="<?php echo get_settings('home'); ?>"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
<div class="description"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></div>
</div>

Replace it with (edit your image URL accordingly):

<div id="header">
<a href="<?php echo get_settings('home'); ?>"><img src="http://yoursite.com/yourimage.jpg"></a>
</div>

Now you will have your custom image as the header of every page, when clicked on it will take you to the front page.

The top menu bar is a convenient way to navigate the site and easiest for readers to find. To get you started you will notice you already have some options there:

HOME | SUBSCRIBE

You can easily change these or add more. Again you will need to edit your "header.php" file from the ComicPress folder. Find this section:

<div class="headerbarlinks"><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>">HOME</a> | <a href="">SUBSCRIBE</a></div>

To add a link to your comic's shop, just add the following text in:

<div class="headerbarlinks"><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>">HOME</a> | <a href="">SUBSCRIBE</a> | <a href="http://yourshopurl.com">SHOP</a></div>

Your menu will now look like this:

HOME | SUBSCRIBE | SHOP

If you made a comics archive page (like was mentioned earlier using the template), then you might want to add a link to it in the menu bar as well:

<div class="headerbarlinks"><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>">HOME</a> | <a href="">SUBSCRIBE</a> | <a href="http://yourshopurl.com">SHOP</a> | <a href="http://yoursite.com/archive">ARCHIVE</a></div>

If you like, you can very easily add a header to the news/blog section on the front page to let your viewers know that's what that section is. You will need to open the "index.php" file from the ComicPress folder. Find this section:

<div id="content" class="blogheader"></div>

Then just add your image or text inside the <div> container:

<div id="content" class="blogheader"><img src="http://yoursite.com/blognewsheader.jpg"></div>

If you use text instead of an image you will want to modify the ".blogheader" class in the "style.css" file to make it look the way you want.

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More information and tutorials about customizing as well as Mods and Plugins will be posted at the ComicPress site:

http://mindfaucet.com/comicpress

Be sure to visit the FORUM there to ask questions and get specific help. There are a lot of helpful people in the ComicPress community as well as people creating mods and plugins for the theme.

ComicPress 2.1 Setup Documentation Version 1.00 | November 26th, 2007