Featured Site: Around Comics
ComicPress Version: 2.0 BE
Modifications: Light but clever
Got a little behind in the Friday Feature, as one year came to an end and a new one began. So to get back on track, I want to feature a site cleverly using ComicPress just a little bit different than the rest… to publish Podcasts… not Webcomics. Around Comics is a podcast about comic book culture, with minimal graphic additions they have styled the theme to look very slick.
Anyway, using ComicPress for other things than Webcomics is and interesting idea, I know some people have used it for sketch diaries and even photos, but this is something entirely different. It works well, because you are still delivering regular content, which gets special feature treatment for the posts with that content, the Podcast file itself is of course a link but in place of where the comic image would normally sit, is a custom “front page” for that Podcast, a graphical representation to go with it, which visually is great for an otherwise graphically impaired medium, and I’m sure it helps entice a non-subscribing viewer who stumbles across the page to wanting to give it a listen.
If you know of any other sites using the ComicPress theme to publish something other than Webcomics, please post them, would be fun to see.
Fellow ComicPress user Scott Kurtz deals with bad habits in this insightful video diary (a play on This American Life radio program). Hopefully we’ll see more of these as companions to the upcoming book, How To Make Webcomics being produced by the Halfpixel group, half of who are publishing their comics with ComicPress now (there’s a blurb about ComicPress in the book). What I’ve read of How To Make Webcomics is great, so look forward to seeing that on the shelves soon this year.
A new version of WordPress was just released that addresses a vulnerability with exposing any draft posts you might have. They consider it an urgent security release so I suggest you upgrade as soon as you are able.
Featured Site: Zip & Li’l Bit
ComicPress Version: 2.0 BE
Modifications: Heavy
Here’s an example of another site I had a hand in, once again, the design itself was completely done by the creator. Once you learn how to move the code around without breaking things, and get a firm grasp on CSS, pretty much any layout should be possible.
Zip and Bit is a unique case, perhaps explaining how it works could give some of you an idea of how to do things with a similar situation. Trade writes the Zip and Bit stories as books (around 60 pages) and then publishes them online a page at a time, twice a week. One book is complete and one was just starting so he wanted two sites set up nearly identical (just some color and header changes). So both sites were created in subfolders of the main domain, separate WordPress installs. The current developing story uses WordPress’ feature to publish the blog to the root directory, so going to the root domain URL gives you the current page of the current story. However, the subfolder name was added to the permalink structure, so that all the permalinks act like they are going to the subfolder. This way, if another book and subfolder are added in the future, this story can be moved back to it’s subfolder and all the permalinks will stay the same.
One nice touch Trade has always done that I think is great, is having a zoom feature on his lovely artwork. You can click on any panel of a comic to view a double-sized version of it. From this view mode you can now navigate the comic as well, panel at a time, making use of a Lightbox plugin.
Finally, the archive was also modified to something more suitable to a book, since Trade’s comics are more page based than name based, and have a set number that is not too high, the archive template file was changed to list the comics in page order as well as including handy thumbnails of each of page. Makes for a nice way to look at the whole book at a glance or find the exact page you are looking for.
I have a bucket full of bookmarks to great Webcomic sites built with the ComicPress theme that I need to share. I think I’ll make it a regular Friday feature here so we can get through some of them.
Seeing these sites gives new users an idea of what they can do as far as site design, layout and features. The ComicPress theme has a nice clean look and layout, but it’s also a nice simple and basic layout to build on and customize. For those just learning how to move some of the code around or experimenting with CSS for the first time, seeing these sites gives them some ideas. Also using Firefox with the Web Developer Toolbar and CSS Viewer you can view the style sheet and hover the CSS elements of the sites to see how the site accomplished certain feats.
Hopefully it will be a great way to learn from each other as well as showcase some excellent work by you guys. And by the way, some of you guys have done some awesome stuff and beautiful layouts. See you tomorrow.
Featured: Around Comics
