This is a theme for WordPress that will help you publish your Webcomic. I wanted something very simple that would use WordPress the way it was without much for mods or a separate comic archiving system. This is just that.

If you’re already familiar with WordPress or PHP content software then it will make things a lot easier. WordPress is PHP software you can use for blogging or news and is free to download.

Click here to download the ComicPress Theme.

Need Help?

Visit the support forum if you need any help editing files or the style sheet. Or just getting it to work right for your comic. Also if you have any suggestions they would be appreciated. We can all work together to make our themes do all we would ever want them to.

Here I’ll be slowly adding some tips on editing the files to customize this theme to your own design or needs.

Wide-Load Comics

This template is set to fit on an 800×600 screen. However some of you may have wide comics and want to optimize for 1024×768. If your comic is wider than 760 pixels then you need to change a setting in the theme. Open up “styles.php” and find the “#comic” section. This section has all the settings for the box that the comic itself sits in. You can set the 760 pixel width to any number you need. Also you can set the background color of this area and I’ve even set in dummy borders that you can turn on by changing the 0’s to number, you’ll notice there is currently a 1 pixel gray border at the bottom.

Change the Header

Probably the first thing you’ll want do do is change the header and either replace it with a logo or menu. You’ll need to open up “header.php” and find:

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

You can replace this section with whatever you want, even just a big fat header image (760 pixels wide to fit with the rest of the page). Whatever you place there you should put it in between “<div>” and “</div>” so that it fits together with the rest of the page. You will also need to open the “narchives.php” file and make the exact same change there.

Security! Call Security!

With your files sitting in a folder with preset names by date it is not hard for someone to look ahead at comics. You might not care unless you have a story you do not want spoiled. You might not care because like most webcomic creators your uploading tomorrows strip minutes before your update time. But if you do care there is a quick solution, “encoded” filenames. WordPress creates something called a post slug, it is the title of the post in a directory/filename friendly format, ommitting punctuation and replacing spaces with hyphens. The slug for a post/comic titled “Bob Punches Steve” would be “bob-punches-steve”. You can also edit the post slug, shortening it if you want. Now you name your files with that post slug at the end, so instead of “2005-11-17.gif” you would name it “2005-11-17-bob-punches-steve.gif”. And noone knows that filename to call it up, also it labels the strips nicely for you to keep track of easier.

By default the theme is not going to recognize this new filename system. So you need to make a change to “header.php”. Near the bottom you will find this line:

<?php the_time('Y-m-d') ?>

Replace it with these lines:


<?php the_time('Y-m-d-') ?>
<?php echo $post->post_name; ?>

Include Comic Image In RSS Feed

By default the comic image itself will not be included in your RSS news feed. You may not want to give away that bandwidth without displaying paying ads that may be on your site, or wanting to display the comic outside of your site in general. On the other hand, you may just be interested in everyone reading the comic by any means possible and allowing modern convenience. If that is the case, then adding the comic image to the RSS feed is a very simple step. You will need to edit your “wp-rss2.php” file. Find this line:

<content:encoded><![CDATA[<?php the_content('', 0, '')
?>]]></content:encoded>

You just need to add the code that pulls up your comic image (three lines of the stuff you edited in the header). It should be placed like this (make the proper modifications for your particular comic, also it should all be one line, I had to break it to fit the format here):

<content:encoded><![CDATA[<?php echo '<img
src="http://yourdomain/yourcomicfolder/' ?><?php the_time('Y-m-d') ?><?php echo '.gif" />' ?><?php the_content('', 0, '') ?>]]></content:encoded>

This area is where the comic creator can talk about this comic. About how he was eating a pizza while making it. And if he has some other topics to cover he can…

Make Another Heading

And talk about that other stuff here. You can make a larger or smaller new heading by using “<h2>” or “<h3>”. To create the heading above you would enter the following in your new post:

<h3>Make Another Heading</h3>

Or if you want it to stay on the front page you may want to post it in its own feature outside the news area here. Some comic creators don’t have much to say so in that case you can say nothing, just leave a title of the comic for easier finding of it in the archive… like this next comic…