Hopefully it’s not that apparent on first glance, but I’ve converted Messenger to run on WordPress with Webcomic & Inkblot, from WordPress with Comicpress. Comicpress has apparently been a hot topic among webcomickers lately, and I’m feeling a few of the ripples as a result, so here is the last of what I have to say on this topic. This will probably not be of much interest to you if you don’t make comics or use WordPress, it’s just my thoughts on these things based on my own experience after 6-ish years of making a webcomic.

I don’t really feel like I have much business talking about this, because who am I? I’m not an authority on anything. My comic is small, and I have a relatively small readership compared to tons of other webcomics out there. I do my comic because it’s fun, I like telling stories, and in this period of my life where employment is awfully slow, it keeps me sane by giving me something to work on when I’m not busting my ass looking for freelance work or applying for other jobs. It’s not a completely fruitless endeavor, in that I do scrape together a bit of money from advertising and reader donations now and again, but that only goes to A. comic supplies, B. groceries, or C. webhosting bills. You’d be foolish to believe that I’m gaining much of anything by doing this comic, aside from personal enjoyment and reader interaction. (Both of which are great things!)

Messenger has been around since 2004. When I first started making it, I posted each new page manually by adding HTML pages and adjusting old ones to link up with the new ones. In the beginning, this wasn’t an unreasonable undertaking because I didn’t have many pages. However, once I started to approach 50 pages, I realized that keeping up with an archive was becoming difficult, and would only become more difficult the further in I got. I started looking for alternatives. I’ve kept a blog since my early high school days around the year 2000, before everyone and their grandmother had one, and at some point I started using WordPress. I love WordPress. I think it’s a great platform, and it offers a lot of options and flexibility for people (like me) who don’t know all kinds of fancy programming tricks to make their website jump through flaming hoops. A lightbulb appeared over my head, and I started putting my comics on a simple WordPress site. It wasn’t perfect, nor was it really designed for what I was doing, but it worked well enough. And then, I discovered Comicpress. It was an early version, and not nearly as fancy as what’s available now, but I installed it and it worked pretty well. At that point, I pretty much stopped looking at alternatives and just did my thing.

And then, it happened. See, a few versions of WordPress and Comicpress ago, updating was not as easy as it is now. Add to this the fact that I’d already broken and fixed my own blog a couple of times during an update, and I was reasonably nervous when it came to doing this. I knew it was important, but I just hated doing it. I had update anxiety. So I did the unbelieveably stupid thing, and just chose not to update for a good long time, figuring that no one reads my comic anyway, so what do I have to worry about? For the record, this is absolute garbage, and everything that happened as a result is my own dumb fault. My site got hacked. My comic site was demolished. A bunch of files for my other domain/blog site were also wiped out. I lost a lot of things. I didn’t have a perfect backup. The backup my host had was also outdated. It was a mess, and I was upset. While yes, this was all 100% my own fault for not being more security conscious, it’s also my argument for updates. No matter how much it sucks or how much it’s a pain to do, UPDATE YOUR SOFTWARE. Eventually, I re-scanned my lost pages, I rewrote all of the written stuff, and rebuilt a new Comicpress site. I learned my lesson.

So earlier this week, when I heard (what was perhaps misinformation) about Comicpress charging $80 for new updates, I panicked. Since then, they’ve clarified that the $80 is for a separate Comicpress-like product with different features and the package includes a different support system, but things are still somewhat unclear as to what will happen to 2.x. They say that it will still be supported, but for how long? After chatting with a programmer friend about the situation, it seems as though what typically happens with this kind of thing is that it’s supported for a while, then only supported for security updates, and then it kind of hits the end of its lifespan and is no longer supported at all. But then what? I’m about 200 pages into my comic, and I really don’t want to have to start over again with more pages than that to juggle. Out of curiosity, I started reading about other webcomic management systems, and found Webcomic & Inkblot. I keep a test install of WordPress around so I can test out new ideas without breaking the main site, and installed a copy of Webcomic to see how it worked. I really liked the way uploads are handled in Webcomic, as well as the way it sorts chapters and storylines. It simply does a lot of things out of the box that I was kind of waiting for in a future update of Comicpress, which might only ever be implemented as part of their premium model. So I rebuilt my layout from scratch using Inkblot, and converted the site. It was a very quick and easy process. Webcomic’s creator seems to imply that it will be supported and updated for the forseeable future, which is something I was specifically looking for in my CMS.

Is there something wrong with charging money for something you’ve created? Absolutely not! It’s yours, you do what you want with it. I have absolutely no issue with the Comicpress guys charging money for their theme – it’s just not something I can afford myself. As far as comics go, I think you should do whatever works for what you’ve got, whether that means writing HTML pages by hand, posting them to DeviantArt or Flickr, or using something like Comicpress or Webcomic. Comicpress is a fantastic platform and it certainly treated me well, but I’ve found something which is better suited to what I’m doing now and accomodates plans I have for the future of my comic. Maybe someday I’ll write up some kind of comparison about the two systems, but what I’m getting at is that both are perfectly valid, and you should use what works best for you and your particular situation.

The bottom line for me is that I need a comic CMS which is affordable for me, does the things I need, is secure, and will be supported by someone (a person or community) for a while. At this moment, Webcomic & Inkblot does that, so that’s what I’m choosing to use. This is not really worth anyone getting upset over, I’m just putting my personal stance down because apparently it’s become an issue for some people.

That’s all I’ve really got to say.

A handful of related links that might be of interest:

Other Opinions
Patchwork – Thoughts on Comicpress for Pay
Ex Nihilo – Response – WebComic + Inkblot vs ComicPress
On Comicpress Premium

Various Comic CMS
ComicPress
Webcomic & Inkblot
Manga+Press
stripShow
WPComic

Etc.
The Webcomic List Forum Thread
Comixtalk – Comicpress goes pro
Frumph.net – Comicpress Unleashed