Anyone want to make your own website?

[jayefabel]

Sorry, this is going to be unnecessarily long. I'll split it into sections. The Main Part is the tl;dr section. Whining is why I don't like Tapas. Musing is more detail re: the main part. Epilogue is... even more of that.

The Main Part

I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a guide on how to create your own webcomic site using css/html?

Whining

Personally, I find reading webcomics on here a really unpleasant experience. The interface gets in the way on the web version, I don't like how the archive works, various other complaints... If there's a webcomic that looks interesting and I find out it's only available on tapas (or webtoons) I just won't read it. :'^) Even with Firefox add-ons like Stylus where you can customize the CSS of a page yourself, it would be too much work to make it usable imo.

At least Tapas was good for gaining an audience for my own comic, since it's a big site. Recently there was an update that has your notifications grouped with a bunch of adds (you may have noticed xD) and I'm like... the only upside of this place was that I get attention and now I have over 70 notifications for ads I can't get rid of. Why bother?

Musing

Anyway! In the hopes of encouraging more people to make their own sites for their webcomics, I had this genius plan~ :v Honestly if I had the time I'd say "I'll make you a website myself!" and dfghjk maybe I will if you make a mockup..... xD;;; But I was thinking at least some kind of guide... Something like "if you don't want to do anything, just follow this and you'll have something decent" but with enough info to customize if you're up for that.

Currently it's just a dream since it'd be kind of a big project... I want to make it good and comprehensive (for example, I don't think the way I have the archive organized on my site would work for most people and I want to test some ideas for alternatives).

I'm not like, an expert but I did make a website for my webcomic (https://blackoutcity.ca/) and I like it. :v Plus there are other templates out there (like Rarebit on neocities and I think there's a free wordpress theme for webcomics) so I could include that kind of thing and other resources...

Epilogue

If you're thinking "this post could have been a single sentence, there's no way this guy could write a succinct and straightforward guide to anything", that might be true. So if you're interested and you want to beta read whatever document I end up putting together, let me know! =w=;;

[TroyVSTheWorld]

I'm no codemaster but I spent the $15/year to own a domain that I can put my comics up whenever. I totally recommend everyone having their own domain, even if you just use it as a link tree.
www.gamepunks.net

[conventurecomics]

I have one a wix site.
https://www.conventure-comics.com/

[river121693]

Your websites super cool. I would love to see how you did it. I think a video guide would be more accessible but a document would be great too.

I made my site using Wordpress and the Comicpress plug in. I cobbled it together with nuggets of info because I couldn't find any comprehensive guide online specifically a webcomic site using wordpress. It works well, but still have no idea how to add a few of the "aesthetic" components, like cool navigation buttons and background.
https://saoandtheglowofmemories.com/

Many folks I know use comicfurry which is great too. I highly suggests anyone who's serious about their comic make their own site as well.

[AmysGames]

I definitely think such a guide could be useful for people! I also generally prefer the experience of reading webcomics on a dedicated website when I have that option, though as a creator I also very much appreciate the social aspects of a platform like Tapas. Getting new readers to come to your website is hard!

And while we're linking websites, I hand-coded my own in PHP. Obviously not a viable solution for everyone, but templates annoy me and I learned how to code in PHP for a reason!

Niji Chikara - Ch. 1 Pg. 11

[allenT]

Very well made website @jayefabel !

I currently do have a ComicFury site and I like I can customize a lot of things with ease (compared to building html from scratch).
I have a cool 'cast' page, it's not too informative but it's a bit interactive.

[jayefabel]

various replies~
in general it's awesome to see all your webcomic sites, thank you for sharing them!! ^^

@river121693
thank you! : D
A video guide is a good idea! I prefer written guides myself, but I could make both versions so it's accessible for a variety of people.
In my experience with Wordpress you need to pay some kind of fee to edit the code yourself, so I'm not sure how much you can actually do. ^^; Hypothetically, the background should be easy to change... the main background would be like
#page-wrap {
background-color: #000000;
or
background-image: url();
}
if you go with an image you'll also want to set it's position

CSS background-position property

like so~
background-repeat is important for whether you want it tiled or not
background-position is important for how it displays on different screen sizes if it's not tiled (it'll put the top left corner in the top left if you don't tell it otherwise)

W3 Schools is the best orz;; If you forget what kind of things you can make a certain element do, or how to make it do them, you can always look it up on there.

@amysgames
yeahhh the social aspect is really the only pro for tapas in my books ;w;;
your php is so good! xD;; tbh I didn't even know it existed until I realized I needed it to do headers and such on my website.
Can I ask how your navigation works?
I have to update the nav & archive manually on my site. It works for me since I don't have it page by page, but the way you have it would be way more convenient for most people. (It's using php to link to the right page, right? Is there js involved?)

@allenT
thank you!
your cast page is SO COOL!!!

[AmysGames]

your php is so good! xD;; tbh I didn't even know it existed until I realized I needed it to do headers and such on my website. Can I ask how your navigation works? I have to update the nav & archive manually on my site. It works for me since I don't have it page by page, but the way you have it would be way more convenient for most people. (It's using php to link to the right page, right? Is there js involved?)

Thank you!

And yeah, not needing to update the links manually is the main reason why I started using PHP, haha. It basically just feeds the current page number into a PHP script and adds +1 or -1 to the nav buttons, with an array that keeps track of how long each chapter is.

(I can send some sample code if you want, though my actual script is a bit messy due to all the stuff I've added to it. )

[jayefabel]

That would be awesome! Thank you so muuuch! x3

[river121693]

awesome, I'll try messing around with it. Thanks!

[AmysGames]

I tried to make it as simple as possible and it still ended up really long, lol. Hopefully it makes at least some sense?

[jayefabel]

Thank you so much! It does make sense~ x3 It's very helpful!