Hosting Your Own Webcomic

[robdesouza10]

Hello fellow comic artists, authors and enthusiasts!
I'm hoping to create a website to host my own comic, Happy Friday. I plan to continue to update on Tapastic but I'd like to have my own site as well.
I'm leaning on my community for support because I have absolutely no idea how to even begin. Does anyone have any experience in this area? Any tips/tricks? Is it something I can muddle through with zero experience or am I in over my head?

[infectedbloodcomics]

Hey there, I also have close to zero experience and so far I'm rather happy with WordPress for my own comic, although I would advise to think carefully about how you want to organize your comics. I went for a single website with multiple comics, but I am having a bit of difficulties, because navigation is not always self-explanatory. If you plan on setting up a single site for each comic (should you have multiple), maybe that would serve you better. Still, I think I'll stick to what I'm doing and just revise it for easier navigation - which means more work to keep track of. One thing to also keep in mind is that WP has a dedicated theme/layout for comics, which, as far as I know, no other service has (anyone can correct me if I'm wrong, of course).

I got a paid premium subscription, which is expensive (well over 300 bucks), but so far, it's worth it, because it comes with pre-made themes that you can tweak either on your own or with direct assistance (there is always some technical person you can chat with directly from your dashboard during regular business hours). I also bought my own domain, which was around 25 dollars, but it actually came for free this first time around, because I got the expensive subscription
Other people got WIX, which I hear works well, but the themes are virtually untweakable and there is no direct support (if I remember correctly).
And there are other hosting sites that may be cheaper, but I haven't explored those.

Let me know if you have any other questions, although I guess going through my site may already help a bit

[Euphorie]

It doesn't hurt to try to make a website, no promises it will be easy, but there are enough people on the internet for one of them to know what went wrong with your website if there are malfunctions.
Weebly and Word Press are the two websites that I know support making websites. If you keep digging I'm sure you will find more.
From what I've seen, I think Weebly is free.

If you are want to make a website, I would say go for it!

[Spinester]

Wordpress with the Comicpress plugin is the way to go here and it's very easy to set up.

[getsuart]

I like Wordpress when it comes to have your own website. Some told me about Blogspot, it apparently is nice too with a lot more referencing than a Wordpress makes. But maybe it's more an European/French thing.

I asked a professional webdesigner to do both of my portfolio and the website for my comic. This way, I had almost every features I could think of. I have her the basis about how I wanted it to look like, then she just did it (this way, we agree on the basic ideas, and she already tells me if the suggestions are possible or not). When something couldn't be added, we just changed it.
But there are a lot of themes you can change, if you know some basis like changing the background or the fonts, you can start with some cool things! I would suggest you to buy your own domain too, but only if you can. It doesn't cost a lot generally, but if you can't afford to pay up to $30 right now for one year, it's okay.

In any case, I'd say like every other people in the thread : if you want your own website, just go for it

[robdesouza10]

Thanks to everyone. I guess - dive right in is the best way. Lets see how this goes...

[winglesscomic]

Most people use WordPress for their comic layout.

When you host on your own site you have to take several things into consideration. First, your plan. Make sure you get a plan that is affordable for you, but also is convenient for your comic - if you get a plan that only has 10 gigs of bandwidth and your comic pages are huge, well that's a shitty plan you need to rethink. Which brings me to my second point.

Bandwidth. I only am versed in this because my own site went over my allotted bandwidth limit for the first time earlier this month. I ended up having to upgrade the plan, otherwise my comic would have been unavailable for the rest of the month. You must keep the size of all your images in check. My site layout uses a lot of images so I have to ensure they are at the lowest size but also a readable quality. If you have a large archive, this is something to worry about, because people will be combing throuhg your archive and racking up bandwidth, potentially putting you at risk of overloading your allotted month. Look into cacheing, and website compression for extra bandwidth savings, and also use TinyPNG to compress your jpegs/pngs.

Lastly make sure that your website has a design that is both aesthetically pleasing and functional. Having bad navigation is pretty much the kryptonite of any reader. If they can't navigate your pages then they can't read your comic. And make sure you put an About page in, that one is very important.

[infectedbloodcomics]

Wow, that's a really nice site you've got! Congratulations I need to customize my site as well, but it's really hard to do, because I want to host multiple comics there. I just chatted with the WP folks and they can't really help me with that. Apparently, the only decent way to go is having a single site for each comic. Meh.

[Kayke]

I also use Wordpress with the Comicpress theme and I love it. It's really easy to customize and make personal.
I've had it longer than I've been on Tapastic, and I don't see myself getting rid of my website any time soon. I love the community feel of Tapastic, but I also like being able to have pages for character bios and fanart and all that.

[DuneDeca]

I've been interesting in having my own site for SwitchOut as well, but it's rather frightening. I've heard horror stories about sites being hacked and pornographic images being uploaded. I many of my readers are apart of a younger audience, so I'm a bit hesitant to make one :<
Is this truly a common occurrence with hosting your own site, or just someone ruffling my feathers?

[infectedbloodcomics]

That's never happened to me. WP has a spam blocker (it already caught a lot of stuff) and you can also approve comments before they are posted, so there are good layers of security in place there.

[Jrej]

Hello there,
As everyone else said, Wordpress Is definitely a must in webcomics sites.
However I host my site with Jimdo (My site). It's easy and free!

I would not feel comfortable paying an expensive fee for a site when I make no revenue at all on my creative stuff! I might change later if ads would pay for it...

[ToonDoctor]

There are other solutions besides WordPress but WP and the ComicPress plug combo are very popular. Make sure that you always update to the latest versions for security reasons. There should be tutorials and a lot of support if you use WordPress and ComicPress.

[infectedbloodcomics]

Except, I tried looking into ComicPress and found it's outdated. There's the Panel theme now, it comes integrated with WP. Or which one is better, if you know about it?

[eagle1]

For the last 6 months, I have run Wordpress with the ComicPress theme and the Comic Easel plug in. I recently switched to the Inkblot theme and the Webcomic plugin, and I must say, I like it a lot better. Easier to update, keeps much better separation between my various titles and above all, it has more options on the organisation. It also has the ability to use one theme for the central site, and a different theme for each of your comics in case you wanted them to stand out from each other even more. I just finished the install this morning, and am adding the pages back in today. Nice easy workflow for me.

Eagle
(And fewer tweaks needed)

[elixiadragmire]

I .... dont know how to wordpress or comicpress and the tutorials send my head spinning. I need an adult!

[DragonPena]

Hi, I made these 2 comic sites in like less than a day, S.elf and Limerence (NSFW)
I didnt really understand wordpress so I decided to use webpagemaker, I totally recommend it. Is easy to use and very intuitive, is kind of like doing a website but graphically instead of using html, but of course for some stuff you need to learn some html..
I will tell you what I used to make these websites:
1.- Web Page maker.
2.- I used to use Ipswitch (A program to upload data to your host) but now that I´m hosting in IWF hosting (The basic hosting is like $4.95 a month, which is great, I use the same host for my 2 webcomics) so now I use IWF hosting instead of Ipswitch.
3.- Namecheap.com, I prefer it to other sites like godaddy.. I have heard bad things about godaddy..

Anyway If I were you I would first go to 000webhost.com, sign for a free website, familiarize myself with web page maker (Or the program of your choice like wordpress) and start playing with it, if you don´t know how to use it look for tutorials or ask me, I will gladly help you

Also, now that we are discussing doing your own webcomic, could you guys tell me what do you think of the site´s design? Not the comic itself, but the design, like its my first design and as you can see both sites are basically the same.. Could you tell me your opinions?

Thanks in advance.

[DuneDeca]

I see a lot of people using the wordpress and the plugins, but what hosts are you guys using?
Are you using the free wordpress blogs or do you go elsewhere for your hosting?

[quietsnooze]

My webcomic Radio Silence is running on Grawlix! It's fairly new but it's a pretty powerful and streamlined CMS. I've recommended it to other artists for how straightforward it is from setup to updates. Any hiccups or issues I've had have been solved pretty quickly thanks to the creator being really accessible.

Hope you find what works for you!

[Spinester]

Kayke, your site looks great. Pretty, clean, simple. Nice work!