We do too. Don't you love it? 
The Depths comic. 
(nsfw) Google it for safety.
A lot of cool webcomics still use it. GrrlPower for instance does, and it's mega huge. A lot of others; I speak regularly to the guy that created "comic Easel" which is an offshoot of webcomic, but a bit easier to follow.
We're all just waiting in terror when a new Wordpress version is released and blows all the sites up. 
Not hard at all. Give ComicFury a go. It's a free comic hosting with a bunch on premade website templates.
I use Wordpress with the ascend theme, because the site covers content other than just my comics.
For the comics part, I use a webcomic plugin that is integrated with the theme. It doesn’t work smoothly with all theme, so I had to do some fixes for an older theme, but now with ascend it’s working like a charm. I also made some flip books for my previous work. It’s a really neat option for graphic novel, and look good on tablet, but it’s gadgety.
Actually, I was considering getting rid of webcomics plugin, and just use elaborate galleries to display my comics, but I haven’t found time to really investigate this option.
We also have an online shop using woocommerce and newsletters, but not really for my comics.
I generally back up once a week, and always wait some time before updating system and various plugin, so I never had major issues so far.
SEO, spam and back links are a pain and time consuming, and I’m very bad in design, so now I keep things simple, and the theme does it’s magic to create responsive results for various devices (but still need to double check the result before posting). I also had trouble with https at the beginning, but now everything is sorted and secure.
Cost side, only domain name and hosting through host gator. Service so so, not very fast, but it’s cheap...
In conclusion, if it was only for comics, I’d probably not bother and just use Tapas or comics fury, it’s good enough to have a good base...
9 months later
Nowadays, everything is easier to do than it used to be. So, now building a site is not so difficult, especially that there are many tutorials on YouTube and many tips on how to create a user-friendly site. However, it is very important to not forget for who you create the site, you need to know your target. You can read more about user experience here, especially about ux writing https://sitebuilder.reviews/web-design/your-comprehensive-guide-to-ux-writing/1. I know that you are not planning to build a site but is good to know more about it.
With Skillshare it's easy to learn how to make new websites by choosing from a variety of online classes #notsponsoredXD.
I used to have a website. but it never got any traffic worth keeping it. I personally feel like personal sites died for bringing people in with the 90's. Then again I haven't tried it recently, so who knows lol.
it depends on you; for me that i've been studying illustration (that includes a bit of graphic design) it's easy with some webs that give you easy options, but if you want your own domain it can be a bit expensive. With wordpress I pay 48€ per year, for example, but it's worth it cause it has a lot of options.
if you want, you can take a look at my web and ask whatever you want: http://blackwingscomic.com4
hope i'm helpful!
There's a lot of good advice in this thread! I used mailchimp because
1. its free
2. you can integrate your mailing list. so get people to sign up and then email them when you release new stuff. great for authors who post on multiple sites.
there arent a lot of customizing options but as long as youre not doing something complicated its fine.
I guess I could be spending all this "rehab" time building a website...I used to be like "I dont have the funds for hosting", etc...but now I do, so money isnt the issue.
Right now my biggest obstacle is time- and energy. The day gig has been DRAINING the f**k out of me; when I get home at nights and over the weekend all I want to do is rest...but then here I am, kicking myself that I could've been trying to work on a site with spare time.
use sites such as wix, i believe most of them are free but have premium options? Website building from scratch
can be pretty hard
Kinda old-ish thread, but since I made my own website3 last month, I figured I'd jump in too
I used Wordpress with the ComicPress theme to make my website. Thought it would be much harder... but it actually took me less than 24 hours to set the whole thing up 
granted, it's also true that I have a certain degree of experience in graphic & web design and that I've been running (free) Wordpress blogs for well over a decade, so there's that. The reason why I picked independent Wordpress hosting and not a paid plan on Wordpress.com was mainly one: I wanted to be able to put ads from ComicAd on my website and the only Wordpress.com plan that supports them... is the "Business" plan, which costs $300 a year -__-
The hardest part for me was figuring out which hosting service I should use. Every tutorial I checked would usually recommend BlueHost, buuuut... tbh, it looked like it required a bit too much commitment from me (the least expensive plans also require you to pay for 2 years of service in advance, before you even get to build your website), and like a lot of the features it offered weren't even things I cared about. Low cost hosting services, on the other hand, seemed a bit too bare bones. Eventually, I settled on a local "managed" hosting service: for less than $100 a year (but the first year costed me half than that), they take care of site backups, Wordpress updates, SSL certificate updates and a whole bunch of other neat things. In this way, all I really have to worry about is uploading my pages I roughly followed this guide2 to make my own site, as well as a few others (one thing that doesn't get mentioned in the guide I linked is the Whois protection... it's an additional privacy option you'll have to add to your hosting plan when you choose it. Costs about $2 a year and can be pretty vital to prevent doxxing, stalking and similar crap).
I made this on Google sites. It is the most simple thing I ever have encountered. With that comes limitations too. But if you just want to make a simple site to show your content then this is a good way. And you can link your domain to it too.
1 year later
Developing website is never been a tough task, consultant for website development is challenging.
So find Good partners and get your work done.
closed Apr 25, '23