Let me see your comics' official sites + Advice

[60Six]

Well, my contract at my job is around the corner and I'm going to have some down time. In this time, I'd really like to get a site up and running for my comic, City of Blank, but honestly I've never built a site outside of my portfolio on Weebly and I'm not exactly sure where to begin.
I've been recommended Word Press, so I'll probably go with that and scream and curse a lot as I try to figure out how to build something with my very, very limited coding knowledge. However, if you have any other suggestions on sites, please let me know. I'm fine with paying for a site, but not much...

Now, even with code aside, I'm not exactly sure what I want my site to even contain or look like yet.
So I'd love to see some of your sites to get some ideas and reference. So please post away!

And if you have any advice at all, like anything you wish you had known when you were building or started your comic's site, please share. I'm going into this pretty blind and by myself so every bit of advice is greatly appreciated.

[AnnaLandin]

This is Grassblades' main website.

It's Wordpress-based, and I use the Comic Easel-plugin, and I have done only very minor tweaking - like, setting background colours, uploading a banner, adding a cast-page, display-width for the pages etc. The only reason it took me all of 3 hours to do is because I couldn't decide which background colour to go with.

Comic Easel's pretty easy to tweak, if what you're after is a simple, basic comic site. You CAN tweak it beyond that and do cool stuff with it, I'm sure, but I don't have the chops for that, and am quite happy having a simple, easily navigated website.

[respheal]

I'm cheating a bit and using Smack Jeeves as my main host: http://www.galebound.com/.

While I've got a server I could host it on myself (that's actually where the Extras page is hiding), I'm honestly pretty loathe to use Wordpress. I work in webhosting and dealing with hacked Wordpress sites all day has left me pretty jaded. So, speaking as a nerd, for the love of all the is good and holy keep that Wordpress installation and all of its plugins and themes up to date and keep backups. Please oh please oh please oh please. Speaking as a fellow creator, I actually don't know of any alternatives to Wordpress besides using a comic host like Smack Jeeves or Comic Fury :T

Back to being a nerd, I'm working on developing a webcomic CMS in Python+Flask for my own use (maybe with a no-support public release someday), prolly using disqus as the comment system, I'm just short on time. Also I have no skill in webdesign.

Anyway, back on topic, I'd recommend having an About page on the site. My typical "journey" for reading a comic on its own site is to read a couple pages, go check out the about page for a synopsis, and then resume reading if it sounds interesting. Tapastic provides a synopsis right on the page as you're reading, but it's handy to have the synopsis somewhere. A character page or section in the about is also nice, but don't get too wordy with it.

Oh yeah, and I also recommend adding your comic site to Comic Rocket. Makes it really easy for readers to keep track of updates and it may drive some traffic your way.

[ptrcksnntt]

My comic Lax Legends has a site here, hosted as a subsite of my portfolio via GoDaddy. If you're just starting off I highly recommend them for your hosting; the amount of tech support they offer for what they charge is phenomenal, and you can always move when they no longer meet your needs.

Mechanically, most folks recommend a navigation bar at the top with the latest page front and center, with page-turn links at the top AND bottom for easiest navigation. Most of the standard stuff you can find by examining any old webcomic site, and I hear there's some fantastic free templates out there.

What I'd wished I'd known when I'd started? Just three things.
1) You can look at the source code for sites you like for reference
2) The best way to learn to work with HTML is to just do it.
This is the second version of my website, I was scared to so much as touch the first one out of fear I'd break something, but the current one is significantly better in every way. You can always go back and make further changes if you aren't satisfied with it.
3) If you have a webcomic site, for the love of god use template files for the individual pages.

[MissMagicGirl]

I have a wordpress site. I know nothing about coding tho so I just used there panel layout for comics ^^
https://magicadvisor.wordpress.com

[Kayke]

My main site is on Wordpress using Comicpress!

I would suggest looking at a lot of comic sites and finding features/layouts that you like! That's how I ended up cobbling together my layout.

[sorrelma]

i use a heavily modified version of a smackjeeves theme. i paid for the url + smackjeeves premium hosting(altogether ~70$/year) it's easy but i've heard it can be kind of limiting. i haven't run into that problem bcuz it was my first time coding anything beyond basic html lol
http://www.sorrelma.com/

[Kyulein]

Here's the website for my comic Soul's Journey.
I have a hosting plan on hostgator and use the Grawlix Webcomic CMS (Content Management System, basically what makes the pages appear in order.)
Before I found Grawlix I tried wordpress, but I honestly found it too complicated to actually design a site there, the wordpress backend wasn't my cup of tea. Lots of creators use it and love it, though.

Grawlix got a bit of learning curve as you need some basic knowledge of coding. But it gives you several fine templates to work with, so you basically only have to change colours and get your own pictures up. It's very flexible in appearance, something that I felt was missing in wordpress, but that is my opinion.

My advantage was, though, that I started out with a SmackJeeves site where I had a lot of the basic layout and colour scheme I wanted figured out.

[edmourabarbosa]

Here's Children of the Moon website.
There are some content online that can help you with this, but I found that the most useful ones are paid. My recommendation would be Webcomic.com.
It's a site dedicated to webcomic creators, with weekly posts with advices or updates of the industry. Unfortunately you have to pay a fee to acess their database, but I think it's worth it. There are pages and pages of previous content that teaches how to build and customize your own webcomic website. They even have ebooks on it!

[sarrowsmith10]

I'm cheating a bit and using Smack Jeeves as my main host: http://www.galebound.com/.

Same here. Smackjeeves is the main site for Goblins of Razard. Although it hasn't been updated in a while, it's still quite a bit ahead of Tapastic. It lets me customize my site almost 100% and I really like that.

[Zanreo]

Here's Consolers' main site, hosted on Comicfury. I love Comicfury and how easy it's to customize your site (it has both a simple non-HTML editor and a bunch of HTML standard themes you can do what you want with... or just make your own) ...can't recommend CF enough! Easy to use, lots of customization possibilities, no ads if you want, and completely free!

For stuff I recommend, a characters/cast page and maybe an "about" page...

[Amymone]

Here is the official site for livNPC.

Every time I make a new site through weebly, I always stop and do a google image search for "site templates" to get ideas of how some people like to organize their front pages. It really helps!

[Ambat]

Here's Nocturne's main site--I'm also using Wordpress/Comicpress. For the most part I like how Comicpress works and feels, although I'm not 100% happy with how my design is quite yet. I want to experiment and play around with some stuff in the future, but I feel like Comicpress more or less has a professional and easy to use default setup that works for what I need.

[Pyomatic]

ahh well i have a site for Edelweiss but its still very much of a wip. I mean, the comic part of the site works okay but with everything else its a bit unsynched (eg the bg w the cast page)/missing. I use wordpress and comicpress, and havent really modified the code at all! it seems you can do most things w comicpress, but in my experience you may need some patience. Its really simple to get a good simple site up tho!

[infectedbloodcomics]

I use WordPress (paid version) as Infected Blood Comics (my official website) and I love it - for the most part. The only real problem is that you need to have a single comic on your site, to make sure navigation works properly with the Panel theme (which is the only one geared toward webcomics). I actually use a different theme, which does (almost) the same job. My main comic, The Green-Eyed Sniper, begins here.

There are several benefits to this: polls, for example, are included, and you can also chat with a technical person during business hours (or leave a message and they will get back to you really fast). Let me know if you have any questions

[60Six]

Sorry for taking so long to actually look at these!
All of your sites look great. I still think I'm gonna at least try to use WordPress, but if that doesn't seem to work out for me, I'll start looking at the other suggestions here like Comic Fury and SmackJeeves.

Feel free to keep on posting sites! I'm still taking a look at every one to get ideas and inspiration, plus it's really neat to see all of these

[leishariddel]

This is Project Solace's main website.
I used Squarespace because when I signed up I had a steady income, since signing up is fairly expensive per month. That said, I still don't regret using it, it's a good site.

The main purpose of my website for me was to be a small area of information about the characters already introduced, and where people can contribute if they wanted to. Hopefully that helps.

[bsawyer]

This is Zounds, Alack, and By My Troth's main page, which is a Wordpress site. It took quite a bit of tinkering to get it how I wanted, but I'm really happy with it now, after a lot of "why didn't I think of that in the first place?" moments. Their panel theme is really the only option they have for comics, so I found I was quite limited in terms of how it looks, but it was an interesting process to find the ways in which I could personalise it. Incoporating the title and description into a banner instead of using the standard site identity gave it more personality.

[agentfink]

I use tumblr for The Pale's website, Simple Webcomic Theme.
It's been pretty easy to use. I use it has a hub for information, store, and ways to contact.
Nice to point people to a website vs a site like Webtoons or Tap.