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[nEmoGrinder]

you've gotten past the masses.  you've decided to devote your life to a webcomic.  but this isnt like all the other times you've committed yourself to.  this isnt like that flash comic that consisted of a bouncing ball and random distorted tweening.  this time your serious...but...now what?

ok, thats my funny intro (who HASN'T tried to start a flash cartoon series?)  anyways...

so I have 6 comics under my belt, draw, coloured, speech'd and people actually think they're pretty damn funny.  whats next... OH SHIT I NEED A WEBSITE TO HOST THEM!  lol, ya I don't even have a credit card, I know thats a first.  basically this post contains 2 questions geared towards accomplished comic authors

I know good ol' JJ hosts through a freind but who are the rest of you hosting with?  I was thinking of going with dh2...4 dollars a months with tons of transfer bandwidth and storage.  I really can't complain.  all their reviews have been great.  any other website hosters that you guys adore?

part two...I got my hands on a copy of frontpage to start maknig my website and my first reaction was WTF!?!?  people told me to use dreamweaver...it's adobe so it must be great, so I got that instead...but I'm still wtf!!  I know that I can easily look on tutorial pages for help but do you guys have any specific pointers as far as layouts or tricks specific to web comics?  theres one thing I REALLY want to know that most web comics use

http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=567

this is the way most comics archive stuff....its like frames...but not.  everything stays the same except for the comic.  I understand that a php is some sort of script but how do I go about creating one?

OR should I just give up and get a webmaster for me site and I'll just stick to drawing?

nEmo

[grrraham]

comicgenesis.com
drunkduck.com

I mean, unless you're too good to share a host with webcomics like Pokemon Guardians.
If that's not a problem-- hey! they're free!
And set up with webcomics in mind.
Which means you don't need to worry about those complicated phps.

[saturnine1979]

I know it's cheap and kind of lame(?) but you could always just start with a livejournal account.

BUT if you can get yourself a host (which isn't hard at all... there's tons of em out there. I have heard www.dreamhost.com reccommended.) then finding a prewritten PHP script is pretty easy. I wish I could give you a link for that, too, as I've found some before that I was gonna use, but I can not find the link! But I'm sure if you do a small amount of Google snooping you can find it. Of course, you still have to figure out how to implement that PHP script, which I can be of no help with, but, um, maybe you have some friends? Haha.

Good luck with your comic all the same!

[nEmoGrinder]

hmm, I'll have to look into those hosting sites.  although I LOVE the thought of free web comic hosting (I'm a cheap cheap bastard) I know for a fact that having your own domain makes a comic all the more professional and easier to find on the web.  going through my list of comics I read on a regular basis, they all have their own domains which makes them easy to check up on when I'm bored and what not.

4 bucks a month of more than enough storage, 30 web accounts and bandwidth is reasonable in my opinion.

yes I will have to pick my friends' brain.  I have a computer science friend that probably knows more than I'll ever need to use.  and then there are people I know who do pure html as a hobby because....they think coding is fun?  I dunno.  I'll look into those domains though, thanks for the suggestion.

[mrtuesday42]

hey! well i did things the OTHER WAY around...website first comic second...im crazy that way...i probably did things the hard ass way too cuz i didnt know bout drunkduck and that other one...
freewebs.com accound+free domiain .co.nr account=www.standardparadox.co.nr coded using dreamweaver which i taught myself in a weekend...so yeah that hard for sure...but the first comic is up so its all good...good luck hosting! careful tho cuz they will make you sign up for free then you have to pay for hosting...grrness.

[ElRodente]

i must have pointed this out a million times
http://www.keenspot.com/downloads/
autokeen lite is what you want, it's what keenspot use and it's free

[Mollinda]

I use Walrus.

If you pop on over to Interact (linked in my sig) Migo is an expert on Walrus.

[nEmoGrinder]

ok, I'm finally back to respond.

about halfway through this post I kind of get lost with all the names I don't recognize...but whatever!! lol

anyways, I've decided I can afford for a proper host, either dh2 or godaddy, both have very reasonable prices.

now back the the other half of this post...making the actual website....ya dreamweaver I looked and and I was all like..WTF?!?  so I tried frontpage and I was all like...WTF?!?! and then i'm like,well I use adobe photoshop and illustrator for art and adobe audition for music and adobe acrobat for school so I might as well use adobe golive for making my webpage...the samples look great also!  so I open instal it and I was like...WTF?!?

so I've officially given up on making a really wickedly nice looking webpage all by yself...and am now looknig for a webmaster...do you think this is a good idea?  or is getting a webmaster more complicated in your opinion?  I know a guy REALLY interested and helped me design what the site should look like...but hes got as much or less experience than me with working with websites.  so this is what I was thinking:

find someone realyl good at golive/dreamweaver and get them to work with me to make a site that really looks wicked.  then get them to teach myself and my buddy how to update/make small changes...nothing complicated.  then we'll just take over from there as webmaster and author.  my fear is that we'll mess it up and be constantly asking for help.

anyways, thats the plan.  I just REALLY want to get something up soon because I'm going on ten comics completed already.  I liek the idea of having a buffer between the current comic and the one I work on but more than ten is a little rediculous.  expecially since I only plan on updating at most twice a week, at least until summer.

so any volunteers to help? lol, that or bug the kids in the computer science program

thanks for all the comments.  I think this is part of web comic design that is often forgetten, since half of the people out there who want to start webcomics might be really good but have no experience with web sites.  its a real pain.

andrew

[grrraham]

look. designing a webcomic site is easy.

At the top of the page you have a title of some kind. something like this
http://questionablecontent.net/test/newlogo.jpg
it tells them the name of your comic I guess.

Below that you have your comic.
this is the point of your site.

below that you have navigation buttons leading to the other comics.
because hopefully you have more than one comic up (or will soon)

below that you have words. Whatever you feel like writing to your audience.
this isn't necessary, but many people like to have it because for whatever reason they can't say whatever they're trying to get across with the comic alone.

No one is going to go to your site for the sake of the site itself. They're reading your webcomic.

how about this. I'll be your webmaster. Here's your site, copy it into a textfile called index.html

Code: [Select]

<html><body>
<img src="header.jpg">
<br><img src="comic.jpg">
<br><a href="01.html">FIRST</a> <a href="xx.html">PREVIOUS</a>
<br>Hey guys this is my comic isn't it great? I know the site sucks, some loser named graham made it for me, but that doesn't matter because HOLY SHIT is my comic ever good, eh? Oh, hey, there's some links at the bottom.
<br><a href="cast.html">CAST</a> <a href="about.html">ABOUT</a> <a href="links.html">LINKS</a> <a href="dolphins.html">THE DOLPHIN EMPORIUM</a>
</body></html>

[Luke]

DO NOT HOST ON DRUNKDUCK.COM.

I don't read anything hosted there because it's too damn slow.


Also, for designing a web page - do you live near a community college or anything? Sign up for a semester of web page design. You'll get a nice book and learn everything you need to know to get started. Then you can start searching for a webhost (if you don't feel like using something free like livejournal or something). I use ipowerweb.com, which is reasonably priced, but you can find other services (such as keenspot) that offer cheaper services (but still a unique domain name) at the cost of forced ads.

It's up to you. Most service providers give you a URL for a control panel where you can just go and start uploading your stuff - the whole webmaster thing is not hard at all.