Host your own Friggin Webcomic!
I’ve spoken with several comic book creators and webcomic creators in the past few months who think it’s near impossible to host their own webcomics and feel they are “computer illiterate” or don’t know design. Some are afraid that places like DrunkDuck.com might go belly-up overnight and they’ll lose all their comics/data and the audience they’ve built there. I decided to write this step by step guide to show you how easy and affordable it is to leave your “free hosting” behind and take the next step to becoming master of your own domain! Keep in mind, this is just my opinion and advice on what to use to take the next step to getting serious about your online webcomics.
1. Sign up at Dreamhost- Don’t ask questions, just sign up. I’m on the 9.99 a month plan, and i pay once a year, $119 bucks. This gives you MORE than you’ll need for hosting your comics. I host SEVERAL sites on my one account, including the Yirmumah comics, and a bunch of sites for the Flobots! — 9.99 a month is only about $2.50 a friggin week, anyone should be able to afford that, especially someone serious about publishing comics in any regard. So sign the heck up. — And if that’s not enough if you type in the coupon code DRAMA when you’re signing up, you’ll get 50 bucks off compliments OF ME.
2. Once you’re signed up with Dreamhost, you login to your control panel, and notice a section called GOODIES, and then ONE CLICK INSTALLS: (click image for larger image)
From there you can install a BUNCH of things with one click, including forums, shopping carts, but for this step-by-step, you want to select WORDPRESS blog and guide it through where to host it on your account. IMPORTANT NOTE! – Don’t click the “easy” method of auto install, it won’t allow you to upload themes to your folder. Do the advanced complete install option and you should be good to go!
3. You’ll need FTP program (basically that means file transfering protocal, you’ll be uploading files to your space on the web from your computer) which will allow you to transfer files by dragging them and dropping them from your desktop onto your webspace. I use SmartFtp, but you can also use free FTP like Filezilla. You will use the password and username that Dreamhost emails to you after signing up for “FTP ACCESS” to your site. ANOTHER GREAT FREE FTP tip, if you’re using the Firefox Internet Browser, there is a free extenstion called FireFTP that once installed turns your browser into a FTP program where you can drag and drop files from. I’m currently using FireFtp for all my transfering needs! Download it here.
4. Go download the free COMICPRESS theme for wordpress it’s a powerful wordpress theme by cartoonist Tyler Martin which is being used by many of the top webcomics around (including PVP) – You’ll unzip the download so its a folder that will say “comicpress”– While you are on that download page, also download the PLUGIN called “Comicpress Manager” and unzip that file as well.
5. Open your FTP program and login to your site. Look for the folder called “wp-content”, open it and inside you will see a folder called “themes” – you want to drag and drop the “comicpress” theme folder into that “themes” folder and let it upload. — Also, go back to the “wp-content” folder and put the Comicpress Manager plugin you downloaded into the “plugins” folder. Here’s a look at what my FTP folder looks like when open. Notice the folders I’m talking about… (click for larger image)
6. Login to to your Wordpress admin page, and go to the DESIGN tab. Switch on the “Comicpress theme” there. Also, go over to th PLUGINS tab and swith on the “comicpress manager” plugin as well.
7. Using the Comicpress manager, which will say COMICPRESS in your main Wordpress menu (see above image) if you have the plugin turned on, you can now upload comic pages or strips right from your desktop. It’s a BREEZE. All you do is name them by date like “2009-09-12-title-of-comic.jpg”, you can even upload them in Zipped file batches all at once too. Here’s what a general screenshot of that Comicpress tab opened looks like…
There are detailed tutorials and tweeks for Comicpress and how to enhance your site’s look and feel over on the Comicpress forum.
8. Kick the tires of everything and look around in your Dreamhost account, and in your installed Wordpress dashboard. There are several awesome plugins out there for wordpress that you simply drag and drop into the plugins folder, and turn on. And you can edit the entire website through the Design panel in wordpress without much fuss.
This is by no means a thorough tutorial on running a webcomic or totally tweeking out your themes in wordpress, and you don’t have to use dreamhost if you can install wordpress on your other hosting you might already have. I mention them because that’s what I use, and they have that nifty one-click install stuff which is great for people just starting out who want to get away from freehosting. Wordpress is just a very powerful tool for getting the word out there too, with tagging and keywords that are going to instantly beam your comics and topics out into the blogosphere and send good search engine traffic your way.
Here are some of the sites I’m running right now on Dreamhost or with Wordpress engines:
- yirmumah.com
- americawillbe.org
- flobots.org
- flobots.net
- djcoffman.com (this very blog!)
And there are many more too. Another sample I’d point to is the quick ACTIONWEBCOMICS.COM website that Jason Embury and myself put up in ONE DAY, as a submission for DC Comic’s editors. Jason is hosting that I do believe on Dreamhost and that’s a very simple Wordpress with Comicpress template there that we only added the header graphic to and changed background colors in the CSS stylesheet.
Hope that helps put some of my friends on the right path. Don’t feel intimidated by the software or technical sounding terms (like CSS STYLSHEET) if you can point and click and type, you can do all this. I often tell friends, it’s sort of like trial and error or flying the Millenium Falcon. Sometimes the hyperdrive goes bad, you just have to get in and tweek it around or hit with a wrench and you’re good to go. Take it slowly and learn just a little bit each day, it’s totally worth it!
38 comments38 Comments so far
Dj Coffman you are my messiah. I do the exact same stuff with Mumblepuss..and I can testify! THIS WORKS! Even a moron like me can do it!
D.J. As always…I’d be lost without folks like you helping us “internet nitwits” along. Thanks for expending the energy it must’ve taken to put this together. I’m going for this…and I’m makin’ the big move. Thanks shitloads! Jim
I think webcreators are foolish not to have their own site. Here’s three reasons to do it: 1.) Webcreators should invest time to draw traffic to their own webpage, not some group. 2.) Less competition if it’s just you. If you’re with a bunch of others, readers may drift to other webcomics and forget about yours. (And yes, it is a competitive market) 3.) By actually spending some money on their product, maybe it’ll force web comic creators to take their cartooning seriously!
glad you found time to put all this together finally for people man. and DAMN is that Superman comic cool!!!
Wait a minute…..you motherf-er. You are giving away all my secrets! Now everyone knows how to do a comic as crappy as mine! DAMNIT!!! Curse you DJ Coffman and your free-wheeling free-information ways! Let’s stop giving away all this free information and start cranking through some Will-Draws. Why don’t you do some shitty first-time paintings and sell them on e-bay, punk? You corporate shill, you!
I’m a lover, not a painter.
Oh, and LOTS of will draws coming today… drawing a yirm strip as I speak, then will draws the rest of today and tomorrow.
Great beginner’s tutorial for ComicPress/ComicPress Manager! I’ll be sure to spread this guide around.
great info Deej.
I can vogue (spelling) for dreamhost. I use it for Life’s A Bluff and also have the year plan. Despite the sporadic downtimes I really am very happy with it.
Yes, you can definitely do it.
I too use this method combined with DreamHost, and it works pretty dang well.
The one-click-installs make keeping WordPress up to date much easier and faster than trying to manage all of that yourself.
ComicPress and the ComicPress Manager are absolutely tops.
Dude.
I am so surprised it’s this easy. I mean, I’m definitely one of those people who has to have an idiot’s guide, but still…
I’m signed up already, and once I wrap my head around the terms and interface, the inspiration of getting this far is gonna propel some webcomics at ya. Hope they’re half decent…
Dude, I was looking for this for about a month jumping from various free hosting page to free hosting – googling any key words I could think of that might be related to this subject.
Your blog rocks! It’s entertaining, informative and tasty!
My good dood, you hit the Nail in the f*cking head man and I thank you! I was a bit confused and now it all makes sense. Awesome
Hi DJ,
Great article, and I’ll been linking it as a must read in PsychedelicTreehouse.com webcomics resources site.
However, I’m up to seven sites, and I prefer to spend every spare nickel at Project Wonderful. I’ve gone up and down the freehost roster, as has TechCrunch, and there is one option for comickers that should be considered by those who want free: Synthasite.com. All my sites are built on Synthasite, and I’m so happy with them they are like friends of the family. TechCrunch gave them, and only them, five stars. You can download your site on a ZIP any time. They have had someone working with me to identify and add features of interest to comickers, which will be added in the near future. Their support is the best I’ve encountered from any company anywhere. They are rich with investment capital. Their CEO is brilliant.
OK, I don’t want to oversell it. Suffice to say I have 400 pages of web sites and I’m really happy with them. The fact that it’s all free and there are no ads or tricks is an afterthought. My point is, you are right in everything you say, but from where I sit there is a free option, especially for people that don’t know much if anything about programming.
Your article is going to help a lot of people. Thanks for writing it, and for letting us throw in our two cents. Oh, should I include my sites for those who want a look? Despite the self-promotion aspect, I will, because all comickers should know about PsychedelicTreehouse, and they can see what an average web skills person like me does with the Synthasite platform.
LilNyet.com – comic
ScratchinPostComics.com – comic
PsychedelicTreehouse.com – webcomic resource site
That should be plenty. I hope this is a good bookend to your article.
I never had much luck with Dreamhost. Ridiculous amounts of downtime (half an hour or more ever week), not terribly speedy, can’t handle big traffic spikes well…
They’re great if you’re starting out, but I’d recommend jumping ship as soon as your site’s making enough ad revenue to pay for better hosting elsewhere.
Multiplex (www.multiplexcomic.com) is at Slicehost now and I’m very, very happy. It’s not for beginners (I’m lucky to have a brother who does web programmer and shit like that), but it’s rock solid and has never gone down. Never.
You might not notice at first how bad hosting is affecting you, but if your pages don’t load quickly, people don’t read a lot of pages, and you’re losing ad views!
Odd. I’ve only had maybe three times that I had some serious outtage with Dreamhost since 2002. And I’ve survived links from Penny Arcade, a CRUSH of traffic from Metafilter.com recently and Seth Godin without any troubles. I can vouge for them even though there have been a couple times I was peeved that the site went out, but not many like I said.
I know for awhile they had CPU usage issues with people running too many scripts on one page, but I think that’s all been resolved.
Where were you when I went through total hell and back when I launched my comic on dreamhost! HA!
Thanks for the tips.
Tj
DJ, thank you so much. You truly are awesome! :bow:
Very cool and very informative. Just the kind of thing that I would love to use in Sketch Magazine. I think a lot of folks would learn something from this.
Best,
Bill NIchols
Editor, Sketch Magazine
Gotta say, I’ve been hosting my webcomic at dreamhost since March and it has only ever been down once.
I’ll live with that.
And what some guy said up there in the comments, the free options doesn’t always mean it’s better. I have no problem paying for something that has made my life easier and continually is easy to use. I like the fact that I am paying for something and can expect quick turnaround on my questions or problems.
I have this site bookmarked. Thanks from Kredit
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Should you have your domain registered first? Is that a stupid question?
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This is absolute gold. Thanks Coffman!
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There are also webcomic hosts out there which will do everything for you, except making the comic itself of course. I happen to own one and this post is basically shameless advertising, but it’s free and very easy to use, so if you want to give it a try, you can go ahead and click my name or go to http://comicfury.com
Well I just got my site up and running. It took a little bit longer than I though it would, but I guess is does pay to read ALL THE DIRECTIONS before you do something. LOL!!! This was really informative. Thanks!
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Rather than Dreamhost, I would strongly recommend NearlyFreeSpeech.NET. They charge by storage/bandwidth used, roughly 1c per unit used. They also charge 1c/day for DNS now, though, and 2c/day (I think) for SQL. Still, in the end, it comes out something like $25/year for all sites on my account.
They haven’t had much downtime, either, insofar as I’ve seen. They have occasional slowdowns but it’s not too bad. They don’t magically install WordPress for you though (and I prefer Movable Type anyway), but installing is not too hard if you follow the instructions carefully. So that may be a good choice for some creators looking for cheap hosting.
So,…. does Wordpress work on a MAC?
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The newest version of ComicPress (2.8 which isn’t out yet) is going to be MORE user friendly making it even easier to customize your site while knowing less about coding and such.
Great post DJ!