New site (and a brief history of how COMMISSIONED has grown… site wise)
on May 22, 2009 at 9:16 amAt first, the comic worked in simple html, with me updating it manually. As it grew, I started using Walrus, a rather simple PHP code that allows you to handle a webcomic with little fuss and without the need of a database. I still recommend it to anybody that’s new at this whole webcomic deal and needs an easy, user-friendly way to start. After a while of using it and with the webcomic growing , I decided I wanted a bunch of extra functions.
From there, a friend named Luke offered to program and admin the site, which brought better archives, comments and even the possibility to make blog posts. And after a year of working like that, I finally made the complete transition to blog format. The blog worked perfectly, but the comic kept growing and after a while the server simply couldn’t handle it. The site had to taken down and things were looking pretty bleak, but fortunately we got some help from our friends at MLStudio and they host the site now.
For starters, we (that’s MLStudio and me) went back to using Walrus php (I told you, Walrus is an excellent choice when you need to keep it simple), and stuck with it for a while – which brings us to this morning when we’re finally ready to give the blog format a shot.
Currently, you’re on a site powered by WordPress with the Comicpress manager. I’ve modified it a bit (not too much, I’m really not code savvy at all) to fit my needs. There’s still quite a bit that needs doing, though. I’m working on the “extras”, “about” and “cast” sections, and I was not actually going to upload the site until those were ready. But then I thought “well, the current site doesn’t have those things anyway, so why not upload it now?”
And I did… as should be obvious if you’re reading this post.
So here it is, still needing plenty of work but otherwise quite functional. The whole archives are up and running, but I still have to name each and every single comic in it. You can navigate them by dates, at the moment. I’ll also be adding tags to each, so you can search the archives – for example – if you want all the comics with a specific character in them.
Other than that and some adspace, that’s pretty much it. I think. Feel free to email me about any bugs you might find. I think we’re having some problems with Internet Explorer (but then again, if you’re using IE, you’re the problem).
Anyway, I hope you all like the new layout and functionality. I know I do.
Site’s looking good, O. Might want to add your Portfolio to the link bar above.
Well, it’s over there on the left sidebar. Although I’ll probably be shifting those around a whole lot these next few days.
Finally, an end to triple postings of the same comic via RSS
Any chance to get the full rant via the feed, or would it be too much for the server to handle?
Doesn’t the RSS for these things handle all the posts?
EDIT: I just checked. The RSS feed includes the posts, rants and everything.
Of course, like I said, I’m not tech-savvy. So I might be missing what your talking about. Feel free to point it out. Thanks!
I think there is a setting where you can say it should put the full post into the RSS or just part of it.
Looks good…only that not on my browser. There are lot’s of bugs when viewing in Opera. Think you could look into it?
The site design looks good, but I find the COMMISSIONATHLON ’09 moving link on the side is very distracting. When it was on the top, I could just scroll down till it was offscreen, and then read the comic. I really tend to not like moving ads in general.
Well, it shouldn’t be there beyond the weekend. After that, spots are closed.
It is not working properly on opera – i have commisathlon banner in a horizontal column at the middle of the page, with few more things ending with calendar, and when I scroll it down i reach the comics. (sry for poor english)
Uhm.. Does anyone else have the problem that the rant-text is on top of the comic when viewed in the thunderbird RSS-reader?
Ahhh and we still have the “suscribe” button! Missed that one!
Hola O, de que parte de colombia eres? es muy chevere encontrar a un coterraneo con tan buenas destrezas e imaginacion, sigue asi viejo, eres lo maximo!!!
great job O.
I miss the old site, it had a clean feeling to it
I thought I’d take a crack at the opera problems. I wanted to actually fix it before posting, but I thought i’d post my thoughts and then get back to trying to fix the bug. Opera has an issue with “float” in the CSS, so it doesn’t always do what its supposed to when you float left or right. I prefer firefox as well, even though i like secure opera, so I haven’t tried to tackle it yet. I messed with the menu float and the sidebar and the entire page went back into the right position, but I can’t get the menu bar to look just right. I’ll keep tinkering, but good luck on fixing it.
Ok, maybe it is or isn’t float, but the issue is in the menu bar. Fix that and everything else in opera should be hunky dory, I’m almost certain.
Sorry for all the posts, but I found your problem. I also feel a little slow for not seeing it while looking right at it. You were missing a containing tag on you Contact link in your menu bar. Contact, you’re missing the closing . Firefox was ok with it, but opera wasn’t. I guess that means its time to sleep. Peace. And besides that, I really like the new layout.
found it, missing a closing tag on the Contact menu link. That fixed opera. Like the webpage design though, and keep up the awesome comic-ing.
Cool, a lot better, but still, I have some problems, minor, but still.
The comic itself is way below the whole left panel. “Sold out” comathlon banner is moved to the right like 160px. So from the top its: Left panel, after it ends, there’s the comic and everything else.
Yeah, its because O is missing a closing anchor tag on his Contact menu link. After he fixes that opera will be just fine. Also, make sure you have the latest opera, because some older versions have quite a few bugs. Sorry for leaving so many posts, I meant to leave just one and then found the error, so now I’ve posted 3 too many times.
Hey, I like the new comments section, and the new site layout is the bomb!
Ok… I’m fixing the “Contact” tag and downloading Opera to check it out. Thanks to “Electric Paganini” for pointing it out. Let’s see if this works.
works like a dream :] Cheers for the great new site and commisionathlon O :]
O: When I subscribe to the new feed on http://www.commissionedcomic.com/?feed=rss2 there is only the excerpt. For example, for Mr. Barf, I get
It was an interesting weekend here in The Ministry of Abnormality, and a productive one as well. Most of it was spent working on the live PRE-COMMISSIONATHLON video stream of Randy Deluxe’s WoW character (”Maui”). I still need to scan it before you can see it, but it was a lot of fun to make [...]
(ending with [...] and sans ad and link to comments) instead of the whole post. The OLD feed on http://www.commissionedcomic.com/rss.php still has the whole post (come to think of it, why is the RSS feed acessible using both URLs? On a fresh install of wordpress&comicpress, the rss.php link yields a 404 error. Did your update your old rss.php script to get data from the wordpress db, instead of modifying the new one?)
For customizing wordpres’ feeds, you might want to look at http://codex.wordpress.org/Customizing_Feeds and add the comment and ad to the template (the templates are in the wp-includes directory).
i hate ‘new’ site… i had the old in bookmarks, and when i re-installed windows /of course/ i forgot to backup ‘the bookmarks’… I WANT A LINK TO THE OLD ARCHIVE!!! please…