Webcomics plugin for WordPress

So I’ve released a beta of 2.5 — don’t install it on a production server, all the usual beta warnings, etc.

One feature that I’m excited about in 2.5, that I didn’t mention in the previous post, is called “AutoComic,” and I thought I’d take a moment to share a little information about it.

One of the most common questions I get on the forums is “Can you make stripShow support the _____ theme?” Well, the answer was always no. Not without editing the theme, anyway, to add stripShow functions (like show_comic()). The plugin can’t really do much about a theme that hasn’t been written for it.

Until now.

Enter AutoComic: Now, with the flick of a switch, stripShow can show a comic and navigation bar on nearly any theme. Thanks to the magic of JavaScript, you don’t even need to edit the theme files. All you need to know is where to put your comic on the page.

Say for instance, I am using the Constructor theme. I’d like to host a webcomic on this site, but don’t know enough about theme editing to get started. stripShow has me covered.

Here’s my site before AutoComic:

As you can see, no comic anywhere. But I can see, in the source, exactly where I want my comic to go — it’s below the header, which is a div element with the id “header.”

So I go to my WordPress admin page, and turn on AutoComic. I tell it to put the comic below the header element, and voila:

Now there’s a comic. Also some navigation arrows. Also, though you can’t tell in this screenshot, a complete widget-aware sidebar. Isn’t that cool?

Obviously, this is intended as a quick, get-up-and-running feature. Nothing beats customizing your themes yourself. But stripShow 2.5 aims to make it all easy. Go download the beta, try it out for yourself!