Version 2.5 features AutoComic, allowing webcomics creators to use virtually any WordPress theme, not just themes designed specifically for webcomics. Thanks to the magic of JavaScript, you can mix comics with your regular blog and still take advantage of stripShow’s features such as searchable transcripts and storylines.

Also new in 2.5 is a handy interface to add comics directly from WordPress’s Add Post page. No longer do comics have to be added from a separate page.

The default stripShow template theme, stripShow Sandbox, has gotten a bit of a facelift as well, but don’t worry. These changes are confined to a separate file, so they won’t affect existing child themes that don’t import that file.

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!

• The Add Comics page is going away. This is a part of my ongoing project to integrate more tightly with WordPress. Now, you can set comic options, upload comics, etc., from the Add Post page that WordPress provides.
• The Bulk Import and Bulk Upload pages have been merged into a kind of file manager, where you can see what you’re importing.
• Now you will be able to specify what characters appear in each comic. This is thanks to WordPress 2.8′s support for custom taxonomies. There will be new template tags and an archive page to support characters. These will behave just like tags, complete with auto-suggestion and clouds.
• I’ve rewritten all the widgets for use with WordPress 2.8 — now they’re all multiwidgets, meaning you can use as many of each one as you’d like on the same page.
• Admin interface enhancements — thumbnails and characters will now appear in the Edit list, and you can specify your characters using the Quick Editor.
• Option to move to next comic by clicking on the comic itself.
• Tighter integration with WordPress’s built-in functions. Now all my custom MySQL queries are gone, and WordPress is used for everything. This makes stripShow compatible with plugins that might modify the WordPress query, like Role Scoper.
• A few edits to stripShow Sandbox — more customization options are moving into the stripShow Sandbox Options page.

Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts

This is the logo of Facebook, in case you haven't seen it before.

At the request of a user, I’ve been exploring ways to integrate stripShow with Facebook. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I think the best thing to do would be to see if I can integrate sS with one of the existing WP plugins that allows Facebook posting. I’m testing WordBook now.

How might this affect webcomics creators? Well, let’s say you want to sell memberships on your site — only members who pay you money get to see certain strips. Take Joyce & Walky for example — the general public gets to see only the Saturday strips, whereas paying members get strips all week.

ComicPress has some support for this idea — you can tag a user as a Member and add content in your blog posts that only members can see. My idea was to see what plugins already exist that can manage user roles, and RoleScoper seems to be the best.

Think about a situation beyond just paid/unpaid. Say you want to sell three levels of service — silver, gold, and platinum for example. Silver members get to see some strips, gold members get to see even more, and platinum members get to see ultra-special exclusive strips. OK, so maybe most webcomics creators don’t get that deeply into the marketing, but it would be nice to be able to do.

So I’m rewriting some of stripShow’s code to be more compatible with RoleScoper and other plugins. Version 2.5 will have full compatibility.

So I downloaded a copy of WordPress MU, and installed stripShow on it, wondering what kinds of changes I’ll have to make to the latest (development) version of stripShow to get it to work… I’d laid out a block of time to explore and figure things out. Much to my surprise…

… it works fine.

I’m still exploring, but from where I’m sitting, there have yet to be any issues. I’m very impressed with the transparency that WordPress MU seems to afford. It works just like WordPress, but keeps your blogs and the settings for them separate. No changes to my code seem to be necessary. I’ve got a test site up with multiple comic blogs and they all seem to work OK.

More on this as testing continues.

Zelda Johnson is just your average suburban hausfrau, struggling with parenting, dieting, housework, and all the problems of modern life. Except, of course, for the fact that Zelda is a practicing witch (complete with pointy hat and black robes) whose friends include fairies and werewolves.

Life’s a Witch, a lighthearted look at fantasy characters integrating into the modern world comes courtesy of Samantha Wikan, one of stripShow’s earliest adopters. Here’s a small art sample:

Life's a Witch

stripShow Sandbox now has an Options page. Here it is:

The options page for the stripShow Sandbox template

Here, you can configure a few options for the stripShow Sandbox template, without having to edit your child theme’s files.  You can rename or remove the blog header, for example.

One thing that has changed significantly is that you can now configure your column layout from this page. Previously, every stripShow Sandbox child theme had to import a stylesheet like so:

@import url('../stripshow_sandbox/library/styles/columns/3c-b.css');

What this means, practically, is that if you have such a line in your child theme, you should remove it, and use the dropdown menu in stripShow Sandbox to select your column scheme. The line has already been removed, in 2.1, from the included child themes and from stripShow Sandbox itself.

I look forward to using this option in the future to include more layout possibilities.

New features in 2.1 include:

• COVER YOUR SHAME! If you happen to draw a comic that is sometimes just nasty, filthy, disgusting… well, we don’t judge. But sometimes people shouldn’t be browsing that sort of thing from work, and for the benefit of those readers, creators can now cover NSFW strips with a cover image that must be clicked on before the real comic is displayed.
• CUSTOMIZE YOUR THUMBNAILS! Now, if you’d rather thumbnail images were something a little more personalized than just a scaled-down version of the comic, you can stick alternate images in a subfolder of your comics folder and show those instead.
• SE HABLA FRANCAIS, MEIN FREUND! stripShow is now fully internationalized, and ready to be translated into all the languages of our big blue planet!

Obviously, all the great features that made stripShow the finest solution for WordPress webcomics, such as searchable, formatted transcripts, nested, low-maintenance storylines,  easy upload of comics, and an awesome theming template, are still present, and ready to propel your webcomic into the 2010s.

Download stripShow today from the WordPress Plugin Directory today, or visit our support site and join our community!

Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts

If you had an old forum account, and you ever posted, you have an account here on this blog now. However, you don’t have a password. So what you need to do is hit “Login” (either on the sidebar, or on the forum page) and it will take you to the login page. Hit “Forgot password” and it will send you an email with a link — follow that link, and you’ll get a second email with a temporary password. Use that password to log in, then change it in the Profile page.

Since I did this conversion myself, I expect some things may be a bit wonky. Let me know if you have any issues. Private Messaging works, or if not, email bhawkins AT monkeylaw DOT org.

Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts