Webcomix is a custom-built web comic hosting platform designed and offered by Rose City Digital (RCD) of Portland, Oregon. It was originally designed as a replacement for WordPress-based web comic hosting for an RCD client, and has since been extended as a creator-focused boutique hosting solution for any web comic creator.
No, it does not.
The original client requirement that resulted in Webcomix was fairly simple: We had a client website based on a no longer supported WordPress plugin – Comic Easel – and we wanted to proactively find an alternative solution before that plugin failed. We considered alternate plugins and themes, we considered developing our own custom plugin/theme.
We also considered developing for content management platforms other than WordPress. The desired end state was a stable platform that met or exceeded features of our client’s current platform, minus the concern of using out of date and unsupported technology. We also wanted to ensure a modern and fully responsive digital experience, ease of use, and a flexible platform that could be easily customized.
The solution we settled on was to build Webcomix on Concrete CMS. Principal factors influencing this decision included ease of use, ease of development, platform security, and platform stability. The enterprise-class version of Concrete, Liberta Server, has a fairly impressive client list that includes the U.S. Army. It’s a solid platform… and we like it.
While this may seem a significant shift for creators with a long history of using Comic Easel/WordPress, it's one we strongly advocate. The unfortunate reality is that Comic Easel has been unsupported for over six years and is no longer offered by WordPress. An aging and unsupported codebase is not a reliable platform.
WordPress itself is concerning as well. Originally built as a blogging platform, it has become as ubiquitous among content management systems as Windows is to desktop computing– with just as many security holes and just as much legacy code deadwood. There are better alternatives… and we picked one of the best.
Not too bad, really.
Moving digital assets between platforms is never easy, but we've done what we can to remove a few roadblocks. Our first exercise in this involved moving six years of a weekly/bi-monthly comic site, roughly 240 4-panel comics with associated text and metadata. Of course, we were building the target platform as we were working– which doesn't exactly make things easy. But we were able to create tools to simplify the process (tools we're happy to share).
However hard or easy moving to our platform is, we consider the effort a worthwhile investment. As a comic creator, you already have a substantial investment in your creation– particularly if you have found ways to monetize your work. The Webcomix team wants to work with you to find ways to protect that investment.
It is, actually.
We conducted a thorough analysis of WordPress-based comic plugins, dedicated comic hosting platforms, and built from scratch comic creator websites. Based on that analysis, we developed tools that empower creators without forcing them to learn the back end complexity of content management systems or limit their creativity to the narrow options of a dedicated high-volume platform.
Whether you are a long-time comic creator who has used other platforms or a new creator looking for a place to express your vision, we believe we have a platform that will empower you. And we are absolutely committed to continuing to grow this platform. If there is a feature you'd like to see, please let us know.
It's free to try.
We offer a 60 day trial site to anyone. As a special incentive to WordPress/Comic Easel users (or creators on other platforms), RCD offers to design your new site on our platform, and migrate your most recent ten comics... free of charge. We're willing to do this because we want to promote our platform. Webcomix was built by creators for creators. We have no interest in building yet another webcomic mill churning out thousand of titles. We'd rather build a boutique business working to further develop a platform to empower comic artists.
The combined cost of site hosting and software licensing for maintaining a single web comic site on Webcomix is $10 per month. That covers everything. If you have a registered domain name you want to use, we can set that up for you as well. In contrast to larger platforms (many of which do offer services for free), we do not place advertising in your content, nor do we harvest information on you or your site's followers. If you are not paying for a product... you are the product. We'd rather not go that route.
We can do that. We learned a lot about web comics building this platform, we're happy to use those skills on behalf of new clients. If you'd like us to estimate the cost of migrating content & decommissioning your old site, just put in a new site request and select "existing comic migration" as the request type and "please help me migrate comics from my old site" as the migration assistance level. You should be hearing from us within 48 hours.
Very favorably, we think.
We are trying to fill a niche between self-hosted web comics (mostly on WordPress) and advertising/personal data supported large web comic hosting platforms. We offer the convenience of a managed platform at effectively the same cost as self-hosting.
What we also offer is a platform that is truly responsive-- not just in the sense of "responsive design" (which, let's be clear, Comic Easel never really did), but also in the sense of a platform that is small enough to be responsive to its users in terms of extending design options, further improving the interface, and working with our clients to further refine a product that meets their needs.
Even though the core team at RCD has decades of collective enterprise/large environment experience, we are -- by choice -- a small business targeting the needs of other small to medium size businesses and clients... and we like working with creators.
A little.
You can check our Content/Community Guidelines page for details, but the usual prohibitions on hate speech, abusive sexual fantasies, and extreme violent content apply. We do ask that you use MPAA-style restriction notices on adult content, and we do discourage the use of this platform by minor children. If you can't operate within these fairly broad guidelines, you are probably better off self-hosting.