Comicpress Releasing Premium Pay For Version

[Rob]

Very interesting article in Fleen today regarding Comicpress.

Check it here.

And the direct link to comments from Phil "Frumph" Hofer (he is one of the developers of the software) can be found here.

This is interesting in light of all the Comicpress site hacking lately. Additionally it makes me wonder what so many other folks who use Comicpress are going to do since it won't be updated ever again (beyond bug fixes). Will they jump on the pay bandwagon and buy Comicpress 3.0 once it's out of Beta or will sites like Smackjeeves, Rampage, DrunkDuck and even alternative CMS's like the ones created by our own DrBlkKnight and DragonPowered be the wave of the future?

Although he doesn't come right out and say it Hofer implies that with the departure of John Bintz from the project as well as the with the changes made to the core Wordpress program they are starting somewhat from scratch with a whole new way of doing things and Comicpress 3.0 will be very different indeed from what they are now referring to as "Comicpress Legacy" (you know... that program many of you are using).

Even Hofer is departing the project leaving it in the hands of Adam Kellogg for health reasons.

I don't mind telling you this feels to me like the core group of guys making this program are tired of working on it and are just moving on to other things and this Comicpress 3.0 is in fact a whole new program that is being "anointed" by the previous developers.

I think perhaps the most interesting discourse on this subject will come from the Half-Pixel guys. Both Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub use Comicpress (Brad Guigar and Dave Kellet have sites that I would guess are Comicpress but they don't have the Comicpress disclaimer at the bottom so your guess is as good as mine).  So to hear what they have to say on the subject as a group might be pretty interesting.

Some of us sadly will never know but if you have a free $30 now might be an interesting time to join Webcomics.com.

;)

[Alectric]

I don't even have the latest version of ComicPress now.  Doesn't it require you to completely redo your customizations of its template?  Even if not, I don't see a reason to make everything on my site shiny, at least not now.  I don't think this will affect me very much.

[Dragon Powered]

Oh wow, interesting.  I've worked with Frumph a number of times, Phil's a good guy.  I can completely understand his reasons for stepping down from the project, he's invested a lot of his own time for free and now it's going a different direction.

Maybe the upcoming changes to Comicpress will be a good thing for my CMS, since it has always supported multiple comic series and multiple comics posted on the same day.  But that's because my system starts with the comic first as the main draw, whereas Comicpress runs on Wordpress which focuses on the blog first. Comicpress looks for a comic with the same date as the blog (and to find it the comic has to be named as a date ), mine picks up the blog if posted the same day as the comic. But even that doesn't matter, you don't need a blog since comments can be posted directly to the comic, or the blog, or both, or directly to the forums for the comic... heh.  You could have 527 different comics, all with unique layouts post the same day if that's what you want.  I guess the people who are picking up Comicpress just realized some comickers actually want to do something like that.

I don't know if it's a good or bad thing for webcomics, but I'm sure it's going to affect a lot of them.

[operationremie]

should be interesting to see what happens. i wanted to try using 2.9 but can't seem to get it to work on my site.

[Knara]

should be interesting to see what happens. i wanted to try using 2.9 but can't seem to get it to work on my site.

IMO 2.9 suffered horribly from "feature creep".  I started doing a test upgrade on it from 2.8 on a subdomain, and the child-theming things seemed like a good idea conceptually, but in reality (along with the lackluster documentation quality vs the 2.8 documentation) it turned out to be a pain.

I gotta take a look at this and see what its all about.  I'm totally not against paying for a good, easy to configure, and powerful webcomic framework.

[operationremie]

should be interesting to see what happens. i wanted to try using 2.9 but can't seem to get it to work on my site.

IMO 2.9 suffered horribly from "feature creep".  I started doing a test upgrade on it from 2.8 on a subdomain, and the child-theming things seemed like a good idea conceptually, but in reality (along with the lackluster documentation quality vs the 2.8 documentation) it turned out to be a pain.

I gotta take a look at this and see what its all about.  I'm totally not against paying for a good, easy to configure, and powerful webcomic framework.

especially, from what i was reading, if it doesn't get hacked like it does now.

[Knara]

Do you have any links for the "hacking" bit.  I know a lot of times (its my day job) complaints about packages being hacked are actually "I used a weak password and didn't follow the directions about PHP".

[Rob]

Go to Fleen

http://www.fleen.com/

Type in Comicpress or Hacked into the search bar.... I'm sure you will find something there as that is where I found most of the stories.

[Knara]

Go to Fleen

http://www.fleen.com/

Type in Comicpress or Hacked into the search bar.... I'm sure you will find something there as that is where I found most of the stories.

I took a look.  There's nothing really to suggest that ComicPress itself was the issue in the stories.  There's lots of ways into a website, particularly if you don't upgrade WordPress itself when the bug fixes come out (or use weak passwords on WordPress or a shell account associated with the site).

Just sayin', I can't see that ComicPress is obviously to blame in those situations (even though the sites themselves used ComicPress or their ComicPress install was screwed up because of the hack).

[Cary]

The whole going to pay model thing is pretty wicked since Comicspress was pretty much the gold standard for a bit for people setting up new webcomics. When I set my site up I tried it and I HATED it. It didn't have the functionality I felt like it should, especially in light of the stuff the Webcomic plug in was offering. After installing and trying both, I went with Webcomic. It seems to suit my needs a lot better, and I guess that's the whole point, you know? At some point you have to wonder if it's not getting a little bloated and static though. I mean are they really adding that much to the release to warrant a mas conversion or is it more likely you'll need it to make the jump to WP 3.0? My suspicions tell me the latter, but I could be wrong.

[Alectric]

I'm pretty interested to hear about this Webcomic plugin and why you favor it.

[Rob]

Yeah Cary if you know a lot about the plug in, or know someone who developed it or something like that, I think we would all love to see an article on the benefits and things it has to offer. Let me know.  ;)

[Cary]

Yeah Cary if you know a lot about the plug in, or know someone who developed it or something like that, I think we would all love to see an article on the benefits and things it has to offer. Let me know.  ;)

Absolutely not a problem sir! I'll finish my paper today and then put something together and send it out for ya!

[Rob]

I wouldn't be ab;e to use it until next Sunday night for the Monday update. So feel free to procrastinate a bit.
;D

[Cary]

I wouldn't be ab;e to use it until next Sunday night for the Monday update. So feel free to procrastinate a bit.
;D

HA! Jokey jokemaker! lol I sent it to your email.