This post is going to be mainly about putting together the back-end of the new webcomic’s website. But first, band things.

EP release has been pushed back. Producer is in South America. We are supposed to talk to some record labels. It sounds awesome. We have a gig on Oct 12th at Whammy Bar. A couple more details are available on the band myspace. I’m going to be adding more contact to the main band site, it’s currently in it’s neutered pre-tour state.

Onto the website. I installed AWStats without too many problems, though I installed it wrong according to a lame tutorial the first time. Second time, all smiles. Now I can stalk all the readers of the new comic.

After much deliberation, I went with ComicPress (which runs off the blog tool WordPress) as the program that will be powering the new comic site. In this field, options are pretty limited. I don’t really know any PHP coders, nor do I want to pay them, so all the custom solutions are out. Programs like Comikaze and Walrus, that serve as the back-end of many older webcomics, are hideously out of date and are no longer maintained. To avoid a painful migration process, many people just stick with them, despite their flaws. Apparently Walrus is back, or is coming back, but that’s neither here nor there.

My friend Jerry, the guy who runs Bomb Shelter Comics, is working on his own piece of back-end software. However, the new comic is due to launch within the next couple months and he’s pretty busy working on Webcomics Idol, amongst other projects. When he’s done, I’ll definitely check it out though.

The main reason for going with ComicPress is that due to it running off WordPress, it allows me to integrate a bunch of other online media. This includes proper blogging, podcasting and twitter. WordPress is so widely used and updated that I don’t have to really worry about it falling out of use. ComicPress is also very easily edited, so even if the creator dropped off the face of the planet, it’d live on. It’s basically just a theme over the top of it anyway.

Most people who use it (like my buddy Fred) don’t really customise it too much. And justifiably so, as editing WordPress themes isn’t a whole lot of fun. It’s easy to get to the place where you edit them, but once you get into the nitty gritty it can be an absolute bastard. On the surface it looks easy, but the struggle is to keep it visually consistent.

I had a number of troubles with WordPress tonight. The recent update has managed to break the Twitter Tools plugin and the ComicPress theme (making it ugly as sin). Since I’m changing the theme a lot, it wouldn’t be a problem, but things are definitely being read incorrectly, so I’m going to wait a couple of days till a new update to ComicPress shows up to save myself re-doing a lot of work. Also, the new version of the giant Podcast plug-in is broken as well.

Effectively, nothing works tonight but due to WordPress’ widespread use, it will be fixed in a couple of days. Frequent updates like this can cause temporary nightmares, whereas the stand-alone solutions are less likely to collapse like a house of cards when one element of the program gets out of whack. However, if those stand-alone programs fall apart and there’s no one around to fix it, then I’m fucked. One day I will be very rich and famous, then I will employ an administrator and make him dance for me.

Ramble ramble, 4:30am, bed.