This post was originally published on Pillowfort in January 2023.

I launched a new (sort of) webcomic project at the beginning of the year, which means I had another opportunity to try out some other comic CMSes. Although Rarebit is a real winner when it comes to comic CMSes, it lacks a scheduling system, which was essential for the new project, I also wanted an easier way to add blogposts and a comment function. 

So here are my thoughts on two more of them, Comic Easel (lol) and Toocheke:

Comic Easel via WordPress (I’m not linking it) was once the standard comic CMS, but development ended years ago, and there hasn’t been any news from the team who said they were working on a new version of it (or its predecessor, Comicpress). But I was frustrated and hoping for something familiar, so I tracked down a working version of it and installed it, and wouldn’t you know, it’s all still running on outdated scripts and has the same issues it used to. I honestly didn’t work with it very long this time around, as it had all the issues I had with Toocheke (which I’ll get to) and really wasn’t worth sticking with.

Toocheke is another WordPress theme that is currently actively supported. The devs even advertise their services (for a fee, I think?) for if you want them to take care of setting it up and customizing it. This is pretty big for anyone who doesn’t have the ability to do it themselves and the support system needed for someone else (e.g. a web person, a friend who’s good at this kind of thing).

Installing WordPress (WP) and Toocheke was technically really easy for me, as my webhost has a one-click WordPress installation function and to install Toocheke all you have to do is download the zip file and upload it in the relevant spot in WP. WP has improved since I last used it in that it’s super duper easy to customize website colors.

Toocheke doesn’t have a tutorial or anything similar that I could find, so I felt really lost as to what to do. I muddled through and spent a lot of time being frustrated that I couldn’t get the header image to show despite having one set, but this was remedied when I figured out Toocheke terminology isn’t completely intuitive (in this case, it was to change the home page layout so that “Hero” was the section where I wanted the header).

WordPress I think tries to be too helpful when sometimes I just want to plug some HTML onto a template and hit save. Instead I had to wrestle with a pagebuilder which I found frustrating, as I’d find something similar to what I was going for and then spend a long time unsuccessfully trying to tweak it.

Toocheke’s comic uploader has a lot of functions, which is nice when you want to use all of them, but can be clunky if you only want to use some of them. But it makes scheduling posts easy and the self-building archive page seems to work beautifully. It’s also extremely mobile-friendly, which isn’t true for any of the other CMSes I’ve tried.

In summation, I’m sticking with Toocheke, which I’m not 100% happy with, but I feel better about using it than a lot of the other (still very limited) options available.

This post was originally published on Pillowfort in November 2022.

I recently had to install a couple of content management systems (CMSes) for a couple of webcomics and wanted to share some thoughts on them:

In the past, I’ve used the Comicpress/Comic Easel plugins for WordPress and Grawlix, both of which aren’t currently supported by their developers. Grawlix went completely defunct a couple months after I started using it, and while Comicpress/Comic Easel is rumored to be making a comeback, I don’t want to wait an undetermined amout of time for it to be launched.

So I’m going to write about the two comic CMSes I’ve used in the past month, Comic Control and Rarebit. This isn’t really a review, because my main criteria for using a CMS is “can I get it to work” and the answer was yes to both of them. I was for a very short bit seriously considering teaching myself coding just so I wouldn’t have to worry about a repeat of Comicpress and Grawlix where I couldn’t keep them up to date and actually useable. I don’t enjoy coding in the slightest; it sometimes makes me want to cry, but the whole “sorry, this thing only runs on outdated PHP” mess is frustrating.

Back to the content management systems:

Rarebit is very simple and bare bones. It’s also extremely easy to customize (read: fiddle with) and very forgiving when you do something wrong. The entire installation process is just uploading the files to the website and then giving the comics the correct filenames and putting them in the correct folder. There’s no PHP or mySql database or password to worry about; I did all my adjustments in Notepad++ and then uploaded the edited file to the website via FTP. Each bit of code and javascript you could consider customizing has an explanation for what it does built right into the document.

The downside to Rarebit is that its simplicity means it’s missing a scheduling feature, so you can’t upload something in advance and have it post at a pre-designated time. Since I installed Rarebit on prophecyfailed.com, which is a completed comic, and doesn’t need a scheduler. I recently had to rebuild the entire website for Prophecy Failed and its 740-page archive and the hardest part was renaming all the comic pages. There’s also no obvious way to integrate reader comments, which isn’t really a good or bad thing. Another big plus to Rarebit is that since it uses only html and javascript, its code won’t become completely unusable as PHP sites can do.

(NB: I could be wrong about how PHP support works, I just know that in my experience it can become outdated and then not function and then you’re stuck with a broken website and you’re not necessarily adept enough at diagnosing the issue beyond that.)

Comic Control is a free version of the CMS a lot of Hiveworks comics use that the creator was very kind to release. It’s much more robust than Rarebit, which also means it’s more complicated. It’s fairly easy in terms of initial setup and installation (there is a lot of hand holding, which I’m grateful for), but I’ve managed to break the header and footer by trying to edit them. I’ve tried to add a sidebar, but I’m not good enough at coding to get it right. But Comic Control has a scheduler, which is very important for my upcoming project. You can also integrate a comments system very easily, which is convenient if comments are important to you.

I’ve always felt like I can get a Comic Control site to serviceable, but I’m really pleased with how my Rarebit site came out. Obviously your mileage may vary depending on your coding skill and what features you can/can’t live without. I’m just a person who wants to make comics and doesn’t want to deal with Webtoon or Tapas. (And I’m old and it used to be that self-hosting comics was the cool thing to do.)

Thanks for reading!