I downloaded SmartFTP and am extremely new to how online comics work. I'm building my site as we speak with html (nothing fancy like CSS or PHP yet). I guess my question is, what exactly does an FTP do? And how does it benefit a webcomic? I was also curious about how the Next, Previous, etc., buttons work on a site (since I don't think making a page for each update is feasible in the longrun lol).
Any light that can be shed on this would be awesome, thanks!
~ Kat
Well ftp allows you to take the files on your PC and put them on your website basicly.
And if you're using just html you're going to have to make a serperate webpage for every comic.
Most comics use some sort of scripts (often written in php) to make it easy to have forward/back buttons, archives, etc. With plain HTML, you would have to try and make a new page for each comic, which does become a royal pain pretty quick. Check out comics you like, and look near the bottom... often you'll see a link to what script they use, like Walrus, or ATP AutoSite, etc. See this thread...
http://xepher.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=3151
As for FTP, it's "File Transfer Protocol" and like gwyn said, is just a program to let you upload/download files. FTP doesn't have anything to do with comics specifically.
So far, I haven't used any PHP (except for the Newsbox). I should probabaly fix that sometime...
Specifically for your webcomics issue... here's what I do (also works with art galleries and other archives):
Use FRAMES! Frames are the key and my favourite layout to use.
One pain though, is to, out of scratch, make your own prev, next, buttons. Well.. look at my gallery: {MY GALLERY} :3 (http://"http://tsunami-yusa.awardspace.com/4.html")
See how there's an archive in one frame? and the picture w/ description and next button in the other?
Hope it helps~ (oddly coming from a n00b)