Messages

I've just picked up a new URL for the comic ( http://www.lastres0rt.com ), and am currently forwarding traffic to it. Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of the current masking (among other things, my little domain icon doesn't show!), and so I'd like to point the domain name to something a little more substantial.

The thing is, I'm not sure what the nameservers for my site are, or if we even have them. It seems like that would be simple enough to fix, but I'm not sure if we have this ability.

Help? Advice? Tips on how to wrestle GoDaddy.com into doing what you want?

I think my latest redesign would prefer a little banner at the bottom.

btw, since you said 'as of the server move'... you still want the 25% from before that point? I think I'm sitting on $5 of yours.

Regular Expressions ARE VooDoo.

How else do you explain Computational Linguistics?!

That Chipmunk poster is HIDEOUS...

Although I do admit the 'Smurfs Hardcore' poster is almost tempting.

I'd like to eventually have xepher.net (or a section of xepher.net) function somewhere between a collective like Blank Label and a hosting site like keenspot (but better, of course.) Right now, I'm not doing any promotion or seeking new members until the new server gets in place and I'm confident of it's reliability. After that however, I want to actively seek out good comics. Not entirely sure how to go about that, or what it is the artists are really looking for. That is, how shared (comic specific) hosting compares to just running their own site, and things like that.

At minimum, we're probably going to need to be a little flexible in regards to giving new comic artists some PHP to hit the ground running with rather than just expecting them to always roll their own.

I see Xepher becoming a Furry Blank Label (Fuzzy Label, perhaps?) but a little less stingy about who it lets in. Not by much though -- Maintaining at least a little eliteness should be key, because what attracted me to Xepher was the following:

• Almost Ad-Free Hosting
• Small Clientele List (at least compared to Comic Genesis or Drunk Duck!)
• Can't-Lose Payment system (No money owed until you start making a profit through donations)

The best way to find new artists (besides seeking them out) would be to get DMFA to do half your legwork for you. Seriously, that thing has pull.

waiting to get invited by PW to host ads...

I've been trying to use the 'free ad space' so far. A lot of work for the effort, really.

The new 'in thing' seems to be comic collectives, like Webcomic Hotness and Blank Label.

I'm curious how you do your line work. It's very clean, and the lines have dynamic width to them. I'm guessing it's vector, but I guessed the same about penny arcade, and he just uses ink brushes in photoshop.

An old edition of Adobe Illustrator + my tablet, so you guessed right on the vectors. I used to try and get similar results in Flash MX, but I got sick of it after using it for about a year (though every now and then I go back for things - the Last Resort 'Bullethole' logo was done in Flash, for example) My understanding's fairly limited in Illustrator, but enough to have a good grasp as far as varying line widths go.

I've been sketching fully digitally this summer, though sometimes I'll do a test run in my sketchbook first for the general gist of things.

Keep in mind that advertising a comic is a lot like advertising a lot of other things online. Treat it accordingly and start reading some blogs. Not just the ones on comics, but about running businesses, marketing, blogging (yes, there are lots of blogs on blogging -- go figure, but they're damn useful), and anything else that's associated with whatever it is you're doing. There's plenty online about running a business, and like it or not, you should treat your comic like one.

I'm trying to run my own blog on the stuff, which admittedly is just another method of trying to advertise the comic and attract readers. That said, it still works, the information there is still useful, and you can update the blog a lot faster than you can your comic.

Find comics you already read that're similar to yours, and start making yourself known in those groups. Don't mess with DeviantArt and FurAffinity's communities (but feel free to post stuff there and try to get more exposure); they're too large, too broad, and you'll just get frustrated if you pay too much attention. Same caution applies to certain LiveJournal groups. At least with comic communities you'll have a far less jaded/dramatic crowd, and they're already receptive to the general idea of webcomics as well.

And check out Project Wonderful for later.  Is interesting stuff.

In that case . . . whoops. >_> Sorry there, I'd already had the account sitting about for a while, so I made the button one day on a lark.

I'll get your payment in whenever it's meant to be. Which form do you prefer?

When paying Xepher's 25%, do I pay 25% of the donation before or after Paypal takes its cut?

(so on a $5 donation, do I pay $1.25, or $1.13 since they take out 45 cents?)

'Cause I can, and 'cause it'll be at least a week before this makes any sense anyway:



Unless any of you have strong opinions one way or the other about teaser panels in comics...

[EDIT:]

make a BMP file with a simple image on it.

after you are done, change the extention to *.ICO

upload it to you base directory.




can anyone confirm that? I think That's what I did.

Just to make sure, Base directory vs. the public_html one?

EDIT: nm, got it!

How do I make 'em, basically?

They seem like a good thing to have, especially now that FireFox shows 'em off in such a way that it seems silly NOT to use 'em...

Learn a little PHP beyond what you need, but only because PHP just makes the 'little things' about your website that much simpler. Once I saw how powerful a few PHP files could be, I was sold.