Features!

..of the premium theme. .. some content will not be available in the public download.

Today we’re going to look at the features of ComicPress 2.8, going to list them off as best as I can because there are quite a bit of easter eggs.

— Features added/changed since 2.7 (incomplete list, working on it) and changelog.

• .. a SINGLE theme for all the different ComicPress styles.
• A ComicPress Options area to turn on and off options and selecting your theme style.
• ComicPress CSS – a CSS editor admin panel for editing overriding CSS files.  You do *not* edit any code anymore, everything can be done with the CSS editor, options, widgeted areas and plugins. CSS files to handle everything from individual browser types to pages that *dont* have comics on them.
• Individual classes for every single page you create and go to on your site, so in theory you can design the look with the ComicPress CSS editor for *every* page/post/place on your site.
• 12 .. Eleven! Widgeted areas to help you design your site.   This makes it even easier to place items on your page, ala Ad Space like Project Wonderful, etc.
• Don’t like the regular menubar? several options to choose from. (more info on that later), including you can now *replace* the menubar text and hover information with images and hover images using CSS (you always could but this has been streamlined).
• Creating a Links page will attach the categorized links you create with wordpress to the menubar as a dropdown.
• Disable the blog or the comic on the front page.
• New widgets that include a latest comic thumbnail if you disable the comic on the front page it goes to the latest comic. (home splash page anyone?)
• Disable commenting with the extended commenting code, sitewide.  (had to revamp what this meant for people who didn’t know what I meant, heh)  Extended commenting code is a whole set of routines that produce an extended output of information to the page with extra classes and more.
• New layout CSS Elements that do better enclosing of areas and correspond to wordpress’s plugin specifications.  Part 3?
• Templates, Widgets and more to use ComicPress as a Blog.
• A bunch of “shortcodes”
• Option for using Lester Chan’s numbered pagination on your home page instead of the regular Previous <-> Next when scrolling through latest blogs.
• Custom Image Header is back and better then ever.  You can turn this off and on at will and specifically set height and width that it will use in the options without editing any code. (this admin panel area makes it so you can just upload a header image instead of embedding with CSS), some people like it.
• Frumph’s (mine?) Buy Print code is put in and revamped, the Buy Print button is now a widget so you can place it in a widget around the comic area.   There are now ComicPress Options for you to specify your paypal information and cost for the prints. Make some cash anyone?
• Code embedded already for Lester Chan’s wp-post ratings plugin.
• Comic Navigation (Graphical Images/on off disabled) using a total of 5 files *only* as a widget.  You can place one above the comic below it, to the left and to the right with css elements so you can modify it and the images it uses with ComicPress CSS.
• Upload flash .swf files as comics with ComicPress Manager and ComicPress 2.8
• WordPress MU (WPMU) Compatible.
• Commenting system has had a revamp of code to let you use a pingback and trackback image, as well as permalink and reply to’s have been changed, also you can CSS the post authors comments.
• Support for the Plugin Wonderful (Project Wonderful ads) plugin from John Bintz, Header Blog and Footer areas are specified as places to put ads without even using widgets.
• Paged Comments.
• Option to remove the constraints of the fixed width #page #page-wide.
• Seperated the pingbacks and trackbacks in the comments area so they are not grouped up with the regular comments.
• Converted almost all of the old widgets into wordpress 2.8 widget classes.  Yeah that means you have to have wordpress 2.8+ to use ComicPress 2.8
• Drow Tales drop down widget area is included.
• Related_Comics and Related_Posts shortcodes as well as options for enabling them on all posts/comics.  if it’s a comic post it will show only related comics and if in a blog post, only related to those that are not comic categories.
• Members only ability.   Admins can flag user accounts as members and mark information inside of a post that only those users who are flagged can read. (Donation incentives?)
• Anomaly Says fun hovertext replacement
• Comic Clicks Next option
• Author Pages / Profile Pages for Authors and Registered Users
• Menubar is now a widget and can be moved around to any position on the page.
• Creating a link category called “menubar” will place whatever links you want in the menubar.
• Creating a link category called “links” will place a drop down list of links on a created “Links” page.
• Sidebar’s will not display the <div> code unless sidebar has a widget in it. (yeah I know, the little things that count =)
• Post options for displaying in posts now have ‘gravatars’ of the author as well options for calendar and MOODS!

Some sites already using ComicPress 2.8 Premium

• Clan of the Cats http://clanofthecats.com/
• How Sweet It Is http://jynksiecomics.com
• Matter Of Fact http://mofcomic.com/ – Matter of Fact uses *alot* of 2.8 functionality, not a single bit of code or original CSS was edited in making it.
• Binary Souls / Other Dimensions http://www.bsodcomic.net/

(OPEN) BETA TESTERS:

ComicPress 2.8 Open Beta Repository