Comic Easel 1.0
Comic Easel (Plugin) has been released to the outside world.
Comic Easel allows you to incorporate a WebComic using the WordPress Media Library functionality with Navigation into almost any WordPress theme. With just a few modifications of adding ‘injection’ action locations into a theme, you can have the theme of your choice display a comic.
The core reason to use Comic Easel above other WordPress theme’s is that you are not limited to the basic ComicPress & Other themes that are specifically designed for WebComics that utilize structures that you do not require or want to make use of. There are a plentiful amount of themes in the WordPress repository that you can now take advantage of that give you tons of options you otherwise wouldn’t have had.
With Comic Easel’s extra taxonomies to control Character and Locations, you can provide your end readers with a plethora of information that wouldn’t have had before that is auto-generated. The Cast Page itself shows how many times a character was in a comic as well as the first comic they were seen in.
If you are upgrading from ComicPress there are several plugins available on the repository that will assist you in converting your categories to the comic post type, including CP2CE. The bonus of using CP2CE is that it will automatically attach the comic from the comics directory of your ComicPress installation and convert the thumbnails at the same time.
Features of 1.0
Custom Post Type control of posts.
Media Library handling of comics.
As many chapters/stories as you would like.
Individual navigation per chapter or all.
Character and Location settings per Comic
Widgets
Chapter Dropdown, brings you to the first comic in the chapter (story)
Calendar display, show’s you what days comic posts were made on, can add images and links to backgrounds.
Recent Comics, a list of comics that have been posted as of late.
Thumbnail, display a thumbnail of a random comic, or first/latest comic in a chapter (or all)
Short Codes
– Shortcodes are simple embed statements that you can put into pages/post that display information.
[comic-archive] Display a list of your comics by individual chapters or all.
[cast-page] Display a list of all of your characters, how many comics they were in and when they first appeared
Action Injection Locations
A number of injection snippets that you add to your theme, mini navigation for the menubar, comic area and comic blost post area, including post-information is available to customize your theme out with auto generated information.
Uh…this sounds pretty wicked.
It IS pretty wicked. You can check out my site at http://maryelizabethssock.com/ for Easel in action. Particularly note the Cast and Archive pages, as well as the cool tag info in the comic’s blog post.
Been waiting a long time for this. Oh comic easel plugin… the things I’m going to do with you.
^ make sure you tell me what features you want to have added 😉
At least, a comics plugin based on WP built in Media management ! Thanks !
So not to be redundant, I’m kinda of new at this, with the easel plugin I would no longer have to use the comic press themes. I can experiment with some other themes but still keep everything I need for my comic that is provided with the comic themes?
Thanks
That is correct. You can add the action areas to any theme and it will work with Comic Easel.
I’m even more redundant… so, to understand this further. Once this is installed, I should never use Comic Press again? Comic Easel does not communicate with Comic Press other than the first time with CP2CE, when it transfers the data? Comic Easel and Comic Press are similar plugins that do the same thing? What would happen if I continued to use Comic Press with Comic Easel side by side? Once again, I just want to understand what its impact on a Comic Press site would be.
1) Yes, unless you want to use comicpress and comic easel together.
2) Comic Easel and ComicPress do not share any code, you can use both or each separately.
3) You can use both at the same time.
Although most people generally will not use both at the same time. Comic Easel works with almost any theme by adding “action” codes into the theme. ComicPress 2.9.3.1 and below are not “out of the box” ready. But 2.9.4 (not out yet) is. If you migrate completely to Comic Easel really is redundant using the ComicPress theme. I wrote Easel (3.0.3 right now) to be compliant out of the box with Comic Easel and it has the same design elements as ComicPress. The “action” hooks to add into a theme, there’s only a handful of them, so if you see a theme on the repo you want to use for your comic that is not comicpress or easel, I can help work with you on enabling it.
It sounds to me like you have your theme design and like it, well that’s okay. As I said the Easel theme has all of the same class/ID entities of ComicPress with none of the ComicPress code in it.
Actually, I just started working on the web site today. I’ve experimented with ComicPress in the past (and have a basic understanding of how it works), but never used it on a live site. Yet, while reading the web site today, I ran across Comic Easel. This will be our first live comic site, so I want to make sure we are using the right tools from the start.
I want to use Comic Easel on an existing 3rd party theme (freshly installed), but don’t really understand how to incorporate it. Integrating it into my existing theme would be fantastic, but I have no clue where to start.
Open up a thread on my forums, title it “Need assistance with “theme name” integration”
That will remind me to download the 3rd party theme you have (if its not commercial, otherwise you will have to email me it) so I can assist you with placing the action locations in.
Thanks. Just sent you the WP Themes in email (since they are commercial). Also, gave you a donation. I want to say thank you for your contribution to the WordPress community.
Quick: I’m familiar with mysql. What data does the migrator looks at when importing from the old Comicpress to the new Comic Easel?
Long:
I made mistakes. I updated everything without looking at it.
I have 999+ comics still in “pre-migration” status. Due to my updating mistakes, none of my pre-migration posts have comic images.
I migrated 2 comics using the updater on the image-less posts. I did so disabling all plugins except for caching and captcha and spam-prevention plugins. It recognized the comic posts and successfully migrated the posts, but did not take the comic image from /comics/ folder and import it into the media library.
Now I have all my 1000+ comics in the /www/comics folder.
I made a new post in comic Easel, and was able to see the comic image properly there. It was in the media library and everything. Comic Easel CAN display comic images, but it currently can’t.
If I can find out which field in the database that got improperly left behind or modified, I can probably fix it on my own. I just need to know how the old Comicpress associated comic images to comic posts. I assume that’s a database field.
Thanks.
Use the contact button and email me instead of commenting please. Cp2CE checks the comics directory for comics, the filename matches the mask … IF you migrated comics but the comics do not appear as featured images THAT is the indication that your files themselves are too large for your host to process. Are they 72dpi ? they should be.
There is several posts on comic easel and here someplace that show how to ‘revert’ comic post types back to regular post types so you can migrate over gain, .. it’s just plugins on the repo to do that, custom post type convertr plugins