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[SteveH]

Now that version 0.2 has finally been released I'm now able to get back to speculating on the future of ComicCMS. Thanks to the great help of the alpha and beta testers it looks like this new version has shipped without problems. The only worries we've had are with upgraders templates and we're doing our best to help them. We hope you're all having a pleasant time otherwise.

Now to move on to the fun bits. Thinking about the bigger picture I'd like to throw these ideas out into the open. Please comment and throw around your ideas, I think nearly all of ComicCMS' shortcomings can be put down to me not knowing how you want it to work.

Obvious improvements - Including tag pages, paged archives (e.g. 30 per page), template nested if statements, etc.

IE support - We wont be adding IE support, for reasons already documented. For times where you are stuck on someone else's computer though you may need some access and we hope to aid that. Attached is the initial designs for a "low-fi" admin panel for these desperate situations.

PHP4 support - May or may not be dropped. PHP4 has not been updated for many years now and no longer receives security patches. For this reason your webhosts should not be offering PHP4 or, at the very least, should also be offering PHP5. We wont gratuitously drop PHP4 but if there is a PHP5-only feature we want to use we wont hesitate much.

SQLite database - A potential idea (one that would require PHP5) is to shift the ComicCMS database over to SQLite. This will still not require mySQL or anything from your webserver but gives a lot of power that we could use to develop faster and better features. We are still investigating to make sure that all PHP5 hosts include support for SQLite2 before proceeding with this (as far as I know it is completely built-in).

Since using custom SQLite databases on my sister project Comic Rank I have fallen in love. It gives all the major benefits of SQL like search, limits and queries without the drawback of needing a mySQL server. It stores it's database in files, not on other machines, so moving, backing up and all those advanced operations can be kept super-simple. I would very much like to start using it on ComicCMS, but it does mean dropping PHP4.

Speed-critical services (serving the cached pages to your readers) will still stay as files to keep the speed top notch.

Template wizards - A lot of work, but would be good to have wizards for templates that aid with tasks like selecting the best default template for your comic style, suggesting a list of usable ComicCMS variables when editing, and other helpers for things like RSS

Other things - I have a big file called "plans" on my computer, full of ideas. Features I would like but you may not much care about would include an OpenID server (providing OpenIDs, not using them for logins) and a nice JSON based API. Date-based database queries is a must (SQLite would sort that out really easily).

Forum - This is a big and different idea, would really put ComicCMS above the pack. ComicCMS has always been lame with comments and they are a big thing with comics now. The other thing comics like having is a forum, but most of the time they just don't have enough readers to fill a whole forum. My plan would be (probably as a plugin):
- Create a small forum software integrating users and databases with ComicCMS.
- Have no "boards" (like "comic","news","chat"), only one page of recent topics
- Topics can have tags, so you can look at a page that displays only "news" topics
- Have the option to auto-post a topic for each new comic/news post
- Tie in with the normal templates so replies to these topics appear just like comments
The development for this would be a lot of work, especially getting it all as templates, but may hold many rewards.

The forum idea I am both excited and apprehensive about. It seems like a great solution to me, but I've never seen it on a webcomic site.


That is all for now I guess.

[fantomx11]

If you migrate to SQLLite, will pure flat-file still be an option? My host doesn't support SQLLite.

[SteveH]

If switching to SQLite then flat file would be ditched. Are you sure your host doesn't support SQLite through PHP? From what I've seen so far all PHP5 installations have SQLite inherently.

You could make a file called test.php with it's contents being

Code:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

then run it on your server. See if the term SQLite crops up much.

[fantomx11]

It says nothing about SQLLite, but I was reading and they don't support PHP5 anyway.

[SteveH]

I'm relieved that it isn't a case of PHP5 without SQLite at least.

Don't panic, we wont be dropping support for PHP 4 before the next big release. Any upgrades to the current version will still be tailored for PHP4 and 5. I'll look in to how long I can continue supporting PHP4 (even if it's only allowing installing an old version of ComicCMS) depending on what commitments for security patches that would cause. Ultimately though everyone should be aiming to be on PHP5 now - considering PHP4 no longer receives security patches itself.

There are quite a few people on the same webhost as you, very annoyed at the lack of PHP5. The standard response is that they "monitor security and user concerns regularly and have no current plans to upgrade". You may want to add your own message to their inbox asking for PHP 5. A website with software over a year out of date without security patches is an explosion waiting to happen.

I hate to force people to use things they aren't already, especially when paid for, but like the admin panel is impossible to create for Internet Explorer; so advanced things like forums are so incredibly hard to support without new PHP5 features (specifically SQLite). There would be a slight possibility of supporting php5 or, separately, php4 with mySQL, but that may turn in to a large job to handle.

[tumbleweed]

I think the main thing this cms is missing is user interaction. I think a forum as well as comments would be a good start. but what about having ways for your fans to create a community around your comic. let them set up fan groups and the like (for example if one charictor is my favorite I could make a page for all the fans of Capt Woods to get together and talk about how good he is and upload pictures we have drawn of him etc) also polls so we can gage how well a new type of drawning/coloring is working or if they want to see more or less of a charictor or storyline etc. I just feel that at the moment the fans can see how good the comic is but other than facebook there is no easy way to get feed back and interact with the fans from within my site.

end or ramble

[tumbleweed]

Right ive tried using some other comment systems and they are just not what im looking for. I want my own user base, i want them signed up to MY site not some dissucion site. I want the option to later reward users who comment regualy. Forums quickly become full of crap or become dead or slow. comments are mych more effective for getting quick relative feed back and I REALLY think you should push forward with making one for this CMS and I will give you  a cookie 

[SteveH]

The challenge I want to set myself is to make a forum software for comics that doesn't turn out to go dead and stagnant. The problem with using any forum software with a small userbase is simply that it isn't tailored to that kind of thing. They are full of features, lengthy sign-up processes, and basically they look terrible when there are not many posts.

By doing away with boards (like general, comic, art, etc.) things will look better immediately. It's much better to have a forum with 10 threads than to have 5 boards with one or two threads spread across them. The key to user interaction is immediacy so guests replying to threads would likely be an easy option too.

Of course there will be nothing to stop people simply not using the forum front-end. As I say it will link in to the comic and news posts, allowing people to reply to them as if they were threads. Certainly an aim is to be able to use the template system to show these replies on a page as if they were regular comments.

Comics are turning to interaction on quite a large scale nowerdays, certainly a stark contrast to when I started out working with them. The problem is small comics want entire communities to magically spawn from installing PHPBB or the like, but nothing happens in a forum unless people are there and people wont go there unless things are happening.

What is really needed is a somewhat distributed network where websites can have there own communities, started by people already being signed up to them from other popular sites. A few experiments I did with twitter would have been perfect if not for the 140 char limit. If you want to start social places you can't ignore the social web, I've steered clear of Google's opensocial but I may have to investigate that a bit further as well.

The long and the short of it: Comment systems are easy to make, getting commenters however is not. Your users are spread, they read many comics a day, and you have to specifically tailor for this if you want to spark their interest.

Personally I'm a fan of a good old fashioned email, write some interesting blog posts to make your readers connect to you as well as your comic and they will come. A personal email seems more special than someone standing up in the middle of your site and shouting their opinion.

Anyway, I've rambled and sidetracked and rambled some more. Having thought out some new structures for this forum aside I think that converting old comments to it wont be too much of a problem, therefore I am likely to release a comment plugin for this version for until then. There wont be much in terms of features but considering the time expected until this future endeavor it's only fair.

[tumbleweed]

yay 

[KeyMasterOfGozer]

Hi SteveH, I am longtime listener, first time caller...

I know this thread has been dead for a while, but I thought I would throw in my 2cents.

I like the idea of having some uber community site where a user can have one login and comment on a bunch of webcomics, but as I have found, the disconnect you get from using an external site for that is pretty hard to overcome.

I also really like the idea of having a forums type community tool for a webcomic, but in my experience, if your community is small, which is not that hard to achieve, Simple comments would go a long way to satisfying the need for some comment.  Seems easy to give a simple configuration for one of
1) No Comments
2) Comments if you are logged in
3) Anyone can leave comments (maybe with recaptcha to avaoid spam)

Seems like that would handle 99% of small to medium webcomic communities just fine will minimal effort.

As you get things like a forum for it, then you could make that a 4th option and then people will have lots of options on how they would like their site to work.

Still, I really appreciate the work you've done.

[tensimon]

I think a small (one page) forum where readers can chat about the comic would probably build a nice sense of community, and would work especially well for long-form comics where comments on individual pages are not as applicable as talking about the story as a whole.

just my tuppence.