radish enthusiast

here is all the reasons why you should use comicfury (if you aren't already) :

pretty much full control over your custom site design. if you're an HTML/CSS nerd you can go as crazy as you want with it. but for those who aren't so code-savvy, there are also simplified built-in design tools so you can create a unique site for yourself and your work. reject homogeneous minimalism design of bigger platforms, embrace tradition of mid-2000's kitchen sink site design (if that's what you want, that is).

the site demonstrates its own philosophies through its extremely charming vintage 2000's-era site design. it ain't broke so it doesn't need fixing. if it's too 'ugly' for you and wards you off from using the site, then it's succeeding at what it was designed to do.

forums! remember those??? CF sure does!

full view of your comic statistics over the past month, shown as delicious daily line graphs, separated by unique visitors, web page view, and scroll view.

hosting is free. don't want that pesky 'thecomicseries' or 'comicfury' add-on? all you gotta do is purchase your own domain name. contact kyo and they'll take care of the rest.

you can categorize your pages per chapter, making for an easier reading experience

you can include page transcripts for screen-readers as well as mouseover text

you can enable comments per upload and even manage them so that all comments have to be approved by you before they're shared publicly

archive tagging!!! i.e. you can tag uploads with relevant characters / locations / etc. so people can find specific pages easier on your site.

you can run a goddang BLOG on your comic site so that people can read what you've been up to! or don't, it's your choice!

clear filters for NSFW content. the filters do what they must to inform your audience as intended, outside of that, your comic will not be taken down, flagged, or suppressed in search results just because it contains violence or boobies.

they are strictly anti-AI

they do not make licensing deals with third-party companies, so the only 'competition' you have are other indie creators like you, no Marvel or DC nonsense

you're free to embed ads and/or donation buttons on your site and CF will not take off a single cent of it for themselves.

the front page goes to Recently Updated by default, all the other tabs are simply Popular Now and Popular Overall. there's also a Random button if you want to be surprised with something new. while this might seem like a bad thing for people who prefer custom filtering, this unbiased layout prevents the common visibility issues / favoritism / etc. that happen on other platforms.

but if you DO want to find something new that fits your specific tastes? just use their search bar, unlike on Webtoons it actually does what search bars are supposed to do! within the search page you can pick and choose whatever genre tags you want, and you can filter out major NSFW flags you're not comfortable with seeing.

ACTIVITY STATUS!

Pretty simple and yet something a lot of the platforms struggle to get right. You can set a series to Active, On Hiatus, Completed, or Discontinued. No more putting comics on hiatuses you don't plan to return from and hoping your audience gets the message, you can just flat out tell them it's done.

NATIVE IMAGE STORAGE!

Meaning you can store images and assign them unique image links that can remain ENTIRELY SECRET until you choose to display them on your page! (if you ever do) This is especially helpful for sharing images in the forums which utilize markdown / BBCode , so when you find out Imgur is banned in the UK for some reason, you can still share the image natively through ComicFury itself without taking up excess storage by re-uploading the image every single time-

I mentioned this in another reblog already buuutttt-

BATCH UPLOADING AND SCHEDULING!

Are you currently sharing pages to other platforms and the thought of having to re-upload all of them to a mirror like ComicFury sounds too exhausting? Or are you just super responsible and on top of your shit and always have a buffer of pages ahead of what you're currently working on? Fear not, because ComicFury has you in their thoughts and made this tool just for you!

If you're a normal person who uploads one page per update (unlike yours truly who prefers dumping multiple pages on people at a time in a single upload oop-) this tool enables you to batch upload multiple pages at a time and then edit the metadata and release schedule for each page individually, all within the same space! No jumping back and forth between each and every page to adjust everything, it's all right here!

RSS FEEDS!

This might be a bit 'old-school' for some people's tastes, but RSS Feeds are how we did it before apps and Twitter timelines.

First, find yourself an RSS reader. Feedread Online is my current go-to, but there are loads of free options out there (and if you're tech-savvy enough, you can also build your own feed from scratch, which gives you a lot more control and ownership without relying on a third-party site)

Then, find a comic you want to add to your feed, go to their website, and scroll to the bottom (sometimes it's along the top as well) and you'll find a button called 'RSS'. Click it! (and if it's not there, you can access it simply by adding /rss to the end of the main site URL)

You're gonna get something that looks scary as fuck, but it's okay! You don't need ANY of this! All you need is the RSS URL (again, the main site + /rss at the end) which you'll then plug into your feed reader of choice, and bam! You now have an all-access pass to every new update! Pin your feed reader to your browser tab and you're all set!

And just a bit of a history lesson for some of the younger folks out there btw - this is not a ComicFury exclusive feature. It's pure Internet design. If a website exists, it can be put into an RSS feed. You can do it with the Webtoons browser too. Your subscription list is now no longer bound to any single app. You are now in full control of what is shown to you. You are free.

AUTHOR PRIVILEGES!

You can change your Author profile. Use whatever pseudonyms you want, it won't be tied back to your original username unless you leave it blank. You can even hide yourself as an author.

You can invite other authors as credited collaborators on a single work and even edit the permissions of those authors.

YOU CAN STRAIGHT UP DEMOTE YOURSELF AS THE COMIC OWNER AND PASS THE OWNER TITLE ONTO SOMEONE ELSE.

I don't think I have to explain how beneficial this is, but this ensures that an author (or authors) have full control over how much privacy they enable between themselves and their audience, and can simply archive a work or pass it onto someone else if they no longer want to be affiliated with that work, without actually having to remove it from the Internet entirely.

CUSTOM PAGES!

Remember when I said this site gives you free access to HTML/CSS? I meant that. While the site does benefit you by giving you a built-in comic archiving feature (allowing you to have Next/Back buttons, page archives, etc.) you can also go totally nuts and just build additional pages from scratch. Maybe you want a cast page, maybe you want a merch page, maybe you just want menu bar links to your social media accounts - if it's something you can make with HTML/CSS, you can make it here.

And they don't even have to be included in your site's menu! You can hide them from the navigation bar so that you can put the link wherever you see fit, whether it be in another button placed somewhere separately on the site, or nested in a comic image, or shared somewhere entirely off-site, whatever butters your muffin!

That's all I can remember for now but I'm sure there are even more little secrets to this site that I'm either forgetting or didn't realize existed. I've been using this site as a casual mirror for a decade now, and reading comics on it for even longer than that. As I've grown exhausted with bigger platforms like Webtoons and Tapas, I'm moving more towards ComicFury for my future projects, and I hope this post encourages others to do the same! (I've already been seeing so many amazing reblog comments and tags from folks saying this is motivating them to get their webcomic started, I'm so happy to hear that <3)

It's genuinely one of the last safe havens for webcomics, and the craziest part is that this used to be normal. Platforms like these used to be in abundance back in the early-mid 2000's, because what they offered was what webcomics were all about - user control, custom coding, community connection, and having fun.

But along the way they were dropped in favor of the shiny corporate platforms. And there's no shame or surprise there, I took the same bait back then because those platforms did have huge benefits to them - larger audiences, simpler tools, a more modern look, built-in monetization options - but it came at the cost of our freedom, especially as those corporate platforms squeezed us for our data and money and time and investment as the years went on and their platforms declined while our own frustration and helplessness grew.

People now reminisce on spaces like MySpace and 2007 DeviantArt, wishing they could have that again - and meanwhile, companies and entrepreneurs have started jumping at the chance to fill that niche - but those spaces never left, we just let corporate modern platforms like Webtoons convince us they were outdated and worthless and thus we convinced ourselves that they were gone.

We don't need to reinvent the wheel, we just need to dig through all the clutter and find the perfectly good wheels that have just been sitting in storage waiting to be used again.

To the Person Who Asked If I Was OK

I am now totally the new showrunner of Doctor Who. (All the other candidates mysteriously disappeared, don’t worry about it). As such, I’d like to announce some new, very good, changes I’m making to the show.

Firstly, of course, I’m bringing the best character, the Master, back from being a tooth.

Jo Jones will be returning as the new companion. (Disabled older companion! Yay!)

The Master will also be in every episode.

Lots of new recurring aliens, now allies of the TARDIS crew.

The Doctor Who will get tortured a lot

Also he’s getting credited as “Doctor Who”, as intended.

I’m changing the theme song. To something cooler.

I’m bringing Gallifrey back, but having it destroyed at the end of every episode, in increasingly ridiculous way.

The Rani shows up again, but he’s a guy and gets kneed in the nuts by the Master.

The Doctor’s dressed awfully, as they should. No more conventionally attractive outfits for Doctor Who.

And no more of that hideous blue lemon. The TARDIS is now a sleek, sexy, vaguely penis shaped time

The Show’s now called Master Who.

It’s my show now.

Bottled Up | Chapter 1 : Alive Again | Pages 23-28 + END