Because there's more space here...

In answer to yesterday's comments:

Evanesce In 2008 said...

You can cheat... you could always use MS Office and save in HTML format.

Note: That's not a clean solution, and purists would shoot me if they knew who I was. But the point's there.

Well, my problem is that static HTML just won't cut it. I need some sort of template that would allow me to upload a strip, write a newspost if I want to, then publish. I have no idea how to do that. For example, the only way I know how to implement a simple 'Previous strip' or 'next strip' button is to upload the button images on every single post and manually link them to the day before's....and then go back when I've done the next strip to link to that.

Also, I've got absolutely no idea how to create a webpage in MS Office and then get it to play nice with Blogger.

I also really want to minimize the actual amount of work it takes to update. If I'm doing a daily strip, I can't spend two or three hours drawing the thing, another hour scanning, cleaning and converting...and then spend another hour creating each new post page from scratch...and with my level of experience that's what I'd have to do.

Thanks for the suggestion though. It might actually be worth me messing around with a WYSIWYG webpage editor just so I can see what the generated HTML looks like.

Kato said...Hacking the Blogger template was, I think, considerably easier in the "old" days before they went to their new widget-based template. Basically, they made it easier for most people to do some limited customization (by having a drag-and-drop layout editor) but made the learning curve for hacking the source much harder because of all the code involved in getting the widgets to work.

They made the right choice, that's just how it goes I guess. Plus the service is free so I can't complain too much.

Not to scare you, but I spent a couple months designing my current template. Of course, to be fair, that included not just the time to figure out their new template stuff but also to thoughtfully design an entire site. I was originally planning to blog what I had learned but didn't think to do it as I was actually learning it, so it never got done. Go figure.

Oh, and my blog link in this post doesn't work. Not that I'm vain enough to check. ;)

First of all, I fixed your link! I'm actually calling shenanigans on that one though. I saved the link properly, then blogger added 'www.blogger.com' in front of your URL when it saved...as usual I have no idea why.

Secondly, I knew how long it took you to design your template (I remember your occasional posts on the subject during your 'upgrade')...and that's exactly why I made it clear I wasn't trying to guilt anyone for help. If I actually had some money and could afford the industry rates I would have considered asking...but since I don't and I can't...I won't

The one thing I do want to try is the comicpress template for wordpress, which a lot of professional webcartoonists use. During my research I found there's a lot of webhosting providers who actually have it set up so you can install Wordpress and then Comicpress on your server with just a couple mouse clicks. One hosting provider I looked at looked pretty promising, they had a ton of useful apps/plugins like forums, storefronts etc that you can install on your server from your login page.

Once Comicpress is set up, actually running the site is about as difficult as blogger. You just upload your strips with a dated filename and it'll publish them on the date specified, automatically adds it to your archive and writing a news post is about as hard as writing a blog post.

Again, the problem is that this is a very 'bare bones' template, the idea being you customize it yourself with your own graphics and layout, which I also don't know how to do.

Anyway, for the time being, I think I've found an existing blogger template that will suffice with a few simple 'paulius level' edits. It's pretty basic and ugly...but I think it'll do in the short term. All I really need to do is work out how to automate those damn 'first, previous, next, latest' buttons.