Optipess

I have returned! I had to take a brief unintended break from making comics as this site thoroughly crashed last week – you might even have noticed! I’m not entirely sure what happened, it might’ve been a server issue, but in the process of attempting to fix things I tried clicking on every ‘install update’ button I could see when I finally could get access to my WordPress dashboard. This of course broke a lot of other things so in the end the only remedy would be a complete restart from scratch.

Luckily this was something I should’ve done ages ago anyway! I have to admit I going by the old proverb of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, and I neglected updating my WordPress install in fear of breaking things. The ages old ComicPress theme I was running wasn’t even supported anymore so now I’ve migrated to the newer Comic Easel plugin. Basically the site looks almost identical, but a lot of the things on the back-end are different. (Any old hyperlinks you’ve had to a specific comic won’t work, for example.) Changing the layout is also now much easier, so I might tinker some more with that as well.

A huge thanks goes to ComicPress/Comic Easel guru Philip (Frumph) for helping me out with the migration! (He’s also on Patreon! Throw him some bucks if you’ve ever used/is using his ComicPress/Comic Easel products. He’s been truly amazing for the webcomic community over the years.)

Anyway, feel free to browse around. There might still be some bugs or missing images, but the most important things like comics and all the user comments are all preserved.

Please let me know if you spot any oddities! Or, now that I can even install a plugin made after 2014, you can also throw some feature requests my way! One thing I was investigating a while back was a WordPress Patreon plugin, and the possibility of for example removing ads on the website for readers who support me on Patreon. This didn’t work when I looked into it earlier, but it should be possible to pull off now. I’ll look into it! Also, is an email newsletter with new comics a thing people want? I would think there should be a quick RSS to email plugin for that.

PS: Oh, one other thing that should work again FINALLY, is the comic image being in the RSS feed! Can anyone confirm or deny this? It appears fine when testing on my end. It only took me 4 years to fix! (Assuming it actually works…)

Edit January 24: Oof, I’m sick, so no new comic today. It’s just the common cold (I think), so I’ve been out of commission for a couple days but I hope to be back (again) soon-ish. Oh also, at least a few days off work made it possible for me to finally see The Irishman.

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