• Home
  • Contact
  • FAQs
    • What is Webcomics.com?
    • Member Benefits
    • How To Post an Article or News Item
    • How to Post a Webcomic on the List
    • How to Post a Comic
    • Terms of Service
  • Forums
  • WebComics List
  • Benefits
    • Print Vendors: Get multiple quotes
    • Banner stand: Discount
    • Consultation discount
    • “How To Make Webcomics” book: discount
    • “Webcomics Handbook”: discount
    • ALL benefits
  • My Account
    • Welcome
    • What is Webcomics.com?
    • My Subscription
    • Join us!
  • Account
  • Membership List
Twitter Email RSS

Webcomics.com

How To Make WebComics

WebComic Handbook

‹ Square introduces Instant Deposit Shipping Comics as Media Mail ›

Adding Character tags in Comic Easel

You don’t need a subscription to read today’s post!

This is a re-post from the Webcomics.com archive. If you’ve ever been curious about the kind of information, tutorials and advice that you’ll get as part of your subscription to Webcomics.com, this is a good example.

If you’d like to join the site, you can get a 12-month subscription for $30 — or you can get a one-month Trial for $5 … with no obligation after your 30 days expire.  For less than three bucks a month, you can get a steady flow of information, tutorials and advice targeted towards your webcomic business — plus a private forum to discuss issues with other professionally minded cartoonists.

 

Since switching to Comic Easel, I’ve become a big fan of character tags. Using character tags, I can give readers more information about the characters that appear in a specific update. You can see it in action below.

When the user hovers the cursor over the headshot, they get a brief intro to the character.

And clicking the headshot takes the user to an archive thumbnail page containing all of the tagged appearances of that charater.

Here’s how to set it up in Comic Easel. I’m assuming that the updated version of ComicsPress has a similar functionality.

List your characters

Under the Comics menu (on the left-hand side of your WordPress dashboard), click Comics and then Characters. Here, you can input as many characters as you’d like. Give each character a name, a slug and a short description.

The “slug” that you give the character will be the name of the image file that you upload to display when the character is tagged for a comic update. You don’t need to include the suffix (.jpg, .png, etc). But you do need to follow an all-lowercase / no spaces convention.

Create the headshots

Next, create a headshot for each character. The default size is 150×150 pixels. Give each headshot file a name that coincides with the proper character-tag slug.

You will upload these to your site’s Web server, in the “images” folder.

Do a little CSS

Don’t panic. It’s easy.

In your WP dashboard, click on Appearance and then Editor.

Open your style.css file.

For each character you will add the following code

.character-slug {

background: url('http://evil-inc.com/images/slug.jpg') top center no-repeat;

}

Where I have the word “slug” bolded above, you will enter the slug you created for the character in the first step.

Now it’s a simple matter of noting which characters are present when you upload each new update. You’ll find the proper field near the bottom of the right-hand column of the “Add Comic” interface. Remember, you can click and drag that field to place it higher in the column.

When you’re finished, don’t forget to click Update.

Position the widget

Go to Appearance -> Widgets in your WP dashboard and drag Comic Easel Cast Hover to the appropriate sidebar.

Updating the archive

Updating your archive needn’t be overly stressful. Remember, when you’re looking at your archive in WordPress, there’s a Bulk Actions button. (It’s in the left-hand corner right under the title “Comics”.)

This is a good way to tag multiple updates at once.

  • Click each update in which a character(s) appear.
  • Click Bulk Actions
  • Select Edit
  • Enter the names of the character(s) that appear in your selected upodates

Note that you can select an update that already has character tags listed and add additional names through a bulk action.

So, I’ve been making my way, page by page, through the Evil Inc archive by selecting all of the strips that feature a certain character and adding the names via bulk edit. I try to catch as many as possible through bulk edits. Then, I’ll add any necessary characters in individual entries via Quick Edit.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
by Brad Guigar on September 11, 2015
Posted In: Tech, Web site
Comments available to logged in users only.


Recent comments

  • Shadowmark Productions on Twitter announced paid-content feature “Super Follows”
  • Shadowmark Productions on How to launch a new comic
  • Jaycee Knight on Twitter announced paid-content feature “Super Follows”
  • Jaycee Knight on Line breaks in word balloons
  • Jaycee Knight on Line breaks in word balloons

Search




Webcomics.com Poll

I design my comic specifically for smartphones and digital tablets.

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...
  • Polls Archive

Categories

  • Archive Dive
  • Articles
    • Advertising
    • Art
    • Business
    • Community
    • Conventions
    • Creativity
    • Crowdfunding
    • Digital publishing
    • Image prep
    • Lettering
    • Marketing / Social Media
    • Merchandise
    • Print publishing
    • Tech
    • Web site
      • Web Site Design
    • Writing
  • ComicLab
  • Edited and Ready
  • Events
  • Guest
  • Hot Seat critiques
  • Information
  • Interviews
  • Livestream Chat
  • Mail Bag
  • Member Benefits
  • Promos
  • Site News
  • Studios
  • Surviving Creativity
  • To-Do List
  • Uncategorized
  • Video
  • Webcomics Confidential
  • Webcomics Weekly
  • Webcomics.com Poll

Tags

AdSense advertising Comic Easel comments composition contract copyright creativity exercise credit cards Crowdfunding digital lettering digital publishing Facebook Google Analytics holiday Humor IP KDP Kickstarter Kindle legal lettering line weight Longform comics Manga Studio merchandise NCS panels Patreon Promotion PulsePoint readers revenue SEO shipping social media Square taxes trademark Twitter typography Web design word balloons WordPress writing

Special Features

Just now, in the forum…

  • Patreon: upfront charging or not?
  • Longform webcomics
  • Quantity time vs quality time on social media
  • Writing a Slice of life
  • Can’t Set Up WordPress Site

Recent Posts

  • March To Do List
  • How to launch a new comic
  • Twitter announced paid-content feature “Super Follows”
  • Webcomics Confidential #48: Spamming Your Patreon Backers
  • Line breaks in word balloons

Recent Replies

  • Jaycee Knight on Patreon: upfront charging or not?
  • Brad Guigar on Longform webcomics
  • Brad Guigar on Patreon: upfront charging or not?
  • Shadowmark Productions on Can’t Set Up WordPress Site
  • Brad Guigar on Can’t Set Up WordPress Site

Recent Topics

  • Patreon: upfront charging or not? by Jaycee Knight
  • Longform webcomics by MynameizJR
  • Quantity time vs quality time on social media by MrMcCloud
  • Writing a Slice of life by MrMcCloud
  • Can’t Set Up WordPress Site by edustin78

Recent Comments

  • Shadowmark Productions on Twitter announced paid-content feature “Super Follows”
  • Shadowmark Productions on How to launch a new comic
  • Jaycee Knight on Twitter announced paid-content feature “Super Follows”
  • Jaycee Knight on Line breaks in word balloons
  • Jaycee Knight on Line breaks in word balloons
  • My Subscription
  • Contact
  • Store
  • Terms of Service
  • Account
  • Membership List

©2007-2021 Webcomics.com | Powered by WordPress with ComicPress | Subscribe: RSS | Back to Top ↑