Now, more than ever, it’s easy to see what a subscription to Webcomics.com will get you.

Every Friday, you can read the entire Archive Dive post without a subscription. This is a post from the site’s archive that I pull out front again because it still has relevant information you can use today. This is especially nice for newer subscribers (or anyone else) who may have missed it when it originally ran.

Plus, at the beginning of every month, I do a wrap-up that highlights some of the best posts — from the site as well as the private forum — from the preceding month.

If you’re curious about joining, we’ve made it easier than ever with a $5 trial membership. You’ll get full access to the site for thirty days so you can see what you’ve been missing. At the end of the trial, you can choose to re-subscribe ($30 for 12 months of access) or walk away with no strings attached. You will not be re-billed unless you choose to subscribe.

Please note: The links below will lead you to content that is “subscription-only” content. Why do I do this? Simple. If you see something that intrigues you and decide to subscribe, you can come back here and use this post to jump right to the post that caught your attention. And once you do that, use the other Best Of posts to drill even deeper into the site!

Best of the site

Exclusive Member Benefit: Get the first year of iDrive at $14.88 — including 1 TB of back-up space. After the first year, an annual subscription to iDrive is still less expensive than the comparable plan at Dropbox.

Philly-area workshops announced: I’ll be doing two 3-day workshops in the Philadelphia area — one on running a business as a creative professional and the other on creating comics and sequential art. Members get the skinny on how to sign up to receive a free copy of The Webcomics Handbook when they register.

Humor writing — one step at a time: I did a writing exercise with my Sequential Arts class at Hussian School of Art that opened my eyes to an interesting strategy for improving humor writing.

Google Sitemap Generator: Use this simple tip to improve your site’s SEO.

Manga Studio — The Photoshop ex-pat’s guide: If you’re like me, you learned Photoshop long before you attempted Manga Studio. This guide is to help you make that transition more smoothly.

Character Design Hot Seat: This month’s critique opportunity was focused on character design. Members were able to get helpful feedback on this aspect of their cartooning.

Idiom management: Using idioms correctly is a big step in polishing your writing. If you’re chomping at the bit, you’re doing it wrong.

Dropbox to Instagram: Instagram has some of the strongest participation numbers in social media. But getting an image to display on the app isn’t always easy. Use this snappy trick to upload your images from Dropbox.

Comics-only RSS feed: This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to offer a special RSS feed to your readers that excludes everything but the comic.

Jetpack adds protection against brute force attacks: Here’s how to implement it.

FTP tutorial: If you’ve ever been daunted by accessing your Web site via FTP, this handy primer will get you going in no time.

Sherpa Safari: In an ongoing discussion of online-comics-service Comic Sherpa, member Jules Faulkner looks at some of the alternatives.

10 ways to use Facebook smarter: You use it every day, but are you accessing its full potential to promote your comic?

Instagram for Dummies: Here’s a quick guide to using the app to promote your comic.

Best of the Private Forum

Cintiq 13 HD price drop

Wizard World Pittsburgh: Who’s going / who wants to meet up?

Ads that open App Store, Google Play on mobile devices: Have you noticed this? Is there a way to stop it?

Image prep questions

Layered TIFF problems

How useful are Facebook Pages? Are they the promotional powerhouses many of us assume them to be?

Letterer won’t share original files: “I hired a letterer to letter a … short comic story I wrote. He lettered it and provided a layered “print ready” PDF and high-resolution tiffs.

When I asked for the indesign files and illustrator files he said he would not provide it. … what do people here think about this practice in general?”

How do I fire a colorist? She’s not meeting her deadlines, and he needs to let her go. But how?

Pricing illustrations for a book proposal: “A writer … asked me to do illustrations for a book she’s putting together. … She’s still putting together a proposal, though, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to approach negotiation at this stage. I assume I charge her for each illustration before the submission to the publisher, and then the publisher pays me for illustrations if the book is picked up?”

Patreon help: “I’m in the process of setting up a Patreon site for [my comic]. One of my thoughts for a reward would be access to the old [2,100-strip] archives [which aren’t available online elsewhere], but I can’t figure out a good way to do this, readability-wise. One thought would be setting up a separate WordPress site with just the old strips on it that could only be accessed by Patrons. Not sure how I’d restrict access, however.”

Advice on prints: “I was just invited to attend my local comic shops Free Comic Book Day event. This is the first time I will actually be behind on that side of the table so I was looking to get some promotional items for my webcomic like prints made up. My main question is does anyone have advice on which printing services are generally used by artists for prints and if you have any advice for a first timer I would really appreciate it.”