Metrophix- Comic Hosting Software

Namingway's picture

My brother and I collaborate on a webcomic called Metrophor that's been up for a couple of months now. Now, rather than hosting it on one of the collectives we decided to get our own domain. However, this meant we were at a loss as far as webcomic software. So he designed his own.

May I present Metrophix- http://metrophor.org/metrophix It's open source software for managing webcomics- updates, news posts, the whole shabang. The site ought to have all the features.

However, it's currently in beta. If there is anyone out there who would like to try it, please let us know what you think so we can adjust it. This includes both bugs as well as features that you'd like to see.

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Metrophor, a webcomic of dystopian fantasy- http://metrophor.org

 

Namingway's picture

An update on the PHP 5.0

An update on the PHP 5.0 question. There have been some compatibility issues. We're working on a solution here-

http://metrophor.org/phorum/viewtopic.php?t=76&postdays=0&postorder=asc&...

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Metrophor, a webcomic of dystopian fantasy- http://metrophor.org

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Metrophor, a webcomic of dystopian fantasy- http://metrophor.org

Namingway's picture

Yup!

While not 100% sure, it is entirely likely. We currently use it for Metrophor, and we're running PHP 4.4.4

Quothe my partner in rhyme, who designed it:

"Offhand, I can't think of anything that would make it incompatible with PHP 5.0--although they do have to have some of the image libraries installed for some of the comic rendering stuff. I designed it with an eye towards 5.0, so it should be functional."

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Metrophor, a webcomic of dystopian fantasy- http://metrophor.org

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Metrophor, a webcomic of dystopian fantasy- http://metrophor.org

xerexes's picture

Good Feature Set

  • Scheduled updating, allowing you to upload comics before an absence which will be released at predefined times.
  • Several instances may be installed simultaneously, allowing for multiple simultaneous comics.
  • Comics may be divided into individual panels
  • Comics can be titled and separated into individual chapters
  • Several comics can be shown per day
  • Comics may be read by comic, day, week, or month at a time
  • News posts for any number of authors/administrators
  • Support for rich media: primarily Flash, but also MPEG Audio/Video, MP4 Audio/Video, Quicktime, AVI, 3GPP (serial cell phone webcomics!), Java and Javascript, and VRML. If you can find a use for any of those beyond Flash, more power to you.
  • Comic image locations are hidden, preventing people from guessing what the next comic's filename is and "peeking" ahead if comics are uploaded in advance. Depending on your web server configuration, comic images may not even be in a web-accessible directory!
  • A variety of actions can be taken for those loading the comic image directly or from an off-site script: either nothing can be done, the comic will be denied, a placeholder comic can be shown instead, or the comic can be sent with an ad attached to the image.
  • Searchable metadata can be assigned to each comic (or panel), including description, dialogue, characters, and location.
  • Customizable, automatically-generated feeds for RSS 2.0, Atom 1.0, and Google Sitemaps.
  • Full handling of advertisements with limited, non-privacy-invading tracking of views and clicks
  • Appearance can be highly customized with CSS
  • Additional CSS files sent depending on client browser (so extra stylesheets can fix IE's broken rendering or Firefox's foibles)
  • Multiple CSS profiles can be enabled, allowing visitors to choose which "skin" to view the site in.
  • Customizable page caching for faster response times
  • Just for the heck of it, WAP support is included for mobile phones. It looks uglier than anything imaginable by the human mind, but it's there.
    Some of the features planned for Metrophix are:
  • Multiple language support--publish web sites and comics in several different languages simultaneously
  • Unnecessary to have a MySQL database--uses only a flat file structure (some features won't work, however)
  • Automatic metadata parsing from ComicsML files or entries
  • Conversely, automatic ComicsML generation from metadata
  • Access stats
  • Integrated Java-based storyboarding tool (based on ComicsML) for brainstorming and collaboration between several author-artists.
  • Automatic referral to the Nobel Prize committee
  • Translation of comics into ASCIIlicious renderings for people browsing with Lynx.
This looks good in terms of the feature set. I might have time to kick the tires on it in the next couple of weeks. I'll let you know if I do. Btw - is it compatible with PHP 5.0?

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Xaviar Xerexes

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Gnaw.

Xaviar Xerexes Oh yeah... this place is called ComixTalk now.