Webcomic is another popular WordPress plugin for creating and managing web comics. After downloading, installing, and activating the Webcomic plugin you will see a new admin menu item named “Webcomic” appear. In Ryuzine Press it doesn’t matter if you are using a Webcomic-compatible theme or if you have ticked the “Integrate” option in the Webcomic Settings. Remember that Ryuzine Press exists alongside of and independently of any WordPress theme you are using.
Assigning Comics to Editions
Once your comic posts are in place assigning them to a Ryuzine Press Edition is as simple as categorizing any regular blog posts – in fact you can mix them in the same edition. Create your Ryuzine Press Edition and assign it to an existing Ryuzine Issue (or create an Issue specifically for this Edition). Then simply go to Webcomic > Webcomics and find the comics you want to assign in the list. Using the “Edit” link open the comic post and look for the “Ryuzine Issues” list on the right. If it isn’t there you may need to go to “Screen Options” at the top and enable it. Once you’ve got it, tick the box for the Issue corresponding with the Ryuzine Press Edition. Note that doing this may unlink the comic image from the post. If that happens use the “Webcomic” sub-section (below the main post box) to re-link the correct image to the post.
Do the same for all the comics and/or blog posts you want to assign to the edition, remembering they will be displayed oldest to newest. This is usually the preferable order since most people using Webcomic to post ongoing stories will have posts in that chronological order, and the WordPress archive pages usually show them newest to oldest, but in “comic reading order” they need to be oldest to newest.
Note that this all works much better if you are posting comic PAGES rather than comic STRIPS. If your work is in strip format you may want to consider creating images with multiple strips and posting them as “pages” or there may be a lot of white space below a relatively small bit of artwork.
If you are switching from either ComicPress or Easel to Webcomic as your platform Ryuzine Press Editions can simultaneously display mixed posts from Webcomic and either ComicPress or Easel.
Covers & Pages
If you want to use the oldest post assigned to an Edition as the cover you will need to configure “Cover Source” under Ryuzine Press > Options > Covers. Realize that this is a global setting affecting ALL your Ryuzine Press Editions.
Under the “Pages” tab you can also decide whether or not to show or hide bylines and dates, meta data, and/or comments. There is also an option specific to comic posts that will suppress any related post text. Use this option if you want a cleaner appearance more like reading a real comic book.
You can also add Issue-Specific styling to the Ryuzine Press Edition (in the last custom box) to hide all the headers, leaving just an empty top margin, which makes it look even more like a real comic book.
If you are not using the oldest post for the cover you can use the auto-generated covers. You may find these are more flexible in that you can have a single image to overlay on all covers as a masthead and use CSS and media queries to place “full-bleed” cover artwork, and you can tag back-up stories or non-comic content with your “featured” category as well and have them automatically turned into clickable links on the cover.