Mission Accomplished!

Webdisaster has now been converted to WordPress. I’ve had a lot of requests lately for features to be added to webdisaster, like a comments system, RSS feeds, and the like. While I could have coded all of that myself, I thought it would be easier and more flexible in the long run to use WordPress and just customize it to look like the old webdisaster. That turned out to be a larger project than I thought, but it’s finally done.

I think it turned out pretty well too. There are probably still some kinks left to work out, but the main homepage will show you the latest text and artwork regardless of what category they are posted in, which is nice because it used to be that if I posted some artwork that wasn’t a main comic, a lot of people missed it. And in order to combat that, I tried to add a news feed to the old site, but if I made the text too long it would push the comic down the page. It was just getting ugly, and I think the new design presents it rather well.

In addition, the RSS feeds and comments are now active, and the category views are a lot nicer, in my opinion, with thumbnails and titles. And since it’s WordPress, I can add widgets very easily, like Facebook, Digg, and StubleUpon icons, rating systems, and search functionality. I plan on playing with these as time goes on. Feel free to leave comments if there’s something specific you’d like to see.

Oh, and I almost forgot! CONTENT! What good is a redesign without content? As you may have noticed, I’ve been hitting a bit of a slump lately in the strip category. Since the new format allows me greater flexibility in the types of things I can post, expect to see a lot more variety in the things that are on the front page. For starters, in the next couple of days I will start a ’15 minute sketch-a-day’ project, in which I will do a 15 minute sketch every day for a year and post it here. I’m following the lead of my friend and co-worker Andy Erickson, who just started his 365 Days of the Art of Andy blog. In addition, I’ve got a few ideas for strips I’ve been tossing around, so keep your eyes peeled.

Okay, that’s it for now.