Hey, Forkers!

I've got a lot of things to talk about, but first I'd like to apologize for the late comic (not that I have a schedule, but it's even later than usual). Redesigning the comic's site took up some of my valuable comic-making time, but hopefully now that everything is up and running there won't be a gap that huge again for awhile.

Why did I redesign the website, you ask? Well the old site was set up to take advantage of the features that Comic Genesis had to offer. In switching to a new host, I went ahead and built a whole new site from scratch. Yes, that's right, I've switched hosts. TaComF is now hosted by the wonderful folks over at Comic Dish. The timing was perfect, because I had been meaning to redesign the site anyway, and re-teaching myself CSS was pretty fun.

The new site is best viewed in any browser that is not Internet Explorer 6. The galleries such as the fanart gallery and the bonus art gallery use a script called Lytebox to work properly, and it seems that any page with Lytebox installed on it causes the dropdown functions of the menu bar to stop working. Not to mention IE6's issues with .png alpha transparencies, and its countless other issues. That said, even you die-hard Internet Explorer users who for whatever reason refuse to switch to a better browser should have upgraded beyond IE6 by now. Come to think of it, we have IE6 at work. Apparently I work in the dark ages. If you notice any bugs in the site in a browser other than IE6, let me know so I can figure out how to fix them. As usual, my contact information is at the bottom of this news post.

Links to other comics that I read (as well as three or four that I don't read on a regular basis but have sent me guest strips in the past - thanks guys) are at the bottom of the main page, as usual. There's like a million of them, so start reading them now. They're even alphabetical this time. Awesome stuff. I intend to add some new comics that I've recently discovered with the next comic update, and I'm going to put up some fan art and bonus art as well. All the more reason to keep showing up.

Below the links, I've also put in some Project Wonderful ads. For literally pennies, you can get some extra traffic to your site. I admit that my comic doesn't get the most visits in the world, mostly due to my lack of a real update schedule, but every advertising opportunity is nice, right? I, myself, visit the sites being advertised when I notice a new ad down there, and I've discovered a couple of pretty cool comics in that way. Ah, the joys of networking. I intend to do a several-day Project Wonderful ad campaign every time I update with a new comic, and my visits increase quite a bit during those times, so if you want to know when the best time to place a bid is to get maximum exposure, it would be after TaComF has updated.

Feel free to take a look around the site and check out everything else that's changed as well. You may be wondering why I decided to switch hosts in the first place. I don't have any problems with Comic Genesis, like many others do. I would still definitely recommend them to any newbie webcomic-person. To make a long story short, I simply felt like it was time for a change. I know that sounds dumb, but that's pretty much it. I must say, though, not having to place mandatory ads or taglines on my site is pretty nice, too. No, Comic Genesis was never perfect, and that's not to say that Comic Dish is either, but I'm here now, and I'm sure I'll enjoy my stay. All-in-all, I don't think I could have gone wrong with either choice. Maybe I'll go over the pros and cons of both systems from my point of view some day, but I'll save that for another news post. All I'll say, is that so far, I'm quite liking Comic Dish. (I can't speak for Drunk Duck or Smack Jeeves, having never used them, but while I'm talking about webcomic hosts, I might as well mention them as well, for any new authors looking for options.)

On the subject of new things, I was going to mention all the different things I did with today's page style-wise, but there are too many to count, so I'll just let the page speak for itself.

I had more to talk about today, but it has nothing to do with the new site or anything like that, and this news post has already gone on longer than I intended, so I'll save it for next time. Keep in mind that "next time" won't take as long as this time. Remember that you can get a rough estimate of when "next time" will be by following me on Twitter. Or, if you're one of those RSS people, the link to the feed is up on the right-hand side of the menu bar.

-Jason "All New!" Torchia