Ok so this isn’t something terribly exciting but sometimes people like to know what CMS (content management system) a website uses or what plugins.  I’ve built the odd website in my time, but up until now I’ve used Joomla as the CMS (sort of like the skeleton of a website).  There’s another popular CMS called WordPress which I wasn’t as familiar with.

So there’s the easy, familiar Joomla road, or the “there be dragons!” unknown of WordPress.  I went for WordPress!  I bought a template from Template Monster to get a bit of a head-start with their Power Builder plugin and then I modified the code heaps.  There’s still a few customizations to iron out. No wait, that sounds too gentle -smash into shape!  I’ve bought lots of Joomla templates from Template Monster in the past and the customer support has been excellent and the templates some of the best I can find.  So there you go.

I knew I wanted the latest comic to show on the home page so that was fairly easily achieved with a Slider plugin.  The biggest time sink has been how to show the comics in a group.  I tried lots of gallery plugins but they didn’t meet my wish-list for social share buttons unless I paid beyond my budget so I’ve set up each comic as a “post” for now.  I also wanted to somehow include a bit of rambling text with each comic and where sensible show the drawings that didn’t make the cut for thew final comic or were dropped for a different expression (it happens). I hope to eventually purchase the fancy gallery plugin that has social sharing buttons that float over the image.

I’m using a popular free WordPress plugin called Photo Gallery for the random image section.  I’m really liking this plugin. It has a lot of features and so far is proving stable.

Ooh! I want to make a custom 404 page for broken links too!