Introducing... Webcomix!

I'm seldom as excited to announce a new development for RCD as I am today. After the better part of a year on the backburner, I'm finally able to complete a long overdue project -- as well as announce a new product.

This story starts almost eight years ago, when I agreed to help an old friend with hosting a website. Natural Habitat Comic is the brainchild of writer Tristan MacAvery. Originally built on WordPress, it chronicles the lives of a household of… well, furries. Not people who dress up as anthropomorphic animals but the real deal, as beautifully illustrated in an anime-styled web comic that has been in production since 2018.

A few years ago, I noticed a potential problem with my friend's website. The WordPress plugin that effectively makes everything work, Comic Easel, was no longer supported by the developer. To be clear, even though Comic Easel continues to function, this is not an 'if' proposition but a 'when'. Eventually, a core WordPress upgrade is going to cause problems with Comic Easel, leaving anyone using it essentially on their own.

I looked into the prospect of moving the site to another plugin, even consider writing a custom WordPress plugin. Eventually, I convinced my old friend to work with me on a more radical solution.

We moved the whole damn thing to Concrete CMS.

My advice on this was based on a few considerations, starting with my lack of confidence in WordPress platform governance. I know that arguing against WordPress for site hosting is like arguing against Windows as a desktop OS (insert rant here), but it's a hill I'm somewhat willing to die on, or at least base a consultancy on (basically, the same thing).

When this project started, I had been doing custom block template coding on Concrete for a couple of months. I'd determined that I could pretty much anything I could expect to do in a WordPress Plugin, just with less code and less dependency on other people's crap (or at least fewer people). And that's what the tech stack for the new and improved 'Natural Habitat Comic' is based on.

The project went on hold when I wound up being hired as the implementation manager for UW Medicine's new intranet, but that project went live with flying colors a month ago. Now that I'm back on the bench... it's time to wrap this thing up.

After a few minor hiccups, the Concrete-based version of Natural Habitat Comic soft-launched last night. See if you can spot the 'before and after' differences:

The differences are intentionally slight in a desktop browser, most consisting of better branding and more modern design. On a mobile device, the differences are considerably more obvious. The old site was not responsive design. The new site is. The differences on the backend are even more striking, but that's a topic for another time.

Between improved user experience, improved management tools, and a more robust web platform, I believe I have the basis for a marketable product.  The product website is up, even though I'm still fine-tuning the product. I'll have more updates on that soon. For now, I'm just happy to announce this long overdue site launch.

cheers!

--MM