ComicPost

A simple webcomic plugin with content restriction options to prevent AI scraping.

Version: 0.1

Requires WordPress Version: 3.5 or higher, PHP 5+

Compatible up to: 6.7.1

Beta Version Disclaimer

This plugin is still being tested. It seems pretty solid, but use it at your own risk.

Description

ComicPost is a relatively lightweight and simple webcomics plugin that should work with pretty much any theme that displays Featured Images with posts. This also may be the first WordPress webcomics plugin to specifically address the issue of Artificial Intelligence image scrapers stealing and training on comic artwork without permission or compensation. To combat that there are a number of Content Restriction options and a built-in automatic Watermarking feature.

This plugin is intended as an easy (but not drop-in) replacement for ComicPress/Comic Easel because it uses the same default custom post-type and chapter taxonomy, so any existing comics will automatically show up in it and work with it without having to migrate/import anything. But a prior installation of either ComicPress or Comic Easel are not necessary.

Installation

Using Admin Upload

1. Download the GitHub archive as a ZIP file.
2. Go to your Dashboard > Plugins > Add New and press the "Upload Plugin" at the top of the page.
3. Browse to where you downloaded the ZIP file and select it.
4. Press the "Install Now" button.
5. On your Dashboard > Plugins page activate "ComicPost"
6. Go to Dashboard > Comics > Options and configure it.

Using FTP

2. Unzip it so you have a "comicpost-master" folder
3. FTP upload it into your WordPress blog’s ~/wp-content/plugins/ folder.
4. Go to your Dashboard > Plugins and activate “ComicPost”
5. Go to Dashboard > Comics > Options to configure it.

Options

General Settings

Comic Navigation: This option determines how the "Previous" and "Next" buttons work in the comic navigation.

• Within Chapters - goes to the previous/next comic within the current chapter (chapter-only navigation). If you use this you should provide some way for readers to navigate to other chapters.

• Traverse Chapters - will go to the previous/next comic in the current chapter until it reaches either the start or end of the chapter, then it will jump to the next comic (by date, relative to the current comic) in an adjacent chapter.

• Ignore Chapters - will go to the previous/next post relative to the date of the current comic, ignoring the chapters (date-only navigation).

Navigation Location The comic navigation can be placed either Above or Below the comic image.

Navigation Style Ideally you should be styling the navigation links/buttons in your site's THEME. But if you were using ComicPress/Comic Easel before and the pre-styled navigation the are reproduced here to ease transitioning your site to ComicPost.

Keyboard Navigation: Tick this box if you would like to enable navigating your comics using keys on your keyboard. For reference they are: ← = Previous → = Next ↑ = First in Chapter ("Page-Up" also) ↓ = Last in Chapter ("Page-Down" also) "Home" = Oldest Comic "End" = Newest Comic

Comic Size: Normally the comic image will be whatever size your theme uses for displaying Featured Images. You can override that here regarding which image WordPress uses, but be aware the theme may still limit or alter the actual display size.

Archive Thumbnail Links: In many themes entries in the archives use only the post title as the link to the full post. Tick this checkbox if you want the comic thumbnail image to also be a link to the full comic post.

Archive Post Count Enter the number of comic posts you would like to appear in the comic archives per page. This overrides the maximum post count under Settings > Reading in the main menu, but only for comic and chapter archives.

Chapter Archive Views

• Theme/None - uses whatever appearance is set in your site theme.
• Vertical View - single column of just comic images.
• Multiple Views - adds buttons allowing the reader to switch between four different views. Note: This requires your theme to actually show Featured Images on archive pages, it will NOT work with every theme, and may require additional tweaks to your theme stylesheet. You may need to enable "Archive Thumbnail Links" to allow navigating to comic posts.

Watermarking

Watermarking your comic images is one of the most effective ways to protect them because information about the provenance and ownership of the image travels with it whereever it may end up. Your unique watermark placed consistently on your images will make it obvious an AI was trained on your images when it reproduces a garbled version of the watermark as well. It is highly recommended you watermark your comic images.

Watermark Comics You can enable/disable automatic watermarking on upload. If you enable it you can choose between Tile and Center for how the watermark image is overlaid on your comic.

Watermark Tile Size If you chose Tile this is where you set the Tile Size in pixels. The number represents both the height and width as tiles must be square.

Watermark Image Source Choose whether to use a Generated or Custom image for your watermark.

Choose Custom Watermark If you chose Custom for the source this is where you point ComicPost to the image you want to use. It should be a square PNG image, preferably black and white, with a transparent background. If it is not square it will be scaled to fit before it is applied.

CREATE WATERMARK FILE This button will create a NEW watermark image based on the "Image Source" setting. It will either use your "Custom Image" or it will use the "Generated Watermark" settings. It will replace any existing watermark.png image.

DELETE WATERMARK FILE This button will delete any existing watermark.png image file.

Watermark Opacity Set the opacity of the watermark between 10% and 100%. Depending on the image being used some setting may be too faint. You may have to play with this generating images with different settings until you find the right opacity.

Watermark Preview

Generated Watermark Settings

Watermark Image Size The watermark image size in pixels, this is for both the height and width as the watermark image needs to be square.

Watermark Text The text to place on the generated watermark image. This defaults to the name of your blog but can be anything. While the text size is adjusted to make whatever you enter fit, if your text is too long the font will be too small to be legible, so keep it brief.

Watermark Font Here you select the typeface for the lettering on your watermark. Your options are:

• Black-Ops
• Cascadia-Code
• Liberation Sans
• Sarina
• Tiza
• Unitblock

Text Orientation Whether you want the text to run Horizontal or Diagonal across the watermark image. Diagonal is recommended because it will cover more of your image and should be obvious it is not part of the image.

Keep Clean Copy If you enable this ComicPost will try to create a "Clean" (not watermarked) copy of your comic image on the server alongside the automatically watermarked version. This copy will NOT:

• have the watermark on it
• have any thumbnails automatically created for it
• appear in your Media Library
• have any links to it on your website
• use "lazy loading"
• use "source sets"

It is intended to be difficult for any automated system to find and only to be shown to registered, logged-in users of your website. It is strongly recommended that you do NOT enable this feature! It pretty much defeats the purpose of all the other methods of protecting your comic artwork.

Clean Copy Suffix If you enable "Keep Clean Copy" the file name of that copy will be appended with whatever unique suffix you enter in the text box. This is to make it impossible for any automated system to guess what the file name might actually be. This, of course, assumes that directory browsing is disabled on your server so bots cannot simply crawl through and find your files. NOTE: If you change this suffix later, any existing clean copies will no longer be able to be found by ComicPost. If you ever need to delete the clean copies from your server you will have to do so via FTP or with your webhost's file manager. WordPress will have no means of managing these files or even know they exist.

Show Clean Copies This is the option that will actually show the clean copies to your readers, but only if they are logged into your website.