How to Host Webcomics with Wix Master Guide (2024)

There are some very barebones tutorials floating around the internet about how you can use Wix to host a webcomic, but they're sort of outdated and don't follow a very traditional webcomic visual format. Now that we've been using Wix for a year we want to talk about the ups and downs of using this service to host comics as well as how to actually do it.

Not included in the guide is the Cast page, because we aren't confident that our convoluted spaghetti code for that page will translate well into a guide. Sorry, guys!!!

INDEX

1. Ups and Downs

2. Introduction to Webcomics

3. Velo with Wix

4. Dynamic Pages vs. Static Pages

5. Making the Home Page

6. Making the Episode Pages

7. Making the Archive Page

8. Making the About Page

9. Extra Tips

UPS AND DOWNS OF USING WIX TO HOST COMICS

Why Wix over literally anything else? While most comic hosting websites allow for some customization options and flexibility, Wix can offer a far more dynamic reading experience as well as the freedom to set up various payment/stylization opportunities that other websites force you to meet huge numbers of user engagement just to qualify for. Even then, they might not approve you for it.

Upsides of using Wix:

• Customization - Almost to your heart's content, or at least everything you'll need to make the webcomic site thematic and yours.

• Easy to Use - Visually, the website builder is similar to Photoshop. You can drag and drop elements right onto the page, and the UI is pretty simple and sometimes even greatly intuitive. Learning how to use Wix is simple and fast, and you can jump right in only having to do minimal coding to achieve what we do.

• App Integration - Apps/widgets will allow you to quickly set up blogs, image galleries, submission forms, online stores, and more. A decent amount of the ones that are useful to you are free.

• Site Analytics - Paired with Google Search Console, it is possible to track your website's analytics to keep track of popular (and more importantly poor performing) content. You can see how well you perform on Google, as well as traffic sources and the amount of unique visitors + site sessions you get every day.

• AdSense - Wix can integrate Google Ads for free, but you have to apply directly to Google's AdSense program first. It may take a while to get approved, but what qualifies you is not user engagement-- it's site content! The better your website looks and the more episodes you have out, the more likely you will be to get approved. It took us a few tries before we got in, so don't feel bad if you don't get approved right away.

• Professionalism - Having your own domain is gonna look better for you and be easier to spread via word of mouth. A nice, short link can be said out loud, fit stylishly onto business cards, and look better in advertisements without being forgotten. The same goes for your social media handles.

• Early Access - You can host hidden web pages that are only accessible to patrons, allowing for you to offer early access as an avenue to fund your project while maintaining the look and feel of your website. These hidden web pages can also be passed off to TRUSTED friends and family so they can enjoy your work before it releases and offer draft critiques.

Downsides of using Wix:

• It Can Get Expensive - A domain hovers around $30. Most people can scrape together the money for the domain! The part where it gets bad is the Wix premium plans. For the sake of transparency, we paid a total of $290 to keep our site running this year (2023). The premium plans give you the tools you need to code, track analytics, and more. They get steep very fast, and the choke hold is storage space, with the cheapest plan only offering a measly 2GB. Plans are yearly and paid upfront in full.

• Learning Curve - Slapping elements onto a web page is easy and will get you pretty far. When you want to do fancy things like showing/hiding elements when a button is clicked, you're going to have to learn how to use Velo, which is Wix's coding panel. If you don't know how to code, this can be pretty difficult to learn. Some feats also require learning how the Wix dataset system works, which is admittedly not beginner-friendly, but we will do our best to explain it in the guide.

• It Can Get Even More Expensive - Some widgets are third-party apps that paywall and watermark their content until you subscribe to a plan. Before Twitter started having API problems, we actually paid $5 a month for a social media feed app on the homepage. Surely the blog and newsletter is working a lot better for us? Sure, but the mailing list automations are not included in the premium plans and you may have to pay upwards of $25 a month for a decent email balance and the ability to schedule them.

• It Can Get EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE! - Our first year, the website and domain costed maybe $130. A year later, our premium plan's price was bumped up to $260. That was not pleasant to be notified about at the last minute and have to pay in full.

• Missing Features - Wix is lacking in a few things we feel that it should have offered from day one. For example, website updates currently cannot be scheduled. Someone has to sit there, at the computer, at 11:59 AM CT and hover over a "publish" button. You could disappoint a lot of people if you sleep through that alarm or the power goes out.

• You're Restricted to JavaScript - Velo is JavaScript. Some complex visual feats only accomplished via CSS are not possible with the current editor regardless of the tier of your plan.

All in all, we recommend Wix to people who can afford to invest a little bit of money and don't like coding. It can take a long time to adjust to the nuances of Wix, but it is extremely rewarding once achieved.

INTRODUCTION TO WEBCOMICS

Webcomics are a fun, digestible art medium that can effectively tell your story and hone your art/time management skills. Many artists start with a webcomic series and move on to more ambitious storytelling mediums like animation, and so can you.

We've got some (actually a lot of) advice for you if you're starting out that we think you should take into consideration if you want to make a webcomic:

• Write out your story in beats before you start drawing - Story beats range from short to medium-sized excerpts of story/script that describe what happens in your episodes. Instead of scripting out every individual scene, angle, and line of dialogue, try to be vague and open to change/improv. The key is to not waste any time on the nitty gritty so that you can jump right into working.

The entirety of Objectified (book one) is scripted out already, and we recommend you do the same thing with your story before you start drawing the episodes. For us, it took a total of three months to write the whole book.

• Take care of yourself - It's corny, you hear it all the time, but it's true. 8 hours of sleep, three meals a day, drinking water, bathing, etc. Burnout is gonna be your new boogeyman and these are the best measures against him besides time management.

Prioritize your health over your work no matter what! Start out slow and hold off on crazy ambitions until you're confident in your workflow and energy level.

• Make a buffer - Buffers are extra completed episodes that are ready to publish. Working ahead like this allows you to take vacations without missing releases and letting down your fans. Being late on updates has a bigger impact on your audience than you may think, or at least that's what we've heard... we've never been late on publishing an update.

We recommend working at least three episodes ahead before you start releasing them to the public.

• It's okay to suck - Your art and writing probably will not be perfect or even up to your own standards when you start out. You're going to make mistakes and make episodes that you hate, and you're going to need to leave them be and keep moving forward.

Going back to fix mistakes is a waste of time and tempts burnout. Let your work speak for itself, as over time you will improve and the contrast between your old work and new work will be more admirable to readers.

Try not to waste a lot of time practicing on the side in your free time. You'll get plenty of practice making the episodes themselves. It's good to practice and learn new things, just be smart about it.

• Branch out to other platforms - Having a personal website is an amazing professional choice, but we recommend hosting your comic on at least one other website that specializes in hosting comics. We use Webtoons.

Don't overdo it or else you'll just make more work for yourself for little reward.

• Stay professional - Goofing around is fun and healthy, but don't make an ass of yourself on social media every day. Keep the things you post appropriate for the tone of your work and be mindful of your image.

Keep your community at an arm's length so that they can immerse themselves in your series without worrying about you breathing down their necks, but try not to be cold to them either.

• Stay active on social media - Sharing previews and promos keeps your fans engaged and looking forward to new episodes by showing them a glimpse of what's coming.

Set healthy boundaries with fans and keep your life private/communications limited if you want. Try not to get addicted to numbers and worrying about everyone's opinions.

• Create a work schedule - Try to make a work schedule and test it during the production of your first few episodes. Adjust accordingly.

We use Google Sheets, Google Drive, and Discord to organize our work and communication. For the artist, Objectified is a full-time job to allow for episodes to come out biweekly.

• Work with people you trust - Having a team made up entirely of strangers that volunteered to work with you is riskier than you think.

All of the people who work on Objectified are close friends or at least friends of friends of many years. Be patient and wary when scraping together your team.

• For Object Comic Creators - Keep your cast small and dream big. Create something that you would find entertaining if you were a fan! Be controversial by challenging tradition and bring new stuff to the table! The OSC is lacking in terms of horror/romance content and LGBTQ+ characters when there is a clear desire for them, so we're trying to be the change we want to see in the world.

The premise of your comic can be absolutely idiotic, but as long as you love it, you can be confident that others will too.

• Be patient - With webcomics, slow and steady wins the race. Projects in this medium typically see a slow, gradually increasing level of traction and the most important thing for you to worry about is getting your episodes out on time consistently.

The more episodes you have out, the more fans will have to talk about and get invested in. When you finally get to the good stuff, we promise you'll see the attention you deserve for all of your hard work.

• Show, don't tell - Concept art is fun to make and share online, and so is gushing about the things you love-- but you do waste time explaining ideas and concepts that you could be executing in comic format instead. Shut your yapper and work!

On a similar note, over-explaining concepts in the comic itself can damage your project as well. Be careful about what you spoon-feed to readers or else your story will be less impactful in execution because fans will already know what's going to happen.

If you have a complex, story-relevant topic than cannot be explained well visually or squeezed into an episode, that would be most appropriate to explain full-on. For us, that was our intermission about Organspace. Keep it fun and interesting.

• Take inspiration from others - If you've read webcomics in the past, it's worth a quick read-over of those works and analyzation of their websites to get a good idea of what you want to replicate. Introduce yourself to other comics that share your genre to immerse yourself in the possibilities, but never plagiarize their work. Taking inspiration from other works is normal, but refusing to admit you're inspired by them is wrong.

For us, we take heavy inspiration from Scape and Run: Parasites, the Dead Space franchise, object shows like Battle for Dream Island, and the works of Junji Ito. Even if your webcomic gets off the ground, never stop introducing yourself to new media. In more recent months, we've taken inspiration from other gems like the Berserk manga and the short story "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream".

• Collect resources - Before you start, take a stroll through somewhere like DeviantArt looking for screen tones, brushes, and effects. Most of them are free to use without needing credit, but we personally credit them anyways.

Always check the copyright/use policy of every individual asset you download, including fonts and website graphics. You might have to purchase a license to use certain assets and not doing so can land you in legal trouble.

• On a similar note, streamline your work - Webcomics are a demanding medium, especially for beginners. If you can find ways to cheat and speed up the process, then please do so! Reuse backgrounds, fill space with free assets, and use the tools available at your disposal to quickly compose backgrounds and choose color pallets for scenes.

Personally, we use home-cooked 3D models to compose a lot of our city backgrounds.

• Open some payment avenues - Running a website and making webcomics means you're going to need money to pay for keeping your site up, buying resources, paying your team, commissioning extra help, advertising online, and so much more.

Most webcomic readers are mobile users and most mobile devices do not have adblockers, so it's a good idea to look into Google AdSense. Make sure your ads aren't intrusive. Patreon is also a good way to fund your project, allowing you to engage with your community in new ways by giving them access to special content.

If you're actually going to start your own webcomic series, especially an object show webcomic, you have our full support. We'll be rooting for you!

WHAT IS "VELO WITH WIX"?

Wix offers Velo, a coding panel (primarily) that allows you to code in JavaScript. It is only offered with premium plans and isn't terribly hard to learn if you have a decent head on your shoulders, but coding is coding and it's not for everyone.

We use Velo to conditionally show and hide elements.

DYNAMIC PAGES VS STATIC PAGES

Wix offers a hard limit of 100 static webpages regardless of your plan. This is because a lot of static pages will slow down your website, and as a result Google will find your website very unattractive and rank you lower in search results. The solution to this mess is to use dynamic page collections.

Dynamic pages collections are for web pages that are nearly identical in nature, condensing them to a spreadsheet of data and information. In our case, our first dynamic page set was made for our comic episodes. Their layout is all the same as well as their function, so they work perfectly for a dynamic set.

Static pages are not something that should be completely avoided, because they still make up the foundation of your website. Your homepage, archive, about page, and cast page should be static. Static pages are the default state for every page you create and can be converted to dynamic pages whenever you want.

In this guide, we'll explain how to set up the dynamic page collections and how those freaky columns work.

But first, let's get the basics out of the way.

MAKING THE HOME PAGE

Once you have your domain or Wix site, it's time to start building. You can choose from a myriad of templates to get started. Wix also has a decently sized image asset library that you can use for site backgrounds and buttons and such. The website background for Objectified is actually a Wix asset!

You'll be starting with your home page, so it's time to set up your header, body, and footer. For Objectified, we try to be mindful and strategic about where we put assets and information. A good example is the website header, which includes a clickable logo that links back to the home page, our socials, and displays a brief content warning. All three are very important for user experience, so they are always present at the top of the screen.

The body of your home page should include every important link that is not included in your site menu. For us, we use buttons that link to the first/latest episodes, as well as a couple more misc. buttons just to pad things out. We chose to link to the shop/extras pages just so fans get an extra reminder that they exist. The footer of most websites includes a copyright statement and contact links. If you have an open avenue of communication, like an email, you can include it here.

To save time, you can use mediocre/placeholder assets. It took more than a year to get our website looking as sleek as it does, so don't stress about perfection just yet.

Make sure to run your website by friends/family so they can critique its appearance and their user experience. If your site is unpleasant to navigate, readers will not come back to it.

Keep in mind that your site will look different on a mobile device VS a computer. Switch to the mobile view in the website editor to adjust how it looks on a phone.

MAKING THE EPISODE PAGES

This is where things get a little complicated. To preface, we're going to learn now what a dataset/collection is and how to connect our page elements to it. Unfortunately, this is the cutoff point for people using the free version of Wix, because we will be using some code to achieve our goals that cannot be cheesed or skipped out on (unless you only have one comic page per webpage like Homestuck or something).

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Dataset collections publish changes within the collection automatically to your live site. To disable this, opt into sandbox mode. The sandbox collection is where you will make unpublished changes and they can be synced to the live collection to publish them to readers.

First, create the general layout of your episode webpage by creating a new webpage.

1. Create the title and date. They can say "EPISODE TITLE" and "00/00/00", because they are placeholders and will be defined later by a dataset. Put them anywhere you want on the page, we recommend the top of the body of the page.

2. Create a box to insert the comic pages/title/date into (if you want to).

3. Insert blank comic page images. Try to gauge the maximum amount of pages you'll be drawing for one episode and stack them on top of each other. These placeholder images will be defined by the dataset later, so it doesn't matter if they are all blank/all the same image file in the website editor.

4. Enable dev mode in the top left of the website editor and label your page assets. In the Velo editor, when you click a page element, you will be able to name it on the right side of the Velo window. Keep it short, simple, and ordered. Name them something like p1, p2, p3, and so on. Skip this step if you only have one comic page per webpage.

5. Make your pages invisible on load and collapse them on load as well. In the same Velo editor under the naming box, you can click a checkbox to hide/collapse the elements on load. They will now change in appearance, being covered in long diagonal stripes and be slightly greyed out. Skip this step if you only have one comic page per webpage. When you're done, disable dev mode.

6. Create the navigation buttons (e.g., "first", "prev", "next", and "last").

7. Add any additional elements you want to be in the body of your page.

8. Fix the mobile version of the webpage by clicking the phone button at the top left of the editor. When you're done, switch back.

Now, let's convert this to a dynamic page set. By clicking the page dropdown menu in the top-left of the editor, you can find your web page and convert it to a dynamic page by clicking the three dots next to its name. This creates your dataset and collection.

1. Wix will present you with a button to get started, so click it. Save to a new collection and name it something like "episode". It will become a part of the URL. For example, our collection is named "episode", so our URLS in the collection will look like https://www.objectifiedcomic.com/episode/00. We define 00 within the collection itself. If you're doing one comic page per webpage to skip out on the coding section, you should name the collection "page" rather than "episode".

2. Wix will likely select all of your text and image elements to automatically add them to the dataset. It might skip out on your navigation buttons, but this is fine. We can add and remove elements very easily later. Click "Connect Elements" to move on to the next step.

3. A dataset will be added to your page. It is a little square titled with the name of your collection and is only visible to you, so you can put it anywhere. You can double-click this element to quickly open the collection, which is where we define the contents of each page. It should open automatically and will look like a spreadsheet with columns.

4. Rename each field appropriately. This is the top row, where each field in the column is labeled. Likely, your episode title and date were converted to two different fields, named "Text 1" and "Text 2". By hovering over them, we can click the three dots to rename them to something like "Episode Title (Webpage)" and "Episode Date". The "Title" field defines the latter slug of your URL. For example, if we entered "1", our URL will now be https://www.objectifiedcomic.com/episode/1.

5. Organize your fields in order of relevancy. You can drag and move your fields left and right of each other. It is likely that you have a field at the very end of the item column named after your collection with the end of the page's URL inside. We recommend moving this alllll the way to the left next to the Title field. The title field defines the URL, so putting them next to each other allows you to edit the Title field and see the URL update in real time. The field that displays the URL slug cannot be directly edited and is defined by your collection name and Title field, which you can rename to "Slug" or "Define URL".

6. Add any missing elements that will change per webpage (navigation buttons) by clicking them in the website editor and then clicking "Connect to CMS". It will ask you for the dataset, so choose the episode collection. It will then ask you what to connect the element to within the dataset. In the case of a navigation button, you will want to connect it to a link field. Create the link field by re-opening the dataset and clicking "add field" at the far right end of the fields. Select the URL field type and name each one appropriately (e.g. "first", "prev", "next", "last"). Create a separate link field for each navigation button, and then connect them to the buttons back in the website editor.

7. Once you are satisfied with your table organization, you can start defining webpage elements. Enter the episode title and publication date of your first episode into the appropriate fields in the collection, since this will be your first episode. Next, upload the images to each image field. You can define the navigation button links in their link fields, too.

8. Add a new webpage to the collection by clicking "+ Add Item" in your collection. When you exit the collection, you can now switch between these webpages by clicking the dropdown menu that has appeared on the right side of the editor on the webpage. This is not visible to users. The new item will be episode 2 and so on.

By creating a dynamic page collection, the initial webpage you created with placeholder assets becomes a template for every page in the collection. Within the collection's CMS window, each row represents one page in the collection and the contents of these fields define what is displayed on your webpage (and more).

We can add other important defining fields that determine the title/description of your webpage in search results, tooltips for images, and alt text. To connect a field to your search result title and description, navigate to the dynamic page collection via the upper left page navigation dropdown menu and select "Manage Pages". Under "Dynamic Pages", you can select your collection. By clicking the three dots next to its name, you can select "SEO Basics" and connect the appropriate field tags.

Important note: If you do not define the tooltip of each image connected to the dataset, Wix will automatically assign them a tooltip based on your file name. Tooltips are small text popups that appear when you hover over an image in your browser. For the sake of a clean user experience, we don't want this. To hide the tooltip, you will need to create a text field in your collection, name it "Empty Tooltip", and connect all of your images' tooltips to it via the "Connect to CMS" button in the website editor that appears when you click your image elements. Leave the field blank forever.

Now we do the coding. Re-enable dev mode in the top left of the website editor.

The code is admittedly pretty simple. If you hid/collapsed your pages on load properly, this code will keep them hidden as well as the space they occupy if their corresponding field is undefined in the collection. In layman's terms, the code hides placeholder images that you aren't using.

Start by inserting the following into the Velo editor:

$w("#dynamicDataset").onReady( () =>
{
    let item = $w("#dynamicDataset").getCurrentItem();

    if (item.image1)
    {
        $w("#p1").show();
        $w("#p1").expand();
    }
    else
    {
        $w("#p1").collapse();
        $w("#p1").hide();
    }
});

The anatomy of this code snippet is simple. Highlighted in red is everything you need to worry about changing. "image1" is the name of the field in the collection that defines the image file of the first comic page. "#p1" is what we named this comic page element in the Velo editor earlier. If you renamed these to something else, adjust the code accordingly to reflect their proper names.

Copy and paste this code snippet for every comic page placeholder that you have on the webpage. If you added ten placeholder pages, paste the code ten times and update the text for each instance. With the next comic page image file, for example, we will change "image1" to "image2" and "#p1" to "#p2" in the second instance of the code.

We are not JavaScript experts, but this worked for us and as long as it works we're happy. If you're a coding geek, feel free to optimize the code to your liking. Here is the full code we use for you to pick apart.

Episode Webpage Code Example

.txt

Download TXT • 5KB

If you have questions, contact us at officialobjectified@gmail.com. Keep in mind we're pretty busy these days, but if you're having problems with your website we can try to help.

MAKING THE ARCHIVE PAGE

The archive page is where readers can quickly access all of your episodes in one place. A simple link list can suffice, but we can really do so much more than that. Opt into sandbox mode before working with datasets.

When Objectified started out, we manually copy/pasted each episode's group of elements into the list. Often, the elements would break or move around. We then discovered repeaters.

Repeaters connect to a dataset, which defines their contents. While dynamic page collections contain identical webpages, the repeater contains simple identical web page elements.

If you're creating an archive page where you need to display many of the same group of elements, the repeater is what you will use. Another example of using repeaters can be for your team's individual profiles on your about page or even your cast page.

1. Create the archive page. We personally would choose the "blank page" option and build it from the ground-up.

2. Create a big box to contain your repeater.

3. Drop a repeater element onto the page and into the box. The repeater can be found by clicking the "(+) Add" button on the top left of your screen and selecting "Interactive". Choose any Hover Repeater and drop it onto your page.

4. Customize your repeater. Make sure every image and text element you use is placeholder. Keep your images simple/blank and your text non-descriptive, because we will define their contents within the dataset. You'll notice when one element is moved around in one item, the same element moves in every other item as well. Get familiar with the settings and display options before moving on to the next step.

5. Create a new dataset. On the left side of the editor, the second-to-last button is the CMS button. When you click it, it allows you to create a new collection, so do that. Name it "archive" or "archive list", select the "Multiple Items" option, and create. When you do this, the dataset will be added to the page. Only you can see this, and double-clicking it in the website editor will open the collection window. You can put it wherever you want. When creating a collection for the first time, it will probably open the collection window automatically.

6. Exit the collection and check how the webpage looks in the mobile editor by clicking the phone button at the upper left of the website editor.

Now you have the collection. We will be connecting page elements to each field and creating new fields to define various different things. For repeaters, you must create each field from scratch. Double-click the dataset element in the editor to re-open the collection. The collection can also be accessed via the CMS button on the left side of the editor in case you accidentally deleted the little box.

When you connect a text element in the website editor to a collection, you lose the ability to freely customize the formatting of your text. You are limited to your website's built-in site theme which can be edited and accessed through the "Site Design" button on the left side of the website editor.

Even then, you only have the option to format text in this way via the "Rich Text" field. When you create a text element in the repeater that you'd like to style, it will need a corresponding Rich Text field in the collection to connect to.

For us, we have the following elements defined in the dataset:

• Title - The Title of the episode. Rich Text field (allows for styling text and embedding link to episode within field text).

• Description - The short blurb for each episode. Plain Text field.

• Thumbnail - The thumbnail for each episode. Image field.

• Characters (optional) - The tiny chalk drawings that tell readers who features in an episode. Image fields.

• Date - The publication date for each episode. Plain Text field.

• URL - The link we connect to the episode thumbnail so readers can click the image and be taken to the episode. URL field.

• Empty Tooltip - When images are connected to datasets, they are automatically assigned their file names as tooltips. We don't want tooltips for these images, so create a plain Text field and leave it empty. We will connect it to the images so that they do not display a tooltip.

• Alt Text (optional) - Alt text tells search engines and e-readers what is in an image. Defining the alt text of your images can help you appear more frequently in search results or aid people with e-readers/shitty internet connections.

For each element that changes on your webpage, create a corresponding field item in the collection with the appropriate field type. An example of an element we do not create a field for is the brick wall background, since it remains the same in every repeater item.

Now we can start connecting repeater elements to the dataset.

1. Click any of the repeater item elements in the website editor and click the "Connect to CMS" button. Choose the archive dataset and begin connecting the appropriate fields through the dropdown menus.

2. Test the website by clicking "Preview" in the top right of the website editor. Do the links work? Do your tooltips show? Is your text formatting correct?

3. When satisfied, click the (+) Add button on the left side of the website editor and go to Interactive. At the bottom of the list of apps, you should see an option to create a pagination bar. We can drop the pagination bar onto the page and connect it to the archive dataset, so users can now navigate between different pages of items. You can adjust how many items display per page via the repeater's settings.

You should be good to go! Don't forget that when you publish a new episode, you will have to go into the dataset collection to manually sync your unpublished changes to your live collection. This includes your Dynamic Episode page collection. Otherwise, users will not be able to access your new episodes. We recommend keeping all of your important datasets on one webpage so you can quickly switch between them to sync them to their live collections.

MAKING THE ABOUT PAGE

It's worth a section. When you create your about page, include your mission as an artist/team/project and link to all of your socials. Describe your project in a short excerpt and beneath all of that you can talk about yourself and your team. If your comic contains mature content, include a content warning here too.

Keep business profiles appropriate. Your readers probably don't need to know your sexual orientation and whether or not you're single. It's okay to be proud of who you are, but this is not a dating profile, so keep that info on your own private social media or Carrd if anything. Something more appropriate for your About page would be the work that each person does, and at most their gender identities/pronouns.

Credit the sources of your assets and give a statement about how you are comfortable having your work shared and edited by people on the internet. We allow people to download and redistribute images in the galleries for specific purposes and mimic our website's layout, for example. Our repository images are also free to edit and redistribute as long as they aren't monetized. Our full English language episodes themselves are not to be redistributed in full without permission, however. Specifying and setting these boundaries is important for fans to know what they can do and what they can get in trouble for.

EXTRA TIPS

If you got through the whole guide, congrats! We hope it helped, and please let us know if there are holes in our steps by emailing us at officialobjectified@gmail.com.

Before you go, we're going to throw at few more valuable pieces of information at you.

• Loading the editor off-tab will reduce the amount of bugs - When you've been using Wix for a while, you might run into a very common and extremely devastating bug where your elements will shrink while you're re-positioning them. Another similar bug is when you load a page in the editor and the elements are displaced. To avoid these bugs, try not to zoom in/out with the CTRL + / CTRL - function and switch to a different window/tab when you're loading a new page with assets that like to teleport around. If the bugs persist, clear your cache or switch to a different browser. We have no idea when Wix plans on fixing these, but they're very loudly complained about by lots of Wix users so we are not holding our breath.

• Graphic design is half of the work - You're going to get a lot of experience in graphic design by making and promoting your website whether you like it or not, so get ready. If we had a dollar for every weirdly specific aspect ratio we've had to use for a banner, we would have enough of those dollars for like one meal at Canes idk stuff is actually kind of expensive now

• Look into RSS - RSS, in the most simplest terms, is a web reader. RSS allows people to track site updates and news via their RSS feed. To integrate RSS easily into a Wix site, you can create a blog via the "(+) Add" button on the left side of the website editor and create an RSS button that links to your blog's .xml page. Every time you post on the blog, people using the contents of your .xml page will see the blog post through their reader. This way, you can notify people of site updates without forcing them to register for social media or webcomic hosting sites. It is an awkward time to be using social media and probably the best time in years to be offering alternatives.

• Look into Search Engine Optimization - When you search "Objectified Comic" on Google you will find our website, but it wasn't always like that. In order to rank well on search results our pages needed to include a lot of relevant data, key words, and alt text. Then, Google's engine had to send a bot to crawl and index our pages. Wix will help you set up an account with Google Search Console and give you tips for managing your SEO through the dashboard, so we won't get into the small details.

• Don't invest what you can't afford to lose - When you pay for help, advertising, and materials, try not to spend any amount of money that you aren't comfortable with wasting. If you have a hundred dollars to blow, you can invest in a short ad campaign... but if you need that money to afford to keep your website running, you need to save it.

• Seriously, be careful with your money - When you make your project your career, people are going to pay you to keep going and working on the things that you care about. Do not waste these people's hard-earned money on videogames and fast food, put it back into the project. It is okay to spend the money on personal things that you need, groceries, medicine, and bills, but don't waste it. If you want to buy something for the sake of enrichment, make sure it's only every once in a blue moon and doesn't cut into what you need in order to stay alive.

• Tell the story that you want to tell - Don't let anyone tell you what your project should or shouldn't be. Learn to differentiate between constructive criticism and entitlement so that you can continue to improve your work without losing sight of your goals. Save your time and attention for people who appreciate your work for what it is and see you as a human being.

• Don't make promises you can't keep - It's a normal part of life to start working on something that you inevitably won't finish. Be careful about what you promise is coming out in case you can't finish it on time. We had to delay Turtleshell's first journal entry when we had promised it would release in October, for example! Mounting broken promises might look bad.

• You aren't alone - Often it may seem like nothing is possible because of our interpersonal setbacks or not being aware that many creators are just like us. If it encourages you to get off of your feet, we're willing to share here that the artist/creator of Objectified got through the first year of production suffering from depression and clinically severe PTSD. In the same year, he was able to start HRT and get his project off the ground by working hard. Now, life is pretty good.

We'll update the guide with relevant information and fix errors in the future when we find time. Thanks for reading Objectified!