Creating a webcomic theme for Ghost (Part 1 - Background)

For independent comic artists looking to publish their work online, there have traditionally been a few basic options. One of these is to use a traditional blogging platform such as WordPress, which has been highly popular for a variety of sites for a long time on the web. Another is to use a publishing platform such as Webtoon or Tapas, which have the advantage of helping you build your audience, or other community run sites such as ComicFury. Social media sites such as Tumblr and Twitter, as well as independent publishing platforms like Patreon, are another option sometimes used.

I liked the flexibility that WordPress could offer, but it had more than a few drawbacks. WordPress has gone through decades of development as a project, and there is more than a bit of drama surrounding the community since last year- I will link a few articles below for anyone curious about those details.

There have been a few themes for WordPress over the years that are specifically for webcomic sites, such at ComicPress and Comic Easel, but a lack of development made these obselete in recent years. A new theme popped up this year- Toocheke- that appears to be a viable modern solution, and I commend the developer Brian for stepping into the vacuum. But I wanted to move away from WordPress entirely, and that meant seeking out a new publishing platform.

I experimented with a few open source site building platforms like Jekyll (the builder powering this website) and Joomla, but the one that intrigued me the most was Ghost. Ghost operates similarly to publishing powerhouse Substack, but maintains an open source version. I saw the potential for it to be adapted for a webcomic platform with a few tweaks.

So far, my first draft of the theme has gotten some positive feedback from one webcomic artist friend, and I am working on getting more feedback from other artists to improve its functionality. I’ll update this blog with my results, and hopefully some tutorials on how to set up the new theme once it is completed.

Creating a webcomic theme for Ghost (Part 1 - Background)

Further reading