This minimal webcomics platform is available under the terms of the permissive MIT license. While not required, if you do something interesting with the code, please drop us a line; we'd love to know what you're up to!
Want to run a comics server for yourself? Maybe you'd rather send us a bug fix or new feature? Get started here.
If you're unfamiliar with Docker, this might be a little tricky for you. It's worth learning though; power through it until you understand!
- Install Docker and Docker Compose for your platform
- Run
python deploy/generate_env.pyto set up the docker environment configuration - Add the line
DJANGO_DEBUG=1todeploy/django.envif you are running a development environment. Don't do this in production! - Run
docker-compose build - Run
docker-compose up -d - Enter a shell on the docker django machine
docker-compose exec django bash - Create the database
python3 manage.py migrate - Add a superuser
python3 manage.py createsuperuser - Collect static files
python3 manage.py collectstatic - The site will now be running on
http://localhost - Add Data into the Django Admin. Set up at least one Comic and then give it at least one Page.
- Open the Site in a Web Browser.
- Better tenant SSL cert management (LetsEncrypt)
- Social link previews & search engine metadata (use SEO checkers)
- Page
- Archive
- Tag
- TagType
- robots.txt
- Scroll to top of comic upon navigating
- Schema.org tagging for our pages, tags
- About the author section
- Character section
- Distinguish between cover art, etc
- Javascript changing of values where appropriate
- Error handling for failed AJAX requests
- Order by Chronological
- Favicons
- New Patreon banners (also consider ad space)
- Smooth out navigation so people don't get stuck in the tag pages ("Return to the Comic" button)
- Reveal hover-text button
- Extended Markdown for tag links; update transcripts and wiki pages
- Refine Tag, TagType, and Archive Pages
- Archive/Transcript/Tag Search
- Translations
- Fix Navigation on VERY old browsers and crawlers (anchor fallback for no js)
- Allow suggestions to transcripts, tags, wiki pages
- Add configuration for Google Analytics per-comic
- Opt-in to receive browser push notifications on new posts
- Domain-specific routing
- Main Page (temporarily just redirecting to swords)
- OAuth client to auto-post to various social media
- Swords "panel bot" (request a comic id and panel number for a cropped version of the comic)
Here's a rough outline of what I did to get this server deployed on an Ubuntu AWS EC2 instance.
# Fix an annoying bug in AWS. This will be the last "unable to resolve host" error you see
sudo sh -c 'echo "127.0.0.1 $(hostname)" >> /etc/hosts'
# Get Docker
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-key fingerprint 0EBFCD88
sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docker-ce
# OPTIONAL: if you don't want to use docker with sudo
# sudo groupadd docker
# sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
# sudo systemctl enable docker
# REBOOT HERE
# Get docker-compose
sudo curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.22.0/docker-compose-`uname -s`-`uname -m` -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo chmod 777 /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
# Get the project
git clone https://github.com/pennomi/comics.git
cd comics
python deploy/generate_env.py # Generate env variables for the docker build
sudo docker-compose build
sudo docker-compose up -d
# Configure SSL Cert with Let's Encrypt
# First, set your DNS to the public IP address of the server
sudo docker exec -it <container_id> bash
certbot --nginx -d <your_domain_name>
# Create the database for administration
./manage.py migrate
./manage.py createsuperuser
./manage.py collectstatic