Web Tweaks 2026

Yesterday, on April 17, I deployed the re-designed and updated the WCG Comics website!

When it comes to my website, I am an inveterate tinkerer. Though not an expert by any means, I enjoy the process of building and coding web pages. In 1998, I started with html, moved to CSS in 2009, and Wordpress in 2022. These updates have included re-designs, moving to different web hosts, and migrating from PayPal to WooCommerce and Square as my payment processor.

While my website has always met my needs functionally—the main goal being the ability to make the purchase process at my webstore as smooth and painless as possible for users—a major goal in my bucket list has been to move to a more modern fluid and responsive full-width website design. Not only was my current website—using a template called MH Themes—somewhat outmoded because it was an older design, I did not have access to some recent Wordpress features.

Above: Recently retired WCG Comics website.

Over the past several months, I intermittently experimented and played with a variety of designs and themes. None seemed to adequately meet my needs—existing templates seemed too rigid and unsuited for what I wanted.

I realized that another daunting aspect of a potential re-design would be the need to re-create and migrate all my existing sales and products, images, and other features I’d incorporated over the years. Indeed, it was enough to make me believe that such a re-design was unfeasible and daunting to rebuild the website again from the ground up.

A major breakthrough was coming across the Staging feature in Wordpress, that allows a user to duplicate an existing website into a walled off sandbox and play with it without risk of breaking the original site. Just as importantly, when it’s ready, staging also allows you to deploy the website by simply writing over and replacing the existing website to make the new site live.

I also came across a theme that I thought might work for me—NewSpare by AF Themes. Though similar to the MH Magazine theme in that it’s a news site at its heart, it had a full-width design with a top banner image that gave me access to more modern features. While I still had to re-build (or rather, re-create) the front page from scratch, and ensure the webstore pages worked properly, the rest of my content otherwise transferred fairly smoothly into the new format. I still need to slightly tweak the containers of the other pages to ensure they do not run to the very edge, but fortunately, these are mostly cosmetic changes since the pages otherwise retained their layout and content, and were already fully functional and readable. Because of all this, what I thought might take me months was completed over a a few nights!

While I’ve learned to never say never when it comes to my website, hopefully this recent leap will be the last major re-design or update to the website I’ll need to make for awhile!

Below: The website from May 2024. 

Website Tweaking

As noted in a recent post, I tweaked the WCG Comics website so that users can place orders right from the home page. The landing page immediately highlights the most recent and popular comics for sale, rather than news, announcements and promotion. While that latter content is still there—my website has also always served to document my comics activities—I realized that the sales buttons needed to be front and center.

On top of that, as part of the ongoing need to keep the site compliant with current web standards, I just migrated to a new payment processor. From the very start, I've used PayPal when my website was in simple html and, and later, css format, and have always been happy with it. My main concern has been that some users might believe a PayPal account was required to make a purchase (it isn't). However, PayPal recently began sending me notices that the protocol used at my site was out of date and should be upgraded. Unfortunately, I found the directions and requirements for PayPal's updated integration protocol to be beyond my technical abilities, so began exploring and testing other payment plugins that more seamlessly integrated with my WordPress website. 

Though it took me a little time to understand the whole ecosphere of the e-commerce process, I began by installing WooCommerce, a popular e-commerce plug-in for WordPress that works fairly seamlessly (WooCommerce is owned by the same parent company as WordPress). This turned out to be a no-brainer since WooCommerce works and partners almost universally with all the top payment processors. It was just a matter of determining which one worked best.

I first tried connecting WooCommerce to PayPal since I already had an existing account there, but surprisingly, the same obstacle related to the level of technical proficiency needed still existed, requiring a level of coding I wasn't comfortable with. I then tried WooCommerce's in-house WooPayments—without going too far into the weeds, I surprisingly found the verification process very complicated and frustrating. Though I understand the need to properly verify my business credentials, it seemed unnecessarily long and complicated, particularly given my experience easily getting approval from other processors and doing business online for more than 25 years. With all that—and even after exchanging some emails with the company (there was no chat or telephone option to speak with someone in person)—I felt caught in a loop with nothing to show for it. (To be fair, without going into the minute details, the delay was related to the need for the IRS to properly confirm my business status with paperwork I never needed before and that still needed to be processed.)

Frustrated by an exercise unlike my relatively straightforward and painless experience with other processors, I downloaded a plugin for Square, another prominent payment processor—indeed, I've used Square and have had an account with them for years to make sales at conventions with a credit card reader (and now with my mobile phone as a tap device). In contrast to PayPal and WooPayments, getting verified by Square nearly instantly turned out to be a very simple and straightforward.

So very long story short, after all that and some testing that went smoothly, the migration is done! (I should add that at one point in this process, when I was starting out and playing around, I somehow "broke" my website—fortunately, I had a backup—albeit not a recent one—that I was able to quickly restore. But it taught me a valuable lesson—to use the sandbox accounts I had created to test changes first and to back up my website more regularly!) 

While I don't believe the PayPal protocol was due to be retired or rendered obsolete anytime soon, the new plug-in processes orders all within the WCG Comics website umbrella rather than redirects users  to a third party website (PayPal) to complete a purchase. As a result, the process looks more seamless and professional. It's a change I actually wanted to make for awhile and I'm glad for once I was ahead of the curve in doing so when I had the luxury to figure it all out rather than under the gun because the protocol was being discontinued. 

WordPress Migration

In addition to my comics work, I’m a bit of a computer geek and, along those lines, one of the skills I’m proudest of is my web capability—launched in 1998, my WCG Comics website initially gave me a simple web presence, then evolved and grew. Not only does it enable me to sell my comics directly to users, it’s also a promotional channel, now supplemented, of course, by my social media accounts and this blog. Also like this blog, it serves as a historical record of my comics work and career, documenting and listing projects and activities like my annual photo galleries and reports of the San Diego Comic-Con, news coverage, interviews and more.

The website began as a simple HTML page in 1998. Then around 2007, I taught myself CSS and upgraded the site to html/css. In 2017, I gave the site a major design overhaul, which I've retained through the present day, also making it more mobile-responsive. This was all made possible with Adobe Dreamweaver—a WYSIWYG and html editor tool that was once an industry standard. Since then, I continued to use Dreamweaver to update manage the website.

As I mentioned in a post earlier this year, I began weaning myself from the Adobe Suite of graphics and design applications, and have already successfully migrated away from Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. However, finding a replacement and alternative for Dreamweaver was surprisingly difficult—they just don’t seem to exist. Though I thought I found an acceptable if somewhat clunky alternative in a product called BlueGriffon and even purchased it (fortunately, it wasn't very expensive), it turns out it was discontinued in 2019 and, more significantly, would not work if and when I finally upgraded my Mac OS, which was the primary reason I’ve been migrating away from Adobe. The only viable alternatives appeared to be pure coding editors or applications that only created proprietary website files—applications that would not allow me to simply open or edit my existing html/css files, so I’d have to re-create the site from scratch.

wcgcomics.com in December 2009

That all said, website development and management the last decade or so has moved to web-based CMS (Content Management Systems), the dominant player being WordPress. (I also am familiar with Weebly, where I maintain a personal family website.)

Over the years, I played with WordPress, but always found it  daunting and impenetrable. (I’m self-taught and rely on documentation—e.g., Google and YouTube—when I get stuck or need to learn how to do something.) However, finally faced with a real need to move away from Dreamweaver and html/css completely, I leaned more heavily into learning and understanding WordPress. 

In recent years, I had already taken baby steps in this direction, first creating an account at wordpress.org to "play" in. More recently, when I became a bit more determined, I asked my webhost company to create a subdomain "sandbox" within my website where they installed WordPress, which allowed me to experiment and play more with the system within my account.

After a few breakthrough moments this past week, I finally cracked WordPress. (It sounds simple, but one of the keys was understanding the difference between blog postings and web pages—WordPress was initially created as a blogging tool and remains its default setting).

Once I overcame these humps and cracked the code in my mind, I became proficient enough to begin duplicating my existing website with the help of a template theme that met my needs. After I figured out how to expand WordPress's features with plug-ins and themed templates, I was off and running. Being able to recreate my home page and my webstore—complete with PayPal purchase buttons that worked correctly—was my priority. If I could make those pages functional, the rest was gravy.

So I’m now in the process of building out the rest of the site—being able to cut and paste from the old site to the new, maintaining many of the links and coding in the process—has made it almost a breeze.

As such, I’m now on track to migrate the entire site shortly. It’s way overdue and I’m glad I can finally upgrade to a more up-to-date web-based CMS system that will no longer require me to maintain individual files on my desktop computer.

UPDATE (7/8/22):

As of July 8, 2022,  the new WordPress site became active! While it turned out to be a relatively smooth process, there were nevertheless some bumps along the way...

As I began building out the WordPress site in a subdomain, I spoke with a support person at my webhost service who initially assured me that the company would be able to transfer the new site into my main domain. However, a week later, when I contacted the webhoster again, I was informed that such work was beyond their scope of service(!). They initially provided a link with instructions that were too technical for my skill level. When I subsequently told them that this was beyond my skill level and comfort zone, and confirmed again that they could not do the work, they suggested using a plug-in application made exactly for such migrations called Duplicator that was widely used.

All things considering, the process and the application were relatively fast and simple—fortunately, I found a couple of YouTube videos that walked me through the process that I followed literally step by step. Indeed, to be sure I understood the process, I first deployed the migration into another subdomain that I created specifically for the purpose of testing the installation. I figured that if it was successful, I would then install the main site.

The test was indeed a success so I then proceeded with the installation that would overwrite the existing main domain. However, after I did so, I was unable to read the file to initialize the install of the new files(!). In a panic, I restored the original html files and found the site still worked with the old files. However, after consulting YouTube again, I found a small trick that allowed me to correctly launch the installation—with this adjustment, everything went perfectly smoothly like the earlier test. The new WordPress-powered site was now live—whew!

Below are screenshots of the wcgcomics.com website over the years—courtesy of the Wayback Machine!

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October 2000

February 2005

January 2012 – around the time I introduced use of the sliding images

December 2016

April 2017 – this is the layout design I still use for the new
WordPress site.

More Favorite Apps

I’ve written in the past about some of favorite apps and websites, including Clearcheckbook, Mint, Xmarks, DropBox, and GoogleDocs. Here are a few more that I’ve found indispensable:

SplashID Save

SplashID Safe is a secure password storage/manager app and desktop program that keeps all my website log in and password information close at hand via a password-protected app on my iPhone (it’s also of course available on other devices). Just as importantly, it syncs with a desktop version of the program, making it available on my desktop and safely backed up should anything every happen to my device. (The desktop program can also act as a stand-alone product.)

While SplashID stores my various usernames and passwords for my online email, banking, and social media accounts, it’s also designed to store other sensitive information and is easily customized. As a result, it’s a great convenience to store information like social security numbers and other private information of family members, credit card numbers, combinations, insurance numbers, vehicle information, etc., that I often have to access when doing things like filling out forms while out and about at places like the doctor’s office or traveling.

I’ve used SplashID for many years, dating back to my PalmPilot days. While there are several popular rivals to SplashID—most notably 1Password and LastPass—I’ve stuck with SplashID since it was easy to transition the data from the PalmPilot to my iPhone. There was a brief period when I considered other options, primarily because SplashID for a time was acting a bit buggy which caused me to worry about its dependability, but upgrades since then have restored stability and my confidence in the app.

SplashID and most other similar apps offer other features that I don’t use, such as the ability to generate strong passwords, securely save passwords in the cloud (a leap I haven’t made yet), and to auto-fill blank lines online. I’ve never used these additional bells and whistles, but as it stands, SplashID is definitely one of my most used and functional apps.

ToDoist

There are tons of “To Do” apps out there, so it’s rather surprising that it’s taken me so long to find one that works just right for me. Of course, the plethora of options makes it difficult to test all of them and each one has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Anyway, I recently discovered and starting using ToDoist and it seems to fit the bill. It is a mobile device app that syncs with the cloud and links to a dedicated desktop app that is also linked to the cloud. So I can add tasks and reminders (with or without deadlines) and check them on both my mobile device or desktop computer, and strike items as I do them. You can view tasks on the fly either for the day or the next 7 days. And, of course, you can organize the tasks and reminders into different categories. It has quickly become a useful app I use every day.

TaxAct

Back in the early aughts, I received a free CD copy of the tax preparation software TaxCut (apparently now renamed H&R Block Tax Software)—they were very smart because I found it very useful and used the software for several years due to familiarity and the ease of transferring data from one year to the next.

As tax preparation and filing moved more to the Web, based on a recommendation, I went to TaxAct, which I have been now using since 2007.

It’s the only web-based tax preparation software I have ever used, so I don’t have a point of comparison, but it’s a product I certainly recommend. It carries over a lot of personal information for me from year to year so that I don’t have to re-enter the data every year (another incentive to stay with the same program). It’s step-by-step entry program is fairly straightforward and intuitive, though sometimes going back to earlier entry screens can be tricky and a bit confusing because they are often nested within sections. Other than that, it’s fairly straightforward and allows the user to submit their federal and state tax forms for one price under $20 (additional state forms cost extra).

Plus, when you file online, users usually receive tax reimbursements much quickly -- usually in about a week or so, versus the several weeks if you are waiting for a check!

Website upgrades

Just thought I'd mention the minor tweaks and upgrades I've made to the WCG Comics website recently:

• In keeping with the march of progress, I've added some animation to the website: on the front page, this takes the form of a slideshow of Rob Hanes Adventures cover art, which also can be found on the online store page.
  
• A more dynamic slideshow consisting of page samples from the series can also be found on the About page of the website. (These java-based animations were built using Visual Slideshow.)
  
• This blog is now a permanent link on the main navigation menu at the top of each page of the website. It previously was buried under "Community links," but given the increased importance of blogs in promotion, I decided to give it a more prominent spot at the website.

These changes are in addition to several changes I've made to the website over the past year, which has included widening the default width of the website's pages and slightly redesigning the banner images at the top of each page.

Blog Changes
I should add that I've also made a few tweaks to the blog as well, which has included changing the overall theme/design of the website (which also featured a larger width).

Another long overdue change is the addition of "Share" buttons that appear at the bottom of each post that allows users to more easily share this link with others, particularly on social network sites like Facebook (and, yes, you can find me there too).

RIP: PalmPilot Zire 72

After recently upgrading to an iPhone and exploring the device's full capabilities, I've finally decided to put my trusty Palm Zire 72 electronic organizer out to pasture.

I'll miss my ol' Palm—back in the stone age, as my calendaring and personal information needs grew, I began using a personal organizer/Filofax to keep things in order. After several years, however, the inconvenience of having to re-enter information each year on a new paper calendar soon had me eyeing, then eventually upgrading to a Palm device (first the m100, then the Zire 72) where items obviously could automatically carry over year after year.

I often described the Palm as essentially an electronic personal organizer, which had the added advantage of keeping all of the device's stored information synchronized with a desktop computer where I could back it up and also access and edit the data separately. In addition to the calendar, I used the Palm to store and track to-do lists, projects and, using an outstanding secure program called SplashID, a myriad of passwords and other private and confidential information for myself and my family like social security numbers, website and forum logins and passwords, etc.

When I upgraded to my iPhone, however, I soon realized that my new device (which is as much a mini computer and personal organizer as it is a mobile phone) rendered the Palm obsolete and redundant. So rather than carry both a mobile phone and a Palm, I moved to consolidate everything onto the iPhone, which I always carried with me anyway. It soon became just a matter of finding the equivalent Palm applications in the iPhone apps store. My main prerequisites were the ability to migrate my data easily from the Palm to the iPhone without having to re-key information manually; and the ability to access and sync the data on a computer desktop as well as the iPhone.

Along the way, I played with and discovered several great apps and functions.

• For my to-do lists, I adapted Zenbe Lists, which syncs wirelessly from the iPhone to a personal free web account where I can also manage and edit my lists online.
• For longer memos and notes (this is where I keep running lists like films I've seen, etc.), I installed gNotes, which wirelessly syncs my iPhone with Google Notebook, which is a free feature of my gmail/Google account. I already used iGoogle extensively, so adapting to Google Notebook was easy and convenient.
• Finally, for storing my logins, passwords, and other sensitive private information, I ended up simply using the same application I used for this function on my Palm, SplashID. SplashID appears to be the gold standard for such software (and I do recommend it), but the primary reason I decided to use it was because I obviously was able to simply import the data from my Palm to the iPhone version of SplashID. However, I must say there were a few minor technical hurdles I had to overcome for the software to work and sync with the iPhone.
• Honorable mention, however, must also go to Memengo's Wallet application. While SplashID provides a separate desktop application that wirelessly syncs over a wi fi network with the iPhone, Wallet provides a free web account that wirelessly syncs stored data with iPhone over the internet. (SplashID also is significantly more expensive.) This means you can access your data on your iPhone or from any desktop with Web access, and manage and edit the data there as well. (By the way, I should add that these password programs always require password access, so even if you lose your device, it theoretically can't be accessed). I actually found Wallet's iPhone interface to be to be more elegantly designed and organized. I've kept the Wallet app on my iPhone and have left the door open to fully migrate to it based on how SplashID pans out.
  

In a future post, I'll be mentioning a few other apps—both on the iPhone and online—I can't do without!