I realized that once per week is a very slow update schedule, but it has worked. The questions that should be realized after this point involve the circumstances that would allow for keeping and increasing traffic.
For example, the aspect I've been thinking over is that Saturday might be an ideal day since school is usually out by then (even in universities). With more free time, those who tend to surf the web and in need of a webcomic may find one in the significantly smaller pool of a lonely Saturday night update.From this view, forums may also be more active, and chatrooms more lively due to the availability of free time.
Counteracting this aspect, Saturday may be the time most people aren't spending time near their computers, and if that isn't the case, most of their regular webcomics aren't updating in this time frame- so a webcomic on Saturday may find itself bored and lonely. Of course, it might not even matter to begin with since the webcomic will be accessible at any point the week after.
I'm interested in what opinions you may have.
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Sunday. That way if worse comes to worst and I don't get time during the week to draw the comic I can always draw it on Saturday.
I have to agree with Ghastly, Sunday means you can work on it over the weekend.
From a reader's point of view: I find that my webcomicless days are actually Sundays, since I read only a few Sunday strips and most of them do not update at midnight, which is when I like to read my comics. Saturday, though still not a very popular update date, has all the TThS update schedule comics.
Monday, from all reports, is the highest web use day. So you have a lot of people reading, but much more competiton for eyeballs.
Now that I think about it, your material will have a lot to do with it. Weekdays for quick to read gag material, weekends for comics aimed at people who dont go outside too often. Like manga about dweebish guys surrounded my lots of hot chicks who want to lay him.
I kid, I kid....cuz I love.
I read that one manga! IT was CRAZY! I prefer during the week, myself. Most of my extraneous interneting is done while at work.
I post my (weekly) comic on Friday morning. Mostly this is for personal reasons (for the first couple of years, I posted my comic over the weekend; I found that I never had time to do anything social, or to go on vacation, so I switched it to a weekday). Honestly, I think if you post regularly, an audience will keep up, even if they're not reading the strip at the exact moment you post.
Monday's are best traffic wise but really just pick a day and stick with. People will read it when it suits them anyway. We update Fridays but don't expect too much until Monday. Except this week because we're getting a mountain of fresh traffic out of the blue today.
I usually post the night before close to midnight so folks coming in the offices the next day can find it in their webcomic run.
I honestly don't think it matters, people will pick their own day to visit, and if they visit once a week and you update once a week they will get what they came for.
I think posting your schedule amounts to advertising. That way folks know you'll have a new comic 1, 3, or 15 days a week.
That would be a super-awesome comic.
That would be a super-awesome comic.
It's so awesome it warps the fabric of space-time!
Sorry. I warped the space-time continuum.
Sorry. I warped the space-time continuum. I update one panel 15 days a week. But because space and time are warped they slide into one page on Tuesday and one page on Thursday. And that's fine by me because most of my fave comics are either daily or Mon-Wed-Fri. Funny how that worked out.
Huh? Oh I meant, I don't think it matters which day a week you update, as long as you tell them it's once a week. If somebody wants to view on Wednesdays and you post on Mondays then they'll still get a new comic every Wednesday when they hit the page. That's all I mean. I think the actual choice of day really doesn't matter except to you and your schedule/stress level. Not saying it's not good to tell them-- sure it is. Just saying, I wouldn't worry too much about high-traffic days vs. non high-traffic days etc, people will still arrive when they want to and get the new weekly product.
Very interesting.
Wow, those are all things I hadn't really thought of. Thanks for your thoughts.
I think Aleph makes a significant point about the archival nature of the comic- if the reader likes the comic, they'll look at it whenever they have the chance. That certainly applies to those people who know about your comic and like it, but TWG brings an interesting point about competition and traffic on mondays. I'd like to suggest that maybe it's not competition for viewers, but a better chance if you have links and advertisements. If there was more traffic on an update day, the readers might feel closer to the comic.
Personally, I feel more connected to the author on update days because coming by a comic on the day they put something up gives comics that virtual "new car" smell. It might just be in my head, but just like forums, I feel closer to a post that happened 10 minutes ago rather than 10 days ago. So if you have a forum, conversation is fresh on the doorstep, which might draw people in as well. So Aleph and TWG make valid points. Aleph (and bifsniff) for a general audience, and TWG for newcomers.
I also like Fabricari's sidenote about updating close to midnight. Not for people coming the next day, but on reminding me of several nights where I was up late, then realized it was past midnight and getting excited in hopes that my usual comics have been updated. Midight shift-refresh club right here!
Yes, the author should be taken into account too, more time for Ghastly on Sunday, or save your social life and do it Friday. Both of these things can be taken care of with time management. However I'm still working on that department, so I guess it really is a serious issue at the moment. I propose a theoretical day that exists between the 7 days of the week.. those extra 8 days that Fabricari mentioned to complete the 15 day week. You see, 7 of those days are spent sleeping at night, so we lose them, and the 8th is a hypothetical part of the space time continuum known only to workaholics who work a month in advance. They refuse to share their secrets about it. With all the previous opinions taken into account, I believe that Monday is the best day. Traffic and time seem to settle it into that position.
When I started updating weekly I picked the day (Monday) that the site I got most of my link traffic from updated. Seemed to make sense to choose the day when I would get the most visitors anyways. I've since slipped into updating on Sundays on the theory that I can then guarantee that the next update will actually be there on Monday. Not everyone has their Monday morning at the same time, you know. Apparently some people have them eight days early.
Good point, but this can also be adjusted by the software you use to present your comics. For instance, my site's web scripts and archives are set up so I can post ahead of the 'publish' date and the cartoons only becomes available on the publish date. I wrote my own scripts ('cuz I'm a nerdy programmer) but I believe there are other off-the-shelf publishing scripts that do the same. Eddie
I just realized that I update at midnight Sunday because obviously that is the beginning of the new week. I never gave it any more thought than that.
Of course, due to timezone issues, I actually update at 9pm Saturday now.
Doing a weekly comic is easy when you have a 3 month backlog :twisted:
I think the best thing about having a weekly update is that you can write and draw the comic on a completely different day than the one it updates on. You can give yourself a day or two to look over it, correct typos and inconsistencies in the art. Although you can almost guarantee you'll end up finishing it five minutes before the deadline.
RSS feeds are your friend. Lots of people track updates that way now. So the specific day is less important to them.
I prefer to update Cybertropolis on Monday... but yeah my personal preference is to make certain everything is ready to go by Sunday for the same reason you mention. So much to do... so little time! ACK! :)
Clever! Right On! :)
Indeed - I agree Aleph. :)
Soffed-wear? :?: :?: I do everything by hand.
I would seriously recommend looking into a content management strategy. When you get upwards of 100 strips you will face problems, especially if you have to do something like change your hosting or add navigation links.
PHP for the win. There are over 200 pages on my site and I can change them all with one database entry.
I also agree with the Monday folk. The weekends are always my lowest days for hits, and Mondays have always been pretty high (though my update day has always been my update day). I also, through compulsive stat-checking, have found that a lot of people visit my comic from company networks; i.e. a lot of people (or at least my readers... who i consider the best sort of people :) ) check for updates at work.
i usually update on sundays
i usually update on sundays for the whole "do the comic on saturday" thing.
but also, it goes up sunday, its there all week for people to drop in on if they forgot. plus sunday is like /the/ comic day anyway, dating back to the days of good old fashion printed newspapers.
Malakhim CMS
Our CMS is completely from scratch. Jay whipped it up in vi. Parts of it are nonfunctional at the moment because it used to be coded to be compatible with phpbb's login scheme, but he decided to redo it from the ground up to put in more news functionality and to use our own BB design. The whole Yusuf thing hit us hard because of the side effects that came with munging the dbs, and we were just done dealing with the cruddy support phpBB offers.
Unfortunately, I can't offer to release the CMS for wider use, even the old one we're currently displaying, because we've had cracking attempts before. The reason we're doing our own BB rather than integrating phpBB is because we found the only way to stop exploits is to keep from advertising what's there to attack-- cracking attempts only ever hit the phpBB side of things and never made a dent in any of the rest of the page, our easter eggs and non-phpbb related member content was untouched. As soon as people know the db names and structuring setup, they start hammering away at them, and frankly we just don't have the time or energy to put into keeping them out. If we came under that kind of attack our only option would be to shut down the extras completely.
Mostly I blame Explorer, well-known exploits in Explorer allow users to send difficult-to-track commands as if they were php code, and make life miserable for people using SQL for their page management if people with hostile intent know what to poke at and how to go about poking it.
But I think Jay would be happy to talk strategy and logistics with anybody who came to him for help in putting a CMS together. He's cool that way.
What CMS do you use Aleph?
____
Xaviar Xerexes
I am a Modern Major Generality.
Ain't it the truth? :)
That's like the curse of the webtoonist...
____
Xaviar Xerexes
I am a Modern Major Generality.