Ok, I doubt there's going to be much interest in the forum right now, but I just thought I'd try and start things of...
Hosted comics VS dedicated comic sites

Putting your comic up with a comic host often gets you attention a bit easier, immediate access to a community of your peers, often the hard stuff like webdesign and programming is all done for you, you're automatically listed with search engines, they're nice free services...
-However, comic hosts only seem to be about 70% reliable. Like a nymphomaniac, they will often go down on you. :lol:
If you build up a loyal readership and a bit of a reputation based around your hosted site, you can risk losing it all at a stroke.

Setting up a dedicated site often means reliability, you can have it up there and going strong for as long as you can afford it. You have the control. Links to you, a loyal readership and all the rest can easily stay with you through thick and thin that way.
The disadvantages are you have to do your own programming, webdesign etc. You have to put yourself on search engines, build your own community, and pay money to a host. You are all alone...

So what's best in your opinion?

There are other issues like status from having you comic hosted a certain way... And often artists will like to spread their comics over a number of sites, hosted and dedicated.

I personally like being part of a community and usually do not mind being on a comic host. My personal solution to the issue of reliability is to get a reliable domain and just switch it to somewhere else if a site goes down.

These days, people are trying to get the best of both worlds. Hence you have collectives where people are hosting themselves but at the same time consider themselves part of one group. The idea is to pool everyone's readership into one and help each other out.

Personally, I think that while this sounds great in theory, there are only a few collectives that are actually successfully. Simply slapping a label on your site about how you're part of this and that isn't going to do it. You really have to work as a collective, promote yourself as a collective and organize events as a collective.

You also have people who have mirrors but on sites that require minimum maintenance. I think this is why comic hosts like DrunkDuck and SmackJeeves are able to lure comic artists to put their stuff on their site even though they have their own host. It's minimum maintenance and hardly a hassle.

What do I personally think is best? Get your own site and mirror. Although I think people should be careful about where they mirror their work. Don't just throw your work around like it's a dime a dozen, find a mirror that's not only easy to maintain but looks good.

.: Black Kitty :.

I think that hosted sites are EXCELLENT for beginners. They can get their feet wet, find out of webcomicing is right for them and do it all with a minimum of fuss and headache (and the perk about what DD used to be was the instant feedback -- like mana from heaven even).

Dedicated sites are for folks that can get the site to pay for itself.

~Liriel

Hmm, Great points.
I really love the community aspect myself of hosted sites. That was the best bit about DD.

Great idea about the domain name.

Personally, I like both of them. I agree with Liriel and Black Kitty, I myself have my own site but, I like to be part of a community just because my site sucks. Unfortunately, I've already made the mistake in throwing my comic's around, though I'll be making a lot of changes over the next few weeks.

Well unless you count Keenspot comics, all the really popular comics have their own sites. And Keenspot is more of a loose connection between sites.

Hosting sites are nice for beginners. It's where I got my start all those years ago...*gets misty eyed*

Hey wait a minute...it's only been a year and a bit. What am I talking about?

I would prefer to be hosted than a dedicated comic site. I kind of feel lonely having a dedicated site. I like the community feel of hosted comic site. But that's just my personal opinion.

Hosted!

Experiance... Drunkduck! Thanks to this place, I found lots of cool friends and it was fun creating comics for such a cool community!

This place was a great webhosting site and I hope it will remain as such after rebuild itself to be stronger.

Hosted sites make you feel that someone is reading your stuff and giving his/her comment and it's a very nice feeling.

This must be why I, as a dedicated site person, have become such a webcomic community forum whore XD

Nice thing about that though is that when I get tired or fed up, I can go home 8)

~Liriel

I thought a lot about this earlier. Because, I realized a person could have their own comic site, domain name and all, for around $50. But does that mean a person should?

Dedicated comic sites are good for people who:
- have already built up a regularly returning fanbase.
- are at the point where they can make money through merchandise.
- are looking to go "professional".
- can create a good-looking and well-functioning site, or have access to somebody who can... or can pay somebody to do it.

Hosting sites are good for people who:
- are doing the comic as a small hobby.
- don't want to worry about programming or setting up a site.
- don't yet have a fanbase.
- need an easy way to promote their comic.

For ME, the obvious choice was hosting site. I don't plan to be the next Penny Arcade... I don't even plan to make money off my comic. And I don't want to worry about spreading my URL all over the internet or joining top comic lists and begging people to vote.

Having a dedicated site means I can post generally everything and anything I could possibly think of posting. If I wanted to post a picture of dead babies in a garbage bag, dead babies in a garbage bag could be on my front page. Unlike on DD, where dead babies in a garbage bag would get a stern warning that I would take very seriously and consider.

It also has allowed me to take my web design a step up, my about me page is what I am most proud of on the new site.

But close enough, LOL :)

prefer hosted because the community is really cool and you'd know that people are reading and leaving feedbacks and that is good!

Id prefer to be hosted, as previously said theres a community so you wont feel so lonely and all, plus you dont have to pay for anything, but like the majority of stuff on the net that is free it sucks. (Excluding DD of course)

i like the sense of community, and meeting people.. but i still want to get my own site. that would be fun. it's encouraging that i've been doing this for six months.. which is nothing to a lot of people on here but it just kind of started out as something fun to do, and then to see if i could keep coming up with a new comic every day.. i dunno, ah lahk.

I just wanted a free place to put my pages for my family and friends and where I wouldn't have to do a bunch of coding.

The community stuff is something I didn't even think about (in fact, if I had considered it, I would have hesitated; people scare me) ... but I like it. I still can't figure out how that happened.

we keep the trouble makers out ^_^

Comic host. I like the community, the people, and the readership availability.

...

It's also pretty cool that it's free.

Your own site is too lonely. I like the community aspect; I started in Impromanga after all.

I draw webcomics so I can draw comics, not so I can spend hours doing a bunch of html coding.

HA! This is one of the oldest threads on this version of DD. I posted it in the debate section when we'd come back after the site was deleted (by the F**ken moron hosts). At that stage the place was just a message board...

Anyway, that was about 2 years ago now, almost. These days things are a little different, it's not only hosted comics on Keenspot that are considered serious stuff; hosting has become acceptable (if not desirable), for pro comics and I think DD has been at the forefront of that because of Platinum.

Anyway, a lot of us now have our own dedicated sites, we host here, and we have domain names. I do all three and I consider my DD site to be my main site. :)

I don't see the point of having your own domain if you can do everything on DD. What's the point (aside from being able to sell mugs n' shirts)?

Domain names are important:
*Makes it a lot easier to tell people your site address, and easier for people to remember and find.
*They're very useful if a host goes down or you need to change hosts for some reason: you just redirect it to your new host. People who know the address will still be able to see your comic as usual and never know that anything happened.

i like free things so i'm for someone footing the bill :)

I'd like to be ABLE to survive with a hosted webcomic if you know what I mean, but I can't lol. But I enjoy the Duck enough for now ^__^.

i started out with my own site. once i found DD i gave up my own site because it cost money, i could make cool things like DD has like message boards and comments. also i had to manually update the site. DD just has better tools than i know how to make and i cant afford to pay someone to make them for me.

That's why you make friends with people who can do stuff like that. Go to your local library and find yourself a nerd. They are usually in little cardboard boxes, sometimes all alone, sometimes with it's brethren. Take him home and give him love.

or break down and become a nerd yourself.

I have my own site, and two-community mirrors.

I prefer my own site to the community ones for the most part. It's completely under my control, I don't have to deal with other users who may be jerks, and when I want to add something or enhance the site, I can just do it instead of waiting for new additions on a community site to come about.

Plus, i am really into designing sites, and DD's site-editing is just too limited for someone like me (so much so I don't even bother with DD layouts).

See? Befriend hpkomic. That's how it's done!

For those of you wanting to run your own webcomic on your own site, I suggest trying Comicpress , which is a wordpress plugin developed by Tyler Martin.

I use it myself for hpkomics.com and it's incredibly solid since it is based on the wordpress CMS. With a little tweaking in regards to the layout, you could have a nice webcomic site of your own with comments, RSS feeds and other pages generated on the fly in the default page-editor.