Category Archives: Useful Information

Why Dreamhost.com is a good option for webhosting for cartoonists

Cartooning Lessons, Lessons, Useful Information

A number of you have asked me what I recommend for a web host. For a long time I was using yahoo webhosting, which worked fairly well but was quite overpriced, and had some other annoying aspects that I won’t go into. I recently switched my sites over to Dreamhost.com, which I definitely highly recommend for your webhosting needs.

First and foremost I recommend it because they pay generously for new customers sent their way, which will hopefully pay for our hosting expenses.* However, beyond the dirty, filthy lucre, they are offering a pretty amazing deal, they have by far the best deals on webhosting I’ve ever seen. I would strongly recommend them without the monetary incentive (that said, I would recommend them even more strongly if they offered me money and chocolate and a flat screen television with surround sound and a porkpie hat).

If you have the cash to pay 2 years in advance you can get hosting for $7.95 a month, which is extremely cheap… prices vary depending on what you want, but the $7.95 account (or $9.95 a month without the 2 year prepayment) will give the average cartoonist much more than they need for webhosting (note there is a $49.95 setup fee on all accounts).

The basic account includes 4800 MB of storage space, which increases weekly by 40 MB. It includes a very user friendly web panel that greatly helps for managing your website. You can ftp to your sites in your browser. You can install all sorts of components into your site very easily (with the click of a button, basically), like a blog or a phpbb discussion board similar to the one on this site. You can have up to 600 email accounts at your domain, and you can set up webmail. You can set up email lists and email discussion lists. You can host as many different domains as you want with no additional cost (other than the cost of registering the domain, which you can do there for $9.95 a year… the initial account comes with one free domain). They have extensive support information. They have all kinds of other stuff that you can read about in detail on their site.

Most importantly for cartoonists, they have no problem with smut! Here is their policy:

Can I have an adult website or dreambook?

Of course!

DreamHost does not restrict the content of sites hosted on our servers, except if that content is illegal in the United States. Illegal content includes:

blatant copyright infringement
libel
child pornography
Other than this, go crazy!

This is not the case with most hosts… like Yahoo, for example, which could have shut down the Conspiracy site at any time based on some jam comic with a wee willy hangus johnson dangling in it, had they ever took notice of one.

I would guess most of you would be very happy with this service… I defnitely am. Anyhow, if you are looking for hosting, and want to benefit this site in the process use this link.

If you are looking for hosting and don’t want to benefit us, just go directly to dreamhost.com.

*Full disclosure: How generously will they pay us, you may wonder? Either a one time payment of $97 (plus $5 for each person the person I send their way sends their way), or 10% of each of the payments a person I send their way makes to them, and 5% of the payments the people they send to them send in.

You can easily do this as well if you use them when you inevitably end up recommending people to them.

Disclaimer: I just started using Dreamhost in July, so my opinion could change. Finding negative posts in google by putting the words “Dreamhost” and “sucks” in the search field isn’t hard (which is true of most companies, I’m sure)… However, I think you are highly unlikely to find more bang for your buck out there, and for a cartoonist on a low budget- which is to say: as a cartoonist- this seems like a pretty ideal solution.

Some Tutorials and Useful Information For Cartoonists Around the Web

Cartooning Lessons, Lessons, Useful Information

Here are some nice tutorials and other info I’ve run across:

RE: A Guide to Reproduction: A Primer on Xeorgraphy, Silkscreening and Offset Printing

Printing Comics

Overview of Copyright and Fair Use

10 Ways to Promote Yourself (there are other good articles down the right hand side of this blog)

Cheap Screen Printing Tutorial

Seven Steps to Getting Published

We have some other useful tutorials and information in our resources section. I’ll be adding links to some of the above resources there as well.

The Mini Comix Coop

mini-comics, Useful Information

Conspirator Doug McNamara was conspiring with other cartoonists long before he joined us… his Mini Comix Coop provides a very useful and fun service for cartoonists. You can simply send Doug 10 copies of your latest mini, and he will trade your comic for you with a bunch of other cartoonists who have sent their work in… generally you’ll get about 10 unique mini-comics from different artists for the ten you sent in. You can read more about how he arranges it here.

PENTEL POCKET BRUSH PENS AT WET PAINT

Minneapolis, Useful Information

It was not easy to do… they have traveled thousands of miles through rugged terrain, and over an ocean, and at great peril… but the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, “The Cartoonist’s Best Friend” is now available in the Twin Cities. The casualties were regrettable, but we no longer have to rely on the black market to acquire the legendary brush pen, which, in addition to being the ultimate inking tool also cures warts, works as a dowsing tool, and can be used to control weaker minds. Thanks much to Tim at Wet Paint Art for making the effort to get us a supply of these difficult to find pens in town… Tim is also putting together an email list for cartoonists & other artists to keep them posted on art supply sales at Wet Paint, so if you’re interested, email him and let him know… email tim at wetpaintart.com… only using @ instead of at with no spaces.

ADDED 5/3: I just heard from Tim that the pens are selling at Wet Paint currently for a very reasonable $18… he is still researching finding a steady supplier so he will hopefully be able to bring the price down further.

Nine Panel Shuffle

Projects, Useful Information

I was thinking this may appeal to the same sorts of people that 24 Hour Comics Day appeals to…

“Nine Panel Shuffle” is a new free Flash tool I’ve built for cartoonists to use. Using Flash, it takes nine panels and places them in a random order in a nine panel grid. It includes a “shuffle” button which rearranges the panels in a different random order. You can see it in action here.

Think of it as the comics equivalent of poetic structures like limericks or haiku… inherently limited, following a defined structure, but potentially interesting within those limitations.

I intend to have a section of the Conspiracy site that will showcase Nine Panel Shuffles built by different cartoonists. If you decide to pursue a Nine Panel Shuffle, please let me know where your work gets published, so I can link to it… if you have nowhere to publish it on the web, you can probably talk me into posting it for you too.