Information for Content Owners

This page is intended to provide content owners with information on how Comic Alert! works, what our goals are, and answer some of the concerns you may have. On this page we also provide information on how you can control the Comic Alert! features for each of your comics.This page is a little long-winded, we apologize for that up front, but we're very passionate about the services we provide and want you to be well informed before making your decisions.

• What exactly is Comic Alert?
• How did my comic get here? I didn't add it!
• Do you link directly to my comic images?
• Do you display my comics on this site?
• Why do you display thumbnails of my comic images on your site?
• Why is there a Comic Alert! frame above my comics when viewing them through Comic Alert!?
• How often do you hit my site? Does Comic Alert! cost me bandwidth?
• I don't like the votes / reviews my comic is receiving, how do I change/remove them?
• Do you offer a way I can notify Comic Alert! when there's an update?
• I have questions / concerns not answered here.

What exactly is Comic Alert?

Comic Alert!, in a nutshell, is a notification service that tells users when their favorite comics have been updated, and provides links to those pages. We also offer a range of features that build on that basic functionality, and help users to find new comics they didn't know about.

Comic Alert! was built as an alternative to many of the gray (some would say black) area web comic parsers. The ones that cost you bandwidth, skip your ads, and reformat your comics into their own pages - sometimes without even crediting the source.

The vision behind Comic Alert! is to provide a solution that's both legal and provides a better user experience, while providing artists and other content owners with the credit they deserve and linking to their sites for the comics. If we build a system that's better in every way, people will use it instead of the quasi-legal gray market sources for web comics.

This page was built specifically to explain the features we offer to you, the content owners, what our goals are, and how we build our features to increase your property rights vs taking them away.

How did my comic get here? I didn't add it!

There's a couple ways it could have happened. One of our users (and one of your readers) may have requested it, because they wanted to be notified when you updated your comic. We also have several web bots that browse the net looking for new comics to add, and yours might have been found that way.

Do you link directly to my comic images?

No. We will never provide this functionality, as it violates our core goal of promoting your comics. We want you to continue receiving ad revenue. We want people to visit and view YOUR site. We will link to the page showing the comic in question only, never to the image itself.

Do you display my comics on this site?

No. All we do is link the user to the page on your site where they can view the comic they've selected (see previous question). We may provide tiny, cropped thumbnails of some comic images on some pages (see next question).

Why do you display thumbnails of my comic images on your site?

We're experimenting with a new feature on Comic Alert! that displays tiny thumbnails of your recent comics. Our reasoning for this, and how it all works, is noted below. Again, this is an experiment on our part, and we would really appreciate your opinions on the matter. Thumbnails are currently only shown on the "Recommended" sidebar area (you must be logged in and have a few comics in your favorites list before this will appear), but if they prove popular, and the web comic artist community approves, we may consider expanding this functionality.

We show thumbnails because people identify images and mentally process them faster than text links. Show a thumbnail of a comic they regularly read and people recognize it and want to see more. Show a thumbnail of a comic they've never seen before, but that looks interesting, and they are more likely to check it out. In short this results in more clickthroughs on an image than a text link. And more clicks means more visitors to your site, and (if they like what they see) more regular readers.

This is especially true when trying to get people to read new comics, and the reason we chose this feature to demo the thumbnail functionality. The current "recommended" sidebar, without the thumbnail, would be a pretty poor sale for the comic being featured, but with the thumbnail it "pops" and creates a strong desire to learn more by clicking in it.

We host the thumbnails on our servers, so there's no bandwidth cost to you. We keep the thumbnails small so that readers can get a glimpse, but they must visit your site to actual read the comic. And we crop them (if necessary) to the first frame so that your visual gags are not given away until they user visits the site. We do not keep full resolution copies of your images anywhere on our servers, so we cannot (and will not) redistribute them in any way.

As with all the value added comic features on Comic Alert!, you, as a content owner, can specify that the thumbnails be disabled for your comic(s). In such cases a "Banned" icon is shown instead. We strongly encourage you to consider our thumbnails as free banner ads for your comics, but if you really don't like the idea of our thumbnails you can disable them in the Artist Control Panel (if you're a registered as an artist on Comic Alert!) or you can contact us directly and request they be removed.

Why is there a Comic Alert! frame above my comics when viewing them through Comic Alert!?

We have a feature called Comic Alert! Tools (currently in beta) which, when activated by the user, displays a small (50 pixel high) banner frame at the top of every comic page that the user sees when clicking a Comic Alert! link. This frame allows the user to perform certain actions, such as voting on the comic they're reading. These features (such as voting) are designed to increase your comics visibility on the Comic Alert! web site (assuming of course the users like your work) which will draw more viewers and in turn more page views and more regular readers for you.

As with all the comic based features on Comic Alert!, you, as a content owner, can specify that the Tools frame not be shown on your comics. We honestly believe it will help promote your comic and your site and draw more viewers for you, but if you're set against that we respect your decision to eliminate this feature. To do so visit the Artist Control Panel if you're a registered as an artist on Comic Alert!, or you can contact us directly and request the tools frame be deactivated for your comics.

Be aware though, that the Tools frame is required for many of the features that help promote your comic on our site - if you disable it, you disable all those features as well. This is also true if you include Javascript code on your site that breaks your page out of any frame set, essentially accomplishing the same thing.

How often do you hit my site? Does Comic Alert! cost me bandwidth?

We're very conscious of bandwidth concerns, both for your sake and ours (monitoring thousands of sites means we want to be as frugal as possible). If a comic is updated regularly we will hit your site a maximum of 4 times a day (the exact times are determined by an algorithm that attempts to decrease the checks if possible, usually only once or twice a day). If your comic hasn't been updated in a week or two the rate drops to once a day.

Our engine detects and uses both ETags and Last-Modified headers, so if your site uses them each hit that doesn't result in a new comic will only use a couple hundred bytes from your server.

In short Comic Alert! acts much like any responsibly programmed search engine bot - we won't cost you anything more than a user hitting your site once or twice a day.

I don't like the votes / reviews my comic is receiving, how do I change/remove them?

The votes and reviews are provided by users - we can't remove or edit them simply because they're unfavorable. Should profanity, slander, racism, etc appear in a review we will certainly look at removing individual reviews, but otherwise you're stuck with it - sorry!

Do you offer a way I can notify Comic Alert! when there's an update?

We're working on a couple of solutions in this regard. Both a web based manual entry, and an XML based automated update notification system. If you're interested in using either please let us know and we'll add you to the beta test list when it's ready.

I have questions / concerns not answered here.

We are very responsive to the concerns of content owners for the comics we list here. Please contact us and we'll respond quickly with an answer to your question.