Editing your Comic Info

Quickstart Tip

If you're setting up comic_git for the first time and you just want to get started quickly without delving into all comic_git's features, you only need to edit the [Comic Info] and [Links Bar] sections.

When setting up comic_git, there are some critical things you need to do to identify your comic, like give it a name or set up what links go in the Links Bar. comic_git also supports a few extra features that can be enabled for your project, like automatically generating thumbnails for your comic pages. All these settings can be adjusted in the comic_info.ini file in the your_content folder.

comic_git also supports comic_info.toml. The traditional INI file remains the simplest choice for most users and continues to be fully supported. If you want structured lists or plan to use future CMS tooling, see TOML Configuration. When both files exist, comic_info.toml takes precedence as the complete comic configuration.

This is a standard .ini file that may be familiar to you if you've ever edited config files for other programs. If you haven't seen one before, it's just a text file with a special purpose, and you can edit it in Notepad or whichever text editor you're comfortable with.

Inside the file, the options format is very simple: The name of the option and its value, separated by an equals sign (for example, Title = Sample Comic). These options are also separated into sections (for example, [Comic Info]).

Sections are not just helpful categories; the program behind comic_git relies on finding specific options in specific sections. If you put an option in the wrong section or change the name of an option or section, at best comic_git will ignore it, and at worst it'll break your site. Be mindful when adding or deleting things!

Some options listed here may not be present in your comic_info.ini file. These options are not required and may be ignored if you have no need to adjust them.

Each of the sections and their options are described in more detail below.

[Comic Info]

Comic name

• Required

• Value: string: your comic name

This is the name of your comic. The comic name shows up in the tab every time a page from your website is loaded (for example, Page 202 - comic_git Example). It does not need to match the name you gave your repository.

Author

• Required

• Value: string: your authorial name

Whatever name or credit you wish to give for the creation of your comic. It can be a single name, a list of names, a sentence, whatever you want. It's currently used when generating your RSS Feed.

Description

• Required

• Value: string: your description

A short, one-sentence description of your web comic. This will show up in your RSS feed and social media previews.

[Comic Settings]

Engine version

• Required

• Value: string

This is used to determine which version of comic_git is used to build your site. The possible values are:

• Minor version: Set this to 1.1 to receive compatible 1.1 patch releases such as 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 automatically. This is the recommended setting for most users.

• Exact version: To pin one release, use its full version number, such as 1.1.0. Your site will stay on that version until you edit this value again.

• latest: Your site will always get the latest released version of comic_git, even if it's an update that could potentially break your site. If you want to automatically keep up with updates as they come out and don't mind fixing your site to adjust for new versions, this is a good option.

• master: Keep up with every single new change to comic_git, no matter how minor or untested. Only recommended for troubleshooting.

Version releases are tracked on comic_git_engine's Releases page along with any necessary instructions for upgrading version (such as moving from 1.0 to 1.1). Announcements are also made on our Discord server.

Date format

• Required

• Value: string: date format using Python %-substitutions

This controls how dates are normally written in your page files and how comic_git displays them. The default format accepts dates written like July 20, 1969. You can change the format to any you prefer.

When adding a comic Post, the simplest choice is to match the format specified here. comic_git also accepts standard dates such as 1969-07-20 and timestamps such as 1969-07-20T20:17:00Z. It uses the date and time to put your comics in chronological order.

If you use the default format, remember to include the comma after the day!

The following table is a list of common date format strings. You can copy/paste any of these into the Date format option to change what date format to use in your comic files. (See Adding Comic Pages for more info on setting the Post dates for your comics)

Format string	Example
%B %d, %Y	July 16, 1969
%Y-%m-%d	1969-07-16
%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S	Wed, 16 Jul 1969 04:20:00

You can also build your own format strings if you feel comfortable doing so. Use the list of Python %-substitutions to create your preferred date format.

Timezone

• Required

• Value: string: timezone in TZ Identifier format

The timezone for all the dates in your comic. This is important for when comic_git is determining when scheduled posts should be published. For example, if you push out an update at 9pm your time just before the midnight deadline, you don't want comic_git to publish the page right away just because it's past midnight in some other timezone!

All timezones found in the TZ Identifier column on the TZ database time zones Wikipedia page are allowed.

Comic domain

• Optional

• Value: string: URL of domain

• Default: none

If you are building your website locally, and you haven't configured a custom domain, you must set this so that comic_git knows what domain to use to build the URL to link to your comic, for the purposes of things like your RSS feed and your social media preview links. For more details, see Building Your Website On Your Own PC.

This option should include your website's entire domain, subdomain, and top-level domain. Do not include the slash at the end. You may include the "http://" or "https://" if you wish.

Examples: https://ryanvilbrandt.github.io, www.tamberlanecomic.com

Comic subdirectory

• Optional

• Value: string: name of GitHub repo

• Default: none

If you're building your website locally, and you have not set a custom domain, you must set this to the name of your GitHub repository. This allows most of the links on your website to function properly. For more details, see Building your Website on your own PC.

This option should not include leading or trailing slashes.

Examples: comic_git, tamberlane

Theme

• Optional

• Value: string: name of theme folder

• Default: default

The name of the theme folder to use for your site. The theme folder must be located in your_content/themes.

Extra comics

• Optional

• Value: string: see below

• Default: none

A comma-separated list of any extra comics hosted on your site. For more information, see Extra Comics.

Banner image

• Optional

• Value: string: path to image

• Default: /your_content/images/banner.png

This option tells comic_git where to go to find the banner image for the comic, that big image that goes at the top of every page in the default comic_git website layout.

On comic click

• Optional

• Value: string: see below

• Default: Next comic

This option defines the behavior of your site when a user clicks on your comic image when looking at the page for a specific comic. The available options are below:

• Open image: Opens the image file in the current tab.

• Open image window: Opens the image in a new tab or window.

• Overlay: Opens the image in an overlay that appears in the same tab over your current comic page. Clicking the image will dismiss it.

All other options will default to navigating to the next comic, as if the user has clicked the "Next" navigation button.

Allow missing variables in templates

• Optional

• Value: boolean: True or False

• Default: False

By default, if a Jinja template is expecting a variable that it did not receive while the site is building, the template will raise an error and the build will fail.

If you wish to allow for missing variables in your templates, you can set this value to True, and the template will treat any missing variables as empty strings. Note: If you are making custom templates that expect certain variables to be present, setting this to True can cause your templates to not render properly.

Markdown extras

• Optional

• Value string: see below

• Default: none

A comma-separated list of extra settings that are passed into the Markdown parser to change its behavior. See this page for a list of many valid settings.

Note that not all settings are currently supported. For example, settings that require extra configuration alongside the setting name (e.g. breaks).

[Pages]

This is a special section without pre-defined options. This section tells comic_git what extra web pages beyond the standard comic pages to build.

• Format: option = value

• The option on the left of the equals sign is the template file name to use. Do not include the extension; if you have a cast.html page, you'd only put cast here.

• The value on the right of the equals sign is the title of the page once it's built.

The section has been pre-populated with pages that are commonly included in webcomics. If you wish to remove a default web page like tagged pages or the Latest page, delete that line from this section.

For more info on adding pages to your website, see Themes.

[Links Bar]

This is another special section without pre-defined options. This section tells comic_git how to build out the Links Bar.

• Format: text = url

• The text on the left of the equals sign is the text displayed on the link.

• The url on the right of the equals sign is the URL the link should go to. Any URLs that start with / will link to a page on your website. All other links will be treated as external links to other websites.

This section has been pre-populated with common links. Feel free to change the URLs to existing links, delete any lines you don't want to use, and add lines you want to use as links.

Open Links in a New Tab

By default, all links in the links bar will open in the current tab. This is good for when the user is navigating around the website, like going to the Archive or Infinite Scroll. But if you're linking to external sites like a Shop or Patreon, you'll want the links to open in a new tab.

To set a link to open in a new tab, you just need to put a ^ at the start of the url value. This works both for links to pages on your site or to external links.

Example

Infinite Scroll = ^/infinite_scroll/
Shop = ^https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Use Images instead of Link Text

If you want to use an image in place of text for the link, just replace the link text with a URL for an image file (determined by the extension at the end of the URL). comic_git recognizes the following image file extensions: jpg, jpeg, png, tif, tiff, gif, bmp, webp, webv, svg, eps.

This URL must not include https:// at the beginning (or any other protocol identifier). Just exclude the https:// (e.g., c10.patreonusercontent.com/path/to/patreon_logo.png), or if you want to reference a file from your own site, you can just use a URL that starts with / (e.g., /your_content/images/logo.png).

Example

/your_content/images/shop_logo.png = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
c10.patreonusercontent.com/path/to/patreon_logo.png = https://www.patreon.com/comic_git

[Navigation Bar]

Use images

• Optional

• Value: boolean: True or False

• Default: False

When set to true, this will replace the First, Previous, Next, and Latest navigation links on the comic pages with the icons found in your_content/images/navigation_icons/. You can change which icons are used by replacing these files with your own, or keep this setting on false to just use text links.

Above comic

• Optional

• Value: boolean: True or False

• Default: False

When set to true, this will place a navigation bar above the comic.

Below comic

• Optional

• Value: boolean: True or False

• Default: True

When set to true, this will place a navigation bar below the comic but above the blurb containing the comic title, post date, post text, etc.

Below blurb

• Optional

• Value: boolean: True or False

• Default: False

When set to true, this will place a navigation bar below the blurb containing the comic title, post date, post text, etc.

[Archive]

Use thumbnails

• Required

• Value: boolean: True or False

When this value is False, the Archive page displays entries in an unordered list, broken up by storyline. When it is True, the Archive displays a thumbnail grid. When images are not listed separately, each page uses its explicit page thumbnail or the conventional _thumbnail.jpg. When images are listed separately, comic_git can resolve or generate a thumbnail for each image.

You can either create your own thumbnails or use comic_git's built-in thumbnail generation as described in the [Image Reprocessing] section below.

Date format

• Optional

• Value: string: date format using Python %-substitutions

• Default: The value you provided for the Date format option in Comic Settings

This is the format that post dates are displayed in when Use thumbnails is set to True. This is defined separately from page date formats because longer post dates can screw up the spacing of the thumbnails in the grid. It accepts the same inputs as the Date format in the [Comic Settings] section.

Show Uncategorized comics

• Optional

• Value: boolean: True or False

• Default: True

By default, if you don't give a comic page a Storyline value in its info.ini file, it will be placed in an "Uncategorized" section in your Archive page below all your other comic pages. If you wish for these uncategorized pages to just not show up on your Archive page, set this value to False.

List images separately

• Optional

• Value: boolean: True or False

• Default: False

When this is False, the Archive has one entry for each comic page. Set it to True to give every image on a page its own Archive entry. Show text-only posts controls whether pages without images are also included when this option is True.

Show text-only posts

• Optional

• Value: boolean: True or False

• Default: True

Controls whether pages without comic images appear when List images separately is True. When images are not listed separately, text-only pages are always included.

Image title fallback

• Optional

• Value: Page title or Filename

• Default: Page title

Controls the Archive title for an image that does not define its own title. Page title uses the page title when available; Filename uses the image filename without its extension.

[Image Reprocessing]

Create thumbnails

• Required

• Value: boolean: True or False

If set to True, a thumbnail can be generated from the first image of each comic page. The conventional page thumbnail is named _thumbnail.jpg. When Archive List images separately is True and thumbnails are enabled, comic_git can also generate separate thumbnails for later images. SVG and EPS comic images cannot be converted into thumbnails automatically; add a JPEG or PNG thumbnail yourself if you want one for those images.

Thumbnail size

• Optional

• Value: string: see below

• Default: 100w

The size of the thumbnail to be generated. This can be a width/height pair in pixels like 100, 36, a percentage of the size of the original image like 10%, a set height in pixels (100h), or a set width in pixels (100w). For the latter two options, comic_git will keep the aspect ratio of the original image the same, adjusting to fit just your defined height or width.

Overwrite existing images

• Optional

• Value: boolean: True or False

• Default: False

When set to False and a generated thumbnail already exists in the comic page's folder, comic_git will not recreate it. When set to True, comic_git regenerates conventional and automatically named thumbnails when thumbnail creation is enabled. A thumbnail filename explicitly configured for a page or image is user-owned and is never overwritten.

[RSS Feed]

This section is covered in Adding an RSS Feed. If you don't need to create an RSS feed, you can leave this section alone.

Advanced RSS options, including RSS feeds for Extra Comics, are also described there.

[Transcripts]

Enable transcripts

• Required

• Value: boolean: True or False

When set to True, comic_git will attempt to create a Transcripts section below every comic that has transcripts files provided for it. A transcript file is a text file with the name of the language as its filename, e.g. English.txt. The transcript file can contain plain text, unicode (for those fancy accents and non-roman alphabets), HTML tags, and Markdown.

Default language

• Optional

• Value: string: name of a transcript file

• Default: English

The transcript .txt file with the specified name is placed at the top of the list of transcripts. Whenever the comic page is loaded, this transcript is the one that's automatically loaded.

Load transcripts from comic folder

• Optional

• Value: boolean: True or False

• Default: True

When set to True, comic_git will search in each comic page's folder for any .txt files (except for post.txt). Any it finds is added to the list of available transcripts for that comic page.

When set to False, comic_git will not look in the comic folders. If Transcripts folder (see next option) is defined, comic_git will still look in that folder for any transcripts regardless of this option's setting.

Transcripts folder

• Optional

• Value: string: name of transcripts folder

• Default: none

If you wish to move the transcripts to their own folder, you can define that folder here. Each page must have a separate folder that matches the comic folder name. For example, if you set the transcripts folder to be your_content/transcripts, then the transcript files for Page 197 should be found at your_content/transcripts/Page 197/. This path is always relative to the root of the repository.

Both this option and Load transcripts from comic folder can be set, so you can have transcripts in both places. Files in your transcripts folder take precedence over transcript files in your comic folder with the same name.

[Google Analytics]

Tracking ID

• Optional

• Value: string: your Google Analytics 4 tag ID

• Default: none

This option is retained for sites already using comic_git's Google Analytics integration. When set, comic_git immediately loads the Google tag on every page. It does not provide a consent banner or another way for visitors to accept, decline, or later change their analytics choice.

Do not enable this option unless you have separately provided the privacy disclosures and consent behavior appropriate for your site and its visitors. Universal Analytics IDs beginning with UA- no longer collect data; current Google Analytics 4 IDs normally begin with G-.

[Webring]

This section is covered in Webring, and decides how to add a webring to your website. This is an optional section.