Now that I’ve been using Grawlix for a while I thought I should share my thoughts about it :)
First of all, I like it a lot better than the patchwork solution offered on Wordpress. I dislike Wordpress with a passion as it feels very bloated and not really comic friendly to me. The sleek design and focus on comics is what I really enjoy with Grawlix! I did have a few troubles with the .htaccess file in the beginning, but the support responded pretty fast and the issue could be resolved soon.
But there are a few things that I noticed on the front end while using Grawlix so far. It’s nothing “game breaking” and the suggestions I’ll make here are mostly cosmetic things :) I hope I’m expressing things clearly for everyone, the last thing I want are misunderstandings. I also don’t know if some of them are planned for the future, if they were consciously excluded for the time being or if there are some workarounds. But I figured it wouldn't hurt to write them down anyway :D
Hide navigation: I’d find an option to hide the navigation buttons for previous pages on the first page/ further pages on the currently last page very helpful. In my opinion it’d serve the reader very well as a help for orientation, at least I always thought so when reading webcomics. I often find myself clicking the navigation arrows multiple times before realising I reached the current end. An alternative to hidden navigation might be an option to have alternate pictures that can be greyed out for example (or whatever the artist likes).
Latest page: I personally am a big fan of having a static home page and direct the visitors to the latest page in order to avoid spoilers. So when permalinking to the latest page the link in the address bar of the browser says “/comic?sort=latest” at the end, this kind of messes up with Disqus comments, though. (Can’t speak for the other comment scripts.) The comments are not staying with the appropriate comic page but stay in the comment section of the latest page, even after a page update. (In short: I upload a page, get a comment on it, upload another page and have the comment from the previous upload still on the “/comic?sort=latest” page.) Maybe there is a way to redirect to the currently latest page from the archive that I haven’t seen yet, but if not there may be a way to implement it in future versions?
Auto post on social media via API: Since not every reader is subscribing to the RSS feed or checking the websites regularly but use social media to stay on top with the updates I usually spend a while to update the social media sites after uploading a new page. Having the possibility to post on social media simultaneously to submitting a page might be a huge time saver. (Like having those options beneath the page upload/transcript box.)
Journal function aside from the comic pages: I personally dislike large text walls beneath comic pages, so when there’s major news I tend to write a separate journal. So I figured having a journal function that works parallel to the comic pages might be a neat feature. It’d also allow people to comment on said news without clutching the comment section beneath the pages with things unrelated to the actual page.
As I said it's not "game breaking" to me to not have this features, I'd just think of them as nice ones to have if it is possible :)
Overall I’m very happy with Grawlix so far and will be curious to see where the development heads!. It is well-rounded already and I like the focus on comics. There are a few nitpicks from my side, but Grawlix has a lot of potential, which I'm sure the hard-working coders will use!
Greetings