Old Gallery replaced, New Gallery finished
The new Gallery is finally done! A visually superior way to browse artwork in Cat Nine compared to browsing the blog categories/tags!
The artwork inside galleries are now tagged and titled correctly, and clicking them will take you to its associated blog post so you can comment, share, etc. The same goes for the random art widget in the left sidebar, although the “Cat Nine Fan Art” widget will still take you to the Cat Nine Fan Art Gallery since most of them don’t have blog posts. I’ve also added a new random art widget for mobiles too; it’s located in the footer.
The downside is clicking on them won’t bring up the lightbox anymore (except for artwork in the Cat Nine Fan Art Gallery), but I didn’t want that to happen in the first place since people can’t leave comments, and well, it doesn’t increase pageviews.
I also had to split the galleries into 50 images each. There’s something weird going on with the Photo Gallery plugin I’m using if I try to manually reorder images if there are more than 50 images in a gallery.
They’ve fixed it by now. I’ve combined the three Cat Nine Art galleries into one.

Kalea (The Depths)
on April 22, 2021Otterly-cute! Check out Kalea and other cuties from The Depths (NSFW) comic!
This is an art exchange so they drew Myan in turn. Check out Myan in their page and moonabel the artist! Thanks so much you guys!
Haliyans… the Movie?
Or maybe not, they’re not that shameless to be maskless… and have a score of 2/10 ! Totally stealing some of their “outfits” for later Haliyan characters though.
I found this while researching something for artwork that I’ll post later.
Fixing old comments
I’ve been cleaning and fixing the older comments bit-by-bit since I’ve learned to modify the comments through PHP. I’ve finished from page 1 to 90, but it’s a lot of work for not much reward so I might not continue.
Most of those unorganized comments were caused by Livefyre Comments, the comment system Cat Nine was using before March 2017/page 122. What’s worse is it didn’t include images nor image links when it synced with WordPress’ own comment system so those images are lost forever. That’s the reason why some of those old comments look empty or just @ mentions a commenter.
Thankfully, Disqus included image links and formatted the comments for WordPress properly so I likely don’t have to fix any comments after March 2017/page 122 even after disabling Disqus.
Comic archives now readable
I’ve styled the comic archives to be more readable, now it’s a great way to read up to 10 comic pages at once! I’ve added links to the Complete Comic Archive and each Episode’s archive (e.g. Ep.5 Archive) to the Archives page.
Unfortunately, I still have no idea how to automatically add the  And yes, if you remove ?order=asc
query string to the Episode links when reading individual comic pages so it’ll still display the default order (descending).?order=asc
from the URL, it will display the posts in the default order, if you need to for some reason.
Thank you BlueDavrial! I got the idea from when he asked how to rearrange blog posts when searching a while ago.
(4/11/2021) I figured it out! Episode links below comic pages should display in ascending order from now on.
Disqus replaced with wpDiscuz
The Disqus plugin hasn’t been automatically syncing with Cat Nine’s WordPress comments so I’ve disabled it for now and used this as an opportunity to try wpDiscuz. So far, I like it better since wpDiscuz actually uses WordPress’ native commenting system while adding some great features.
Pros
- It’s not a third-party website so it should load the comments faster.
- I learned a bit of SQL so I have more control over the comments. Now I can fix or modify multiple comments. Don’t worry, I won’t abuse this power!
- I’m planning to pay for some add-ons for it in the future. The most notable is the Emoticons add-on for the built-in emoji palette… and custom stickers! I’ll definitely add the Discord emojis as stickers later if I get it.
- Guests can now comment without an account, although they’ll still need a name, email, and click on the reCAPTCHA. Logged-in users won’t need nor see the reCAPTCHA. Might change this to the invisible reCAPTCHA if I get that add-on.
- Badges depending on your role, particularly for patrons. I can style them too for additional bling, though I’ll reserve that for higher tiers.
- I’ve finished setting stuff up so you can log-in with Facebook, Twitter, Google, Patreon, WordPress, and Disqus (only available in the comment form). Or you can just register if you don’t want to use any of these or want to set your own username.
Be warned, using any of the log-ins mentioned might use that account’s profile pic.Just installed a plugin that allows you to upload a profile pic. Hope it works!- You can also sync your FB, Twitter, and Google account to your account in your profile page.
- Users and guests can add a link to their website when commenting.
- Possibly more features if I get the add-on bundle. I’ll likely use these two:
- Points/reputation system for frequent and/or highly upvoted commenters, which award badges.
- Embed stuff from Twitter, Youtube, and etc.
Cons
- Your profile pic might be missing if you didn’t have an account here in Cat Nine, or if you didn’t have an email associated with Gravatar when you commented. I might be able to fix them upon request or if you log-in here.
- I’ve disabled uploading media since my webhost has limited space. The only way you can post images is by posting the image’s URL.
- Have to agree/check the Terms and Privacy policy checkbox before commenting, but you’ll never see it again afterward.
- Lacks some features compared to Disqus until I get the add-on for it.
Because of APO (mentioned below), you might have to refresh the page after logging in to see that you’re actually logged-in. To make it more obvious you’re logged-in, I’ve activated the admin bar again for logged-in users. If you can’t see the admin bar, you’re not logged-in or have to refresh the page.
You might need to resubscribe to notifications
I moved from HTTP to HTTPS so I had to reconfigure some stuff in the website, particularly the notifications. You can just subscribe again if the pop-up shows up, but now you can also do it manually yourself through your browser’s Site settings.
Faster speeds with Automatic Platform Optimization by Cloudflare
It apparently makes WordPress sites faster so I’m trying it out for a month. Hopefully, it speeds things for you guys and worth the $5/month. Thanks for helping out by voting on the poll below!
[poll removed, thanks for voting!]

Cowgirl Bikini Rallidae
on March 20, 2021This just in: moo!

Another one joins the herd! HD version here

Cowgirl Bikini Hibi-Hibi
on March 18, 2021Milkmaid, maid milk, maid milking, or maid milkers?

nyoom
on March 17, 2021Look at her go! Spent too much time again for details that won’t be seen in a new animated emoji… that I can’t even use.
More website stuff. Back to work on the comic after this.
- I know I said I’d change the Aside artwork posts to Image format gradually, but I’ve changed and added the appropriate links to all of them.
- All (three 😆) of the NSFW artwork I’ve done have been uploaded to and have pixiv links now. 😉
- Changed the blog posts displayed on the homepage/recent posts from 20 to 10 to make loading a little faster.
- I can now change the image sizes for Image posts. If it’s thumbnail-sized, it’s likely it will take you to the appropriate link instead of opening a larger version of the image.
- I use Font Awesome for the icons, but the icon kit is loaded after everything else on the page are loaded and there’s a 10k pageviews/month limit. So, I changed from using externally loaded kits to .svg so it’s faster. But because of that, I have to credit them and link to their license properly so I made a new Credits page. I’ve only changed the icons in the top navigation menu for now and had to adjust the CSS for them.
- Added pixiv icon to the top navigation menu.