TheLazylonewolf on March 6, 2021

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.

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Bonus artwork of Myan as Vault Boy/Girl from Fallout

Vault Catgirl Myan and new Image Format

by TheLazylonewolf on March 5, 2021
Posted In: Lazylonewolf's Art, Cat Nine Art, Fan Art, News and Announcements
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Source HD WIP HD+WIP Pixiv

Vault Catgirl Myan here to test the new Image post-format! This is both an announcement and test post so only HD + WIP is the real link.

I’ll use this from now on to replace the Aside format that I’ve been using for posting my artwork, and I’ll slowly change my older artwork posts to this new format as well. Posting art is going to be a touch faster, easier, and cleaner with this new format since I don’t have to do everything inside WordPress’ text editor.

  • Actually uses the post’s title instead of me having to type/copy-paste it. It should also automatically link to the post itself, I’m testing if the link works with this post (it works!).
  • Now actually uses the post’s Featured Image/thumbnail and outputs it inside the post. Clicking on the image also opens itself for full view. Unfortunately, the lightbox plugin that I use doesn’t seem to be working on this. I’ve already asked Simple Lightbox’s developers for help with this, but if they can’t, oh well. Lastly, I can assign a different URL for the image to link to instead of itself if I want.
  • Categories and tags just below the title, instead of at the bottom.
  • Buttons! I just have to copy-paste the URL instead of fiddling around in the text editor and having to assign classes/ids to them. These five links are what I think I’ll use the most, and use these too for comic posts later. Pixiv’s only going to be for public NSFW posts so, remember this: blue buttons = free horny.

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TheLazylonewolf on March 3, 2021

Supporters page updated

A fresh coat of paint and cleaner CSS for the “new” Supporters page (ex-Patrons and Ko-fi enablers page). I renamed it to Supporters so it’ll fit the new navigation menu if you were curious.

It’s definitely not the most useful nor frequently visited page, but hey, I and this whole friggin site wouldn’t be alive without these guys so thank you once again!

If more supporters show up (wink wink) or if I want to update that page automatically, I’ll probably have to learn SQL or some real PHP since I’ve been making do with modifying .php files at most. Welp, I’ll leave that to future me.

Sticky nav menu?

Speaking about that new nav menu, Mod BlueDavrial has suggested the nav menu should stick to the screen while it scrolls down. I figured most webpages that aren’t comic pages will be rarely visited, so I didn’t make it sticky. I was also worried about it being annoying, but most of us are used to sticky nav menus and when I tried myself here in cat-nine.net I didn’t find it too annoying. Kinda dumb having two fixed bars on my side though. What do you guys think? I’m leaning toward keeping it static rather than sticky.

screenshot showing admin and navigation bar

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TheLazylonewolf on March 2, 2021

Just remembered to do this so… my Tapas has just been deleted. Goodbye, or rather 안녕 (annyeong)! Oh, fun fact, there’s a bit of a joke with “annyeonghaseyo” (“hello” in English), and Filipino’s “ano nang yari sayo” (“what happened to you” in English) since they sound kinda similar. 😆

If I make a mirror again I might use WEBTOON or MangaDex next time, but I’d rather have all Cat Nine comics in here anyway, and the original intention for posting in Tapas is to have a more mobile-friendly version way to read Cat Nine. While the horizontal strip + scrolling isn’t exactly ideal for mobiles, I think cat-nine.net’s currently good enough with all the responsive changes I’ve been doing.

If you’re asking why I dislike mirrors/hosting somewhere else, well:

  • Some of the most-well known webcomics don’t have mirrors.
  • I don’t like the term “webtoon”. It’s “webcomic”!
  • I prefer owning my own stuff in general. That includes hosting comics in my own website. More responsibilities for me yes, but I can customize a lot of things (fun for me), or learn how to do it myself if I don’t know. Fair enough for people who don’t have the time, skill, nor money to deal with web design and maintenance.
  • Converting to vertical strip from horizontal is time-consuming and not all the panels/pages are going to convert well.
  • From my experience in Tapas, they usually use CDNs that lossy optimize images that I upload to lower their size, but it also hugely affects quality. It’s understandable for mobile-users and/or slow internet, but it’s a bit annoying having my artwork be downgraded like that without any choice. Aside from that, I usually can’t download the images I’ve uploaded, at least at the original quality I’ve uploaded them in. Not that it matters that much since I have the original source files, but still, it kinda fails as a mirror if I can’t access my own images for emergencies. They also disable right-clicking to save images, which just annoys me a lot for some reason.

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TheLazylonewolf on March 2, 2021

More site updates

Sorry, I was still actually in a web development mood! How many new/changed things can you count?

I’ve been working on that new top navigation all day, I hope it works properly in most devices. The ones with dropdown menus (e.g. Gallery) are hoverable menus, so mobile users might accidentally open that up instead. I haven’t completely figured what to do about that yet, but I have an inkling.

And now, a brand new Status post-format test. I’ll try not to abuse this newfound power, but no promises! Instead of the complete garbage dump that is Twitter, you’ll only get to see one man’s trash, mine. 😉 While working on this thing, I totally didn’t panic when I crashed the whole Cat Nine site when I uploaded a file in the wrong folder, whoops. I’m just glad this thing’s working now.

As for using this Status format, I’ll try to keep it at 1 or 2 posts a day at most. I’ll likely use this for random thoughts/rants, actual status updates (like if I’m streaming), and maybe sketches. I’ll only share or use the notifications for important status updates and drawings to not annoy you all!

New Comicad Banner

Comicad Website Banner

Finally made this banner for my Comicad profile. You know, I’m thinking about writing a review about Comicad since it’s been a year since I’ve used it. Spoiler alert: it’s pretty good as it is but it’s not quite as big and functional as the old Project Wonderful. It’s slowly getting there though and I appreciate that the developer has listened to most of my suggestions.

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Is web development a mood?

by TheLazylonewolf on February 23, 2021 at 4:02 pm
Posted In: News and Announcements

Because that’s what I’ve been doing the past couple of days. It’s kinda like you’re suddenly in the mood to clean your room and just clean everything. If there’s anything weird or not working, please inform me. Well, back to drawing after this!

Stuff I’ve done:

  • Added navigation menu for mobile. Removed the bottom comic nav menu for all mobile users. Landscape mode users keep the top comic nav menu. Portrait mode users get a bigger and simpler top comic nav menu which includes an Episode dropdown menu. Much easier to navigate now for portrait mode users! No button to directly take you to the first page though, but you can use the Episode dropdown menu for that. No idea how to fix that tiny arrow yet!
  • Added social media + support menu for mobile. Just in case you guys want to follow me, support me, or join our Discord. Used Font Awesome for the icons; annoyingly, pixiv’s logo isn’t there and I’m not in the mood to do something about that yet.
  • Cosmetic changes for mobile
    • Images in blog posts should center properly now.
    • Remove rounded borders for the menu and banner.
    • Remove the top margin from the banner so it’s at the very top of the screen instead.
  • Webtoon format comic pages for mobile mysteriously disappeared. Yeah I didn’t do that, must’ve been a WordPress update or something that messed with it. Oh well, I was planning to remove them and it’s a hassle to upload in different comic formats anyway.
  • Removed links and buttons to Tapas and Magicat Girl. I don’t care about using Tapas anymore, so I’m going to delete my Tapas account when February ends.
  • Updated the New Reader Guide. It also counts as an About page. Removed some outdated stuff and added a little info about me.
  • Updated FAQ Page. Mainly with info about apps and tools I use for drawing.
  • Updated the Characters Page.
    • Changed their horribly outdated pics to the current Episode. I left Rallidae and Robin alone since they didn’t make any recent appearances yet and I want to use images from the comic pages.
    • Added pics for Haliya, Haliyans, and Bakunawa.
    • Added and modified their descriptions.
    • Removed the professors, which I’ve added in the past for some reason.
    • Made the page look a little nicer too.
  • Removed the “tutorial” text in comic pages except for the first two pages. Removed them because I think they’re an annoyance now. Do you think I should’ve kept them?
  • Added complete time info. Finally got WordPress custom fields to work. Currently using it to post the total time an artwork took to make since I’m regularly tracking my time to make myself more productive. Might be able to do something else with what I learned later.
  • Removed the special formatting for posts like for Halloween and Magicat Girl. I really shouldn’t have used category or tags to format them, or rather, at least not put them in the single CSS file I’m using since it just makes things messy.
  • Reformatted the older artwork blog posts to the current one so they’ll display better. And by that I mean artwork>title>patreon links>content. I probably should learn how to make custom post types for this, but I’ll leave that to future me. Also, it didn’t occur to me till now that I’ve made 230+ blog posts by this point, and that doesn’t include the 230+ comic pages!

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