While we were all concerned about the latest Comics Kingdom problems last week (Mike Peterson noted, “Comics Kingdom changed servers and the last week has been very glitchy,” and Joseph Nebus explained, “The server it was on has expired and the link’s been infested with malware.” see Joseph’s comment below) along with that fix King Features Syndicate revamped their website.
It was slow downloading for a few days, but now has good speeds.
Most of the stuff has been transferred and it has a very pleasant look.
My only disappointment (you knew there would be one) is they
discarded the page highlighting their syndicated comics.
All the syndicates have such pages: Andrews McMeel Syndication, Creators Syndicate, Tribune Content Agency, Washington Post Writers Group, even the Ink Bottle Syndicate.
King Features used to have a page that informed readers and clients about their comics and the creators. It looked like this:
That page now looks like this:
Instead we are directed to their 2021 Syndicate Directory which has minimal information.
To browse our full selection of syndicated features, please view our 2021 directory.
Their Content Distribution page does give us new material updates.
But it will be a long time before I get over missing that Comics – A – Z page.
On the bright side their King Features Weekly Service page has survived.
later add:
I forgot to mention King does have a list of their comics
at the bottom of the Comics Kingdom home page.
Archives are still glitchy. Better, but not easy to navigate and some strips show, but won’t open.
I still can’t see my favourites despite any amount of cache clearing and browser restarting, and my support ticket is untouched for a week. Once I get in, there’s still the same unmoderated trash in the comments.
As far as I’m concerned it’s still the same failure of a website.
Last week was but a hiccup for me (last fall I had to cancel the subscription and re-sub to get the favorites back).
My only problem now is it doesn’t run the strips by date, so I
have to scroll through days old strips to read today’s offerings.
I was a longtime subscriber, beginning in 2006. For many years the website worked fine. I don’t recall when the problems began, but by 2021 I was so fed up with the parade of website issues (and non-existent customer service) I threw in the towel.
No mention of the fact that you can only go back two days instead of six, and they don’t even try to sell you their premium package to see them :^(
The thing I hate about the new change is that they shrunk the archives down to 3 strips from 7…& that they did it w/o warning!
I apologize for the ambiguity in my writing. I had meant that the Tina’s Groove blog (to which Piraro and Wayno referred) was on a malware-infested server. It looks like Rina Piccolo let the Tina’s Groove domain expire.
So far as I’m aware none of the Comics Kingdom servers have expired, or are spreading any malware besides advertisements.
It is weird they took away the page that just listed all the comics in alphabetical order, even if it is in every page’s footer.
Joseph – I apologize for my inability to read (walk) and comprehend (chew gum).