TGP Tutorials & Articles

Comus Thumbs: Taming the Beast

by Patrick Moore, September 14 2006

At first glance, the Comus Thumbs control panel looks as though it could oversee perhaps the most involved sci-fi supercomputer of all time. But when you trim down the fat and get at the heart of the script you'll find the bare necessities rather easy to use. While Comus is a TGP powerhouse, many of its features will remain untouched by the novice webmaster. I'll help differentiate between the functions you need to know and the more advanced ones you'll likely never use.

Let's get one thing straight right off the bat. When I talk about the menu, sidebar, navigation panel, etc., I mean the left frame of the control panel. When you first login you'll see two panes, one large frame with the trident Comus Thumbs logo and news, the other containing a host of menu items (starting with Search, then Help, Import, Database, etc.) in the left part of your screen. This is the part I'm talking about.

Now that you've got Comus Thumbs installed, what's next?

Configuring Your Settings

First let's configure your site. In the menu click Settings to expand its submenu and from that select Mysql Setup. Assuming you've not yet updated any settings, your default password is 'demo'. Let's set a unique administrative password by entering one and confirming it in boxes #6 and #7. The next few settings ask for URLs - these are the URLs Comus will send clicks to if it can't send to a gallery because of an error. A wise idea would be to set these all to another site you own or a sponsor you promote. Copy and paste the URL(s) into boxes #8, #9, #10, and #13. The only other setting in this first group worth mentioning is #11, the "On Click Number" URL. This neat feature allows you to send every 4th, 5th, 6th, etc. click to a specific URL. If you want to sell your traffic to Choker or send every visitor to your paysite, copy and paste that URL here.

Let's scroll down to the operation settings. Setting #42 "Refresh Period" tells Comus how often to pull new galleries. The setting is in minutes and by default is 10. I set my sites' to 144, updating the site ten times per day or roughly once every two hours. You should set yours depending upon the amount of traffic you're getting, but 1440 isn't a bad place to start - updating once daily.

If you plan to incorporate a trade script, scroll down further. Settings #58 "Link trade script prefix" and #65 "Thumb trade script prefix" allow Comus to send every click through your trade script before getting right to the gallery. Reading the manual for your specific trade script, paste the proper URL here.

Lastly, if your thumbnails are a size other than 90x120 you'll need to tell Comus so that when you crop thumbnails they are the proper dimensions. Settings #77 and #78, "Width" and "Height" respectively, allow you to do so.

Click any of the several "Submit" buttons to save your settings.

Registering Comus and Entering Your License Key

If you haven't registered or purchased Comus, it is important to do so. By default, the unlicensed Comus installation will skim 20% of all clicked galleries to a Comus site. What does this mean to you? It means that you're only getting 80% of the clicks you should. If you register the free 2% skim version, you get 98% of all clicks. If you purchase the script, you get 100%. Notice the advantage? After you register, the license key will be emailed to you. In the menu click License Key > License Key. Copy and paste the license key that was emailed to you into the License Key box and click the "Submit Changes" button. Go back into the settings page (Settings > Mysql Setup) and click any of the Submit buttons. You should now have an operational registered copy of Comus.

Importing Galleries

This is where it gets tricky. To import free hosted galleries from a sponsor, create a text file of URLs copied from your sponsors' databases. Append each line with an appropriate category and description. Your file should look something like this:

  http://www.sponsor.com/gallery01/, Teens, Sexy Talia struts her stuff
  http://www.sponsor.com/gallery02/, Teens, Ashley strips naked in the shower
  http://www.sponsor.com/gallery03/, Teens, Young tan teen gets fucked hard

Now in the Comus menu, select Import > Bulk Importer. The screen that appears is full of combo boxes and settings. Ignore them. Paste the contents of your file into the larger textbox with the appropriate title "Paste your Urls to be bulk imported here, one entry per line". Below that box change the default setting of "Approved" to "Pending", make sure the delimiter character is a comma, and if you trust your sponsors check "Fast scan on?". Now let's backup to the settings. Each setting (1 through 24) allows you to import and set a variety of options for each gallery. Since we aren't going to bother with them for now, leave 1 at URL, 2 at Category, 3 at Description, and change the rest to n/a. Click the Submit button and on the next page review your choices then click "Yes, I'm sure this info is correct". Let Comus do its thing and when all galleries have been imported you're ready to thumb.

Thumbing Galleries

Now that your database is populated with galleries, you'll need to create thumbnails for each one. From within Comus there are several ways of doing this. I'll explain two. The first is the Auto Thumb option, which lets Comus create each thumbnail for you. The second is manually selecting and cropping each thumbnail. To let Comus Auto Thumb, click Database > Search. In the search parameters section, select all galleries and only "Pending" and "No Photo" in the gallery types. Update "Records" to 500 and change "Special Commands" to Auto Thumb All. What this does is tell Comus to find 500 galleries that are both pending and without a thumbnail, then create a thumbnail for each. Click "Execute". Repeat this step until all your galleries are thumbed.

To manually create thumbnails, click Database > Search. Copy the same settings from above but set Records to about 20. What this does is tell Comus to find 20 galleries that are both pending and without a thumbnail. Click "Search" and wait for the 20 galleries to load. To create a thumbnail, click the "NO IMAGE" thumbnail next to a gallery. A window will popup and Comus will scan for images suitable for using as a thumbnail. Select one that you like by clicking on it. A new page will load with each suitable thumbnail image, as well as the image you chose enlarged. Click and drag on the image to crop the thumbnail. Click the "CAPTURE" button and close the window after it displays your thumb. Repeat this step for each "NO IMAGE" thumbnail on the page, and then repeat your search. This is a long and exasperating process, but it helps to ensure quality thumbnails for each gallery.

Odds & Ends

To clear your gallery database, click Database > Categories. Click the Red-X'd Trash Can icon next to each category.

To rebuild your site, click Engine > Build. To rebuild using the next day's galleries, click Engine > Build With New Galleries.

To change how Comus displays your text or thumb links, click Templates > Textlink Format or Thumb Format, then modify the HTML code in each respective box.