Linden:ranger_brian_new:-About: Originally, I thought that it'd be slightly redundant with my comic summary, but then I decided that whereas the comic summary is supposed to be brief (the recommendation is, what, three sentences? Something like that. It's in the other topic), the About Page would be detailed.
While it's still under construction, my About Page is meant to tell everything about the setting:
What it is, what it used to be, how it's grown, and touching upon how it was created, and why. (Though those cross over into the Inspiration Page.) Essentially, it describes not only the world, but also the setting, and might also include a basic description of the plot when I'm finished (though that would cross over into the Characters page, which covers this to some degree).
This seems incredibly redundant to me. All this information is suppose to come across from the comic. You shouldn't have to write a novel for the background information. Your site isn't suppose to be a wiki.
Personally, I feel the about page should only be behind-the-scenes material... things about the production of the comic. A blurb about the inspiration, author bio, contact information, personal links to a gallery or other work, maybe also be an FAQ. Not nearly as redundant as you may think. Keep in mind, I'm writing a whole RPG for my comic. As in, built-from-scratch, entirely-original, fully-functional RPG. Because the world the comic's set in runs on said RPG.
That's...not something you can describe very well in-comic. It just isn't.
Regardless, I need the page anyway (rendering the need to describe it in-comic pretty moot), since while the RPG I'm building is meant to be used inside my webcomic, it is not intended to be exclusive to my webcomic. As in, I'd love to see others using the RPG system I built and playing games in it. Far easier to do with a page devoted to it, eh?
Beyond the RPG...there are some things which would be a little difficult to describe as well. The comic takes place on a whole entire fictional world I created, which I've only begun to explore a couple of continents of. Imagine if all you knew of Earth was limited to Australia and Europe, and you can get an idea of the scale of what I know compared to what is there.
Plus, there's one more factor which is why I kinda need the extra page. *points to number of released comics and last release date* There's very little for the comic to convey at the time. :P (This also means that while I certainly would hope I'm not going to, it's fully possible that without a page describing the plot, I'd forget about key details somewhere down the line.)
So that's why I need a page detailing the setting and plot. But beyond that, my pages DO serve as the behind-the-scenes stuff as well, in that the inspiration (and to some extent, I suppose the About page) page describes the inspiration, how the comic was made, how the setting has changed...those are all things which have to go somewhere, and it'd either be massive author's comments on multiple pages, one ore multiple blogs, or (as I have done, as it's somewhat more efficient) an extra page.
But to some extent, I'd agree for the average comic-maker. Since my world and my comic are somewhat...unusual...in that regard (really, who makes their own RPG from scratch? Who has so much content on a comic which has barely updated and which last updated two years ago? Well..... :P), my extra pages are of course going to be somewhat unusual.
What I WOULD recommend, then, would be something more like this:
-Characters Page. I described it in another thread, and basically, it boils down to a quick description of the main characters, the essential details of them and trying your best to convey who they are in a small amount.
-About Page. (Note: Since my About Page is my weakest extra page, do keep in mind...me describing the ideal About Page is my achilles heel. :P)
The FAQ section in here, answering common/anticipated questions/concerns about the comic. To me, this is basically describing the comic's summary page...only less summarized. You're not going to describe everything in here, but you're preferably going to get all the pesky details out of the way so that you don't have to constantly put them in your comic, constantly make author's notes about them, etc. (Basically, things which would come up multiple times in the comic. You typically don't need one-shot stuff in here.)
This section would also be the author bio section.
Inspiration may fall under here, or...
-Recommendations.
Links to other comics. If possible, this would be the place to put inspirations. I can name a number of webcomics which have inspired me that I'd highly recommend, and of course can also name quite a few webcomic authors who have helped me who I'd like to attribute.
And if you say that you're not the same, you're lying. :P
-Other stuff.
Most commonly, fanart.
I don't really recommend more than four extra pages, since it seems a little excessive.
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