Joey Manley has been posting the transcripts from some of the scheduled chat sessions on the new Talkaboutcomics IRC channel.

Already you can read conversations between Joey and Jeff Crowther (Sketchbook) and Cat Garza and Tim Broderick (Odd Jobs), among others.

I suspect many, if not most, webtoonists draw with offline tools (pen, brush, paper, etc) and use a trusty scanner to upload their creation to digital form.

The tablet allows, however, for the direct creation of digital art and with their increasingly (well, relatively) affordable prices, it is an option that anyone creating webcomics should investigate.

A good place to start is

David Schumacher has released version 7.2 of ATP Autosite. ATP is a "site automation script" that automates many tasks needed to update a daily (or less frequent) webcomic site.

ATP allows for archive navigation through back/next links, monthly calendar links, and a drop-down menu. Version 7.2 adds new features such as providing for a comic "title" and allowing for daily text with the comic to be archived.