Yesterday we had nearly 15,000 webcomics indexed on Comic Rocket. Today we’re past 35,000, making this the largest, most comprehensive list of webcomics anywhere!
The Duck, provider of free hosting to webcomics since 2002 and now home to over 20,000 of them, had some server issues recently that I was fortunately able to help them sort out. (Their site is developed using Python and the Django web framework, just like Comic Rocket, so I had a lot of experience to offer.) As I got to know the folks behind the site, we chatted about ways we could work together, and today we’re kicking off the first of those projects: Indexing every comic that The Duck hosts!
Like Comic Rocket’s existing arrangement with Comic Fury, The Duck is providing us with an API that efficiently tells the Comic Rocket site when new comics have been posted. We’re also mirroring descriptions, genres, etc. so readers can easily decide which comics they want to read.
It turns out that 20,000 is a big number. Although we started importing listings this morning, the initial import won’t finish until sometime on Wednesday, about 2.3 days later! After that we should be able to pick up future updates within 24 hours.
This move makes all of Comic Rocket’s tools available for these webcomics. As a reader, you can
- bookmark what page you left off at, adding the comic to your Comic Rocket reading list;
- get personalized recommendations for other comics you’ll probably like;
- and use the Comic Rocket app for Android to read these comics on your mobile devices.
This also means we can index age-restricted comics. You still need to log in to The Duck to read those, but we can keep track of where you left off in them now. Our standard indexer is only five years old and isn’t allowed to look at adult material, you know.
If you’re the creator of a webcomic, whether hosted on The Duck or elsewhere, check out the Comic Rocket Creator Dashboard and claim ownership of your listing to gain access to additional tools we’ve built especially for you.