[creshal]

Yeah. This whole mess pushed me to moving everything I had (or could remember, anyway) to Tachiyomi¹, so I can hop between hosting websites freely without losing progress or access to old chapters (as long as I don't run out of local storage).

And while it works fine for reading, it kills any interaction with the hosting sites. No chance for monetization, socialization or anything else that can help sites survive long-term.

[1] https://tachiyomi.org/

[m45t3r]

Before MangaDex we had Batoto (the old Batoto before some sketchy company bought the name), that was kinda of the same: serving high quality manga for most scanlators that wanted it (and also avoiding hosting pirated chapters from official sources, so kinda the same as MangaDex nowadays). As far I remember Batoto closed because of pressure from companies and also because of the high costs related to run the site.

So yeah, considering how fragile maintaining a site like this is, it is always a good idea to sync your progress in a third party so it is easier to migrate if something goes wrong.

> And while it works fine for reading, it kills any interaction with the hosting sites. No chance for monetization, socialization or anything else that can help sites survive long-term.

BTW, MangaDex doesn't have monetization because it is strict a hobby and also because it is a gray area to monetize about this kinda of work [1]. Also, their Tachiyomi client is official (MangaDex v5 API was tested primarily via their Tachiyomi client before they finished the Web interface).

[1]: both for companies (that has the copyright from the works hosted on those sites) and the scanlators (the fans that does actual work of translating those chapters). Sites that host those chapters and monetize are pretty much monetizing on work from other people.

[doutatsu]

It's obviously not at the same scale as MangaDex, as they provide actual hosting for scanlation groups, but if you want to support the scanlator sites that do have a site - check out Kenmei, which is my take on tracking series you read. It specifically built with scanlator-first approach, so that you actually go and visit their sites, helping them survive long term, instead of hogging the traffic, like Tachiyomi does

https://www.kenmei.co/

[majora2007]

Totally a self plug, but if you're looking to take it a step further, Kavita is a great program to host your own, Plex-like manga server.

https://kavitareader.com

[creshal]

That actually looks really interesting, thanks!