History:
This project was created by Mike for his own use, but it became so useful, that Mike has made it available to all. I've seen similar renditions called an "aggregator" or "consolidator".

The goal was to have this website keep track of what comic strips I want to read on a daily basis, and to keep track of exactly what date I have read up to. Some strips are old archives, not operating on today's date, and I wanted this to keep track of that sort of thing as well.

Additionally, I wanted to minimize clicking around through different websites for different strips; this was simply to optimize my comic reading time in the mornings - I spend about a half hour while having breakfast reading about 120 comics via this reader, if I had to click through different websites, well, simply, I would only be able to read a couple of dozen. Bottom line is that I really wanted to emulate the old days of a printed newspaper, where you simply read the comics on a single page.

I wish to make clear that the intent was never to circumvent paying for comics. The comic strips we have access to are all publicly available via their source websites, and/or via newspaper websites. I encourage you to directly contribute to cartoonists - many have a Patreon.com or similar presence.

Temporary account:
The only difference between a trial and a permanent account, is the presence of an email address. If your account has no email address, it will be automatically deleted after the trial period. Your temporary account does not require any contact info, no email address, no payments - it is utterly anonymous.

When you decide to make the account permanent, you will simply add an email address in your settings. This will only be used for the app to communicate to you, it will never be released in any way, there will be no ads, only notifications about the website or your account. This service is free, there are no payments for an account.

Note that passwords are stored in a one-way hash, so your password would be safe even if it were to be accessed illicitly. Also we do not use SQL, so are immune to "SQL Injection" attacks.

Getting Started:

• On the Home page, you'll want to start by clicking on the "List Following" tab. You'll find a list of comics that I have arbitrarily chosen as a default. You can choose to "hide" or "unfollow" any of these. This really just moves that comic to a different list called "hidden" or "not following". The difference is that "hidden" are comics that you have chosen to not read daily, whereas "not following" are probably comics that you have not even accessed before.


• Next, you'll want to go into the "hidden" tab, and check that I haven't excluded any of your favorites. If I have, on that screen you can hit the checkbox next to those you want, and hit the "follow checked" button. Most of the default "hidden" are Spanish strips - I don't speak Spanish so thay're not useful to me.


• Next, you'll want to go into the "Not following" tab, and find any favorites that you'd like to add to your daily reading list. Put a checkmark next to them, and click the "follow checked" button at the bottom. Be warned, there are hundreds of them, (you may want to use the ctrl-F search function in your browser)!


• In event of duplicate services for one comic, you'll want to favor the 'arcamax' entry, as these are the ones we are able to decode and display directly.


• Lastly, when you've gotten your list the way you like it, take the "Display following" tab. This page will show all the strips that it can, directly as a page of single comic images.


• When you've read all the strips for that day, you'll hit the "Set last read" button at the bottom, and it will update the last-read time by one day for all strips. If you're a few days behind, you can simply do another "Display following" and you'll get the next day.

• Note that the first time each day using "Display following" will take a little longer, as it is fetching each comic page from the service. When we bring in each of these pages, we cache it so as to speed up access and to avoid the "500 error" that some services return on too many fetches in a short time. After the first time that anyone has fetched a given comic, future fetches will be returned immediately from this server. Note that entries in the cache are removed after 7 days.


• The Display page will include the clickable link to the actual comic page (unless you have deselected this in your preferences).


• If my program has sufficent information, it will fetch the comic page from the service, then display only the image. If the service makes it too hard for us to resolve the page to only the image, the display page will simply say "unable to decode". In this event, I suggest that you right-click on the link, and take the "open link in new tab" option. You can then read it there, close that tab, and return to this list right where you left off.


• When the server fetches the comic page, if it is unable to find the actual strip image, (common with political cartoons that publish intermittantly), the link will be followed with the shorthand "404". You can choose to take the link manually if you don't trust the server.


• If you go back into "list following" or "display following" after you've done a "set last-read" for today, there will be a '*' next to all the strips that you are "caught up" on - namely those where the next-to-read date is tomorrow. If you have older strips that you're behind on, they will not have the '*' shown. Note that you can also have these already-viewed strips simply omitted from list - this is a setting in your home screen.


• Our database includes publish date info, as an example, some strips are weekdays only, or daily-except-Sunday. This will be shown on the display page with the link. As mentioned above, the link can be made not-live by settings in your preferences.


• Our database also includes image size info, with a seperate value for Sundays as these are often a different format. This is set for each comic strip by the adminstrator. We make every attempt to make them consistent in size, although sometimes they'll be on the large side if the strip tends toward small writing.


• In the "Edit comic details" you can make your own comments. You can also provide these comments when you "hide" a comic strip via the "list" screen. This will help you to remember why you chose to hide a particular comic.

If you find a comic strip that is not displayed well, e.g. is tiny or huge, this is a setting the admin can correct, however, it is a system-wide setting, affecting all users. Obviously if you encounter a strip that is the wrong one, or otherwise needs fixing, let me know.

Contact Admin:

Contact admin.