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Reply to @TerryHancock@realsocial.life
will have been preventable@virtulis@loud.computer (2026-09-26 12:00:27)
@TerryHancock @thevhswizard I don't know what the authors need or have come to expect. But I can answer as a reader:

– most formats won't fit in a federated post, so it must work as a standalone website without any auth etc.
– simple and reliable navigation between episodes of a single title (which an author can have multiple of, and which is likely ongoing)
– a mobile-friendly UI that can accommodate different page formats and isn't ridiculously slow.
– some sort of a recommendation system, yes, fedi hates an algo, but even manual shout-outs of eachother can go a long way.

Of more technical concerns:

– if it's going to be randomly boosted onto people's timelines, those boosts will probably work better if the booster can pick something specific as a preview, i.e. we're potentially looking at every panel being a separate "post" somehow.
– it'll be a killer feature if it's able to somehow have "members-only" content with a time unlock for everyone else. then add Patreon integration and everyone's existing patrons can suddenly read with something a bit more usable than a PDF reader (or worse, Patreon UI). I'm not sure if AP allows for posts to change visibility, but being a paying member might be incentive enough to just visit the website.
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Dead Metalpoet's society@metalpoetnl@metalhead.club (2026-09-27 13:45:22)
@virtulis @TerryHancock @thevhswizard I was a webcomic author once, long ago, and one big feature is scheduled publication. 

Like most people doing it I would often create several comics in one big sitting, a good platform would let me upload them all but set a date when each should go live, to maintain a consistent schedule.

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Tykayn@tykayn@mastodon.cipherbliss.com (2026-10-15 19:14:00)
@metalpoetnl @virtulis @TerryHancock @thevhswizard yup, there are UX and practical concerns about such a platform.

As someone who produces comics and studied it, and enjoyed so much when people massively had comic blogs, and used several platforms to publish my pages (manolosanctis, a french one who died a few years ago) I really would love to see something like that get real.

So because i also am a freelance dev who puts some libre stuff for free on my computer, i started to build something federated around the Symfony Framework, and added some stuff to help people import what they do from other platforms, add moderation tools, admin stuff, financial support links, comments, added some of my drawings, a possibility to translate pages and series of pages, and it is already working with examples demo account and my drawings in the tykayn account. but yeah, before being ready i will need to test a lot of things, exporting account works, RSS feeds too, but emails sending do not work yet.

https://calico-webcomic.cipherbliss.com

sources are AGPLv3+ , but remember, this is very beta.
about how much does it cost to run: it depends on the storage, i have set up some quotas, but having 20Gb of pages would cost me nothing more than running this mastodon instance. portability matters too.