Third Party/External Chapter Links - We want more!

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MD has the ability to link out to external websites hosting official releases, and we're looking to add more accepted websites.

Broad guidelines;
The chapters need to be freely available, and accessible from a normal web browser.
Best example to use here is MangaPlus, where we have a community maintained bot that adds and deletes chapter links on MD as they're added/removed from M+.

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If you're from an official publishing site and you want us to link to your content, email us at support@mangadex.org.

If you have a suggestion for a site that we should link to, or if you're interested in making a bot that does this for a suggested site, post in this thread.

Bot guidelines;
  • The bot will need special site permissions to add externalUrl properties to chapters, and a dummy account for this purpose (we will provide this)
  • It needs to detect newly available chapters on the site, obviously, but it also needs to detect when chapters are removed and delete them from MD so we don't have dead links. In the future this will probably be changed to mark them as unavailable so comments/views are kept intact with a placeholder chapter, but the process will remain the same.
  • Ideally the site should have a public API, even better if it's somewhat documented. If it doesn't, you'll have to figure out a way to scrape everything you need and it'll be a pain to do.
  • The bot should check for available chapters with the same chapter number as the external chapter it's currently creating a link for, and if the MD chapter has a volume number it should copy that. This helps keep chapters organised without requiring manual mod intervention.
  • The bot also needs to be able to exclude any given series, to account for cases (generally user-created) where, for example, someone is uploading their series directly to MD + Webtoons Canvas. The Webtoons bot should have this series excluded, as it's an unneeded duplicate.
  • Complete chapters are preferred - if the service hosts partial chapters and there's already conflicting MD chapters, it ideally should only link the first partial chapter and match the MD numbering so users don't have to click through multiple copies of the same chapter. Example; Ch1.1, 1.2, 1.3 - link Ch1.1 as Ch1.
IMPORTANT NOTE - Bulk chapter submissions (like linking the entire Webtoons back catalogue) aren't currently possible, as we have no way to silently upload chapters. Linking them would effectively fill up the upload queue for days at a time, and that's not a great user experience. Once we have the ability to silently upload chapters and prevent them from appearing in the new upload queue, we'll be free to bulk link as much as we want.

For services like J-Novel and Alpha Manga where there's only a small number of chapters (every free JNC release is linked on MD, 412 as of me typing this line) exceptions can be made, as it's not too disruptive.

Bot Progress Spreadsheet

Potential Sites
Webtoons - there's defintely some kind of API access here (1, 2) and they have a lot of chapters in multiple languages for thousands of titles. They're also the original source for a lot of popular OEL titles on MD with no English scanlations (obviously) and having some kind of English chapters available for those entries would be nice.
EDIT: More technical details in this post.
Tapas - I don't think there's easy API access for this, or at least I can't find anything more recent than a dead Github repo from 2020. It'd be nice for the same reasons as Webtoons, and it also hosts the #1 most followed OEL title on MD - The Beginning After the End.

Note: I'd really like a Webtoon bot.
 
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The bot I wrote for MangaPlus, only works for MangaPlus at the moment. It works at the moment by only referencing the MangaPlus API in one file with the rest of the bot working using arrays returned by the code. Given some code changes here and there, it will be able to work using extensions for dynamic publisher chapter retrieving.

The template for extensions and the specifics of how the extensions will work is yet to be made, but anyone that wants to make extensions for other sites can drop me a message.


Edit: The bot has been transferred to an extension-based version. Check the repo to see how you can make an extension.
 
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Day Comics (The site toptoon merged with)

All there SFW series generally have the first 5 chapters available for free and require no login.

While there NSFW series have the first 3 chapters available for free but requires login so I am guessing the NSFW one won't work?
 
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Regarding Webtoons, is there any update to BOT linking the series from Mangadex to the official site?
I have found some manga that is stuck on Mangadex while it is complete and freely accessible on the official site.
 
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Regarding Webtoons, is there any update to BOT linking the series from Mangadex to the official site?
I have found some manga that is stuck on Mangadex while it is complete and freely accessible on the official site.
No-one is working on a Webtoon bot, as far as I know. I'd like to see one, as it's a very popular site.

EDIT: If anyone wants to work on it, I'd advise stealing borrowing from Tachiyomi's Webtoon extension and setting it up as an extension for Xunder's automated upload tool. If you're familiar with Python, it's the easiest route.

Here's an example API response from Webtoon, with a list of series and information about them.
Here's a different API response showing the list of chapters for a specific series, Daedalus of the Crows.

A typical chapter URL for a Webtoon series will look like "https://www.webtoons.com/en/fantasy...-the-angels/viewer?title_no=4761&episode_no=1" but can be simplified to "https://webtoons.com/-/-/-/-/viewer?title_no=4761&episode_no=1" as the slugs are purely used for SEO/readability.
This also applies to the series page itself, where "https://www.webtoons.com/en/fantasy/daedalus-of-the-crows/list?title_no=4761" becomes "https://www.webtoons.com/-/-/-/list?title_no=4761".

You can construct chapter URLs by fetching the series list and taking "titleNo", then adding the chapter number to the URL. Relatively straightforward as far as I can tell.

Here's the sitemap, and here's an RSS feed for Daedalus.
 
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No-one is working on a Webtoon bot, as far as I know. I'd like to see one, as it's a very popular site.

EDIT: If anyone wants to work on it, I'd advise stealing borrowing from Tachiyomi's Webtoon extension and setting it up as an extension for Xunder's automated upload tool. If you're familiar with Python, it's the easiest route.

Here's an example API response from Webtoon, with a list of series and information about them.
Here's a different API response showing the list of chapters for a specific series, Daedalus of the Crows.

A typical chapter URL for a Webtoon series will look like "https://www.webtoons.com/en/fantasy...-the-angels/viewer?title_no=4761&episode_no=1" but can be simplified to "https://webtoons.com/-/-/-/-/viewer?title_no=4761&episode_no=1" as the slugs are purely used for SEO/readability.
This also applies to the series page itself, where "https://www.webtoons.com/en/fantasy/daedalus-of-the-crows/list?title_no=4761" becomes "https://www.webtoons.com/-/-/-/list?title_no=4761".

You can construct chapter URLs by fetching the series list and taking "titleNo", then adding the chapter number to the URL. Relatively straightforward as far as I can tell.

Here's the sitemap, and here's an RSS feed for Daedalus.
Thank you for the information!

I am new to these forums, but have moderate experience with precariously assembling random coding projects, and a small amount of experience with writing things for actual production environments. (I have used MangaDex since v2, but have never worked with its back end, API, etc.) I would be willing to poke around and put something together for this, if everyone would be fine with that.
 
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Thank you for the information!

I am new to these forums, but have moderate experience with precariously assembling random coding projects, and a small amount of experience with writing things for actual production environments. (I have used MangaDex since v2, but have never worked with its back end, API, etc.) I would be willing to poke around and put something together for this, if everyone would be fine with that.
@glad-barfs and @Xunder are the biggest contributors to this effort at the moment, and there's a thread in our Discord server where it's being discussed if you've got an account there.
 
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@glad-barfs and @Xunder are the biggest contributors to this effort at the moment, and there's a thread in our Discord server where it's being discussed if you've got an account there.
Oh; thank you! I looked on the MangaDex Discord group, but couldn't find a thread. Could you please tell me where the thread is (in what channel) or send a link?
 
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Square Enix’s MangaUp

Ultimately many of the chapters are app-only, but they do have a website which features the first chapter or so of each series. Not perfect, but hey.

Alpha Manga

Same thing, but for AlphaPolis series - first three chapters are available for most series.

J Novel Club

Mostly manga adaptations of LNs, with some originals thrown in. A bit different in that while you need to pay for the books, but the first chapter of each volume is free to read.

I don’t have much knowledge of automation, but assuming the chapters have a set format it shouldn’t be that hard to get things set up, right?
 
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https://teaser.kmanga.kodansha.com/

Press release here, US only for now. Launching the app on the 10th of May, with the website going live later.

Hopefully there's an accessible API, and hopefully the website goes live quickly. I don't think it'll be anywhere near as user-friendly as MangaPlus though.

https://mangadex.org/group/7c5fb223-aa64-4eb8-955f-762d5bfd5ab7/k-manga
Placeholder group.
Necro-update: The official site is now up. I'm not a programming wiz so I don't know if the API is readily available, but if anyone wants to check there it is.

As for other manga websites that could be added... there's the Shonen Jump and Viz Manga subscription services - since they're both on the same site, cracking one could help crack the other.
 
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Necro-update: The official site is now up. I'm not a programming wiz so I don't know if the API is readily available, but if anyone wants to check there it is.

As for other manga websites that could be added... there's the Shonen Jump and Viz Manga subscription services - since they're both on the same site, cracking one could help crack the other.
Both of those will not be added because they have a very strict region locking.
Therefore, any services that have region locking (on similar degree as Viz Manga/Shonen Jump and KManga) will not be added.
 
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yomoyo

Most of their releases are of old manga which is mostly untouched by scantling groups, There are no proper numbered chapters available freely on the website, It's just volume samples, I am not sure if any of them consists of the full chapter or not.

By the way they use "Chapter" instead of "Volume" or any other word of the same meaning.

I am only suggesting adding these samples since there are no other alternate translation available and just to shed a light on this website if anyone's looking for old shoujo stuff...


Edit: So, I recently went to website again to check a manga and it seems the sample can only be read if you have signed up for an account on their site (which I have), not sure if this was always the case or not...

Edit 2: It started working without an account again, I don't know what the error was before.

Edit 3 (9/9/23): So, was trying the site again and go the following error message while trying it on Firefox
⚠️ Failed to start.
This page cannot be viewed with the browser you are using. Please return to the previous page and check the supported browsers and operating systems.
So, I guess this will be a no go indeed.
 
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Just noticed that JNC was added (albeit only one title atm, and to the chagrin of the commenters who can’t wait for them to catch up), and wanted to suggest another site - MangaPlanet. Mostly just has a bunch of stuff from other sites like Azuki and Comikey, but they also have a couple exclusive titles. And a bunch of smut.
 
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Just noticed that JNC was added (albeit only one title atm, and to the chagrin of the commenters who can’t wait for them to catch up), and wanted to suggest another site - MangaPlanet. Mostly just has a bunch of stuff from other sites like Azuki and Comikey, but they also have a couple exclusive titles. And a bunch of smut.
Annoyingly, you don't seem to be able to link directly to a chapter on there.

https://mangaplanet.com/reader?cid=64868f77bf6fa

Looks valid, redirects to https://mangaplanet.com/comic/647868a583f7a if opened in a new tab.
 
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Yeah, that's a tough one then.

Besides that and the titles listed above, I can't really think of any big manga sites we're missing. Coolmic? Kodansha's website has free chapter previews for stuff that aren't on Azuki and INKR already, if you want to sidestep K Manga.
 

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