GetComics Site Update – September

Hi Fellas,

The past few weeks have been quite a roller coaster for us. Several issues happened at the same time, making it a rather stressful period 🙁 I’d like to share the updates with you:

1. Pop-up Ads

Since last month, we lost our last ad network partner. Fortunately, we’ve received a new offer from another partner that I believe we can rely on. As always, we’ve opted out of using pop-up ads from day one of our partnership.

However, in reality, it’s not that simple. The new partner keeps adding requirements to increase potential earnings, and as a result, some pop-up ads that shouldn’t be on the site are slipping past the filter and being shown to you. We’re actively removing these ads, but if you still encounter them, please let me know via the contact page (adding additional ads url or screenshot via image link would also be helpful) so we can remove them as quickly as possible.

Relying solely on donations is extremely challenging. Many times, I’m unsure if we’ll be able to keep going in the coming month. That’s why I try to find any extra funding I can for the site. So, if you also notice random posts or links that seem unrelated to our usual content, now you know the reason.

2. Major Technical Issues and Server Problems

In the past few days, we’ve experienced major downtime on both the ReadComicsOnline and GetComics websites.

On RCO, the downtime lasted about two days due to a mainboard malfunction on the server, which had to be replaced. Unfortunately, our backup also had issues, and the most recent working backup we could restore was from several months ago. Thankfully, I managed to manually re-upload almost all the missing issues just in time for the weekly release.

We also faced a networking problem with one of our proxy servers, which caused GetComics to go down for a few hours.

3. New Commenting System

You may have heard that earlier this year, Disqus began removing a large number of download-related websites from their service. You can read more here:

Disqus is Deleting Pirate Site Communities on Short Notice

It seems our turn has come. For the past few days, Disqus hasn’t been loading on our site. Although I haven’t received the same official email others have, it’s safe to say we can no longer use Disqus.

After several days of (a lot) trial and error, I’ve found a new commenting system that I hope will work well for us. If you encounter any issues with it, please let me know.

4. New Comic Files Not Opening

Another recent issue is that some downloaded comic files can’t be opened. This isn’t due to file corruption, but rather a compatibility problem with recent rips that use RAR5 compression. Some comic reader apps still don’t support RAR5, even though it’s been around for over a decade.

If you face this problem, I recommend using a reader that supports RAR5, such as YAC Reader or ComicScreen.

Lastly, with so many issues to address, I apologize if I haven’t yet replied to your emails, comments, or Discord chats. I promise I’ll get to each one by one. I can’t thank you enough for your continued support. Hopefully, the rest of the month will be much smoother for all of us.