Archive Binge - Frequently Asked Questions

Archive Binge: Frequently Asked Questions

For users

You don't have a webcomic I'm interested in. Can you include it?
We only include webcomics whose authors have given us permission to make feeds of their work. We do this out of respect for their work and allowing authors to control the distribution of their own property.

If you'd like to binge a comic which we don't offer, try politely contacting the author and suggest that they get in touch with us (at the e-mail address shown at the bottom of this page). We also try contacting popular authors, but some are very busy and have not yet got back to us. Please do not harrass comic authors! If they say they aren't interested in our service, leave them alone.

I just created a feed. Why isn't it showing me "new" strips yet?
Newly created or edited feeds update for the first time 24 hours after creation/editing. You need to wait 24 hours for the first update and parcel of new strips. We may change this behaviour, but for now, if it bothers you, you can work around it by starting the feed at the strip number (last comic you read + number of comics per update).

How many feeds can I have active?
You can create one custom feed per webcomic that we offer. If you really want to read the archive of a comic twice, read it through once, then start again. :-)

Why does the feed update on days other than the ones I specified?
Our server is in California. If you're in a different time zone, then the server might have a different idea of what day it is than you do. If it bothers you, you can probably work around it by setting your update days to be one day of the week earlier. (e.g. Sunday to Thursday instead of Monday to Friday.) We may implement a way for the server to learn your time zone, but that's a low priority for now.

What happens when the archive runs out?
Congratulations! You're now up to date with your chosen comic! Your feed will contain a message letting you know when this happens. You can then delete the feed and switch to keeping up to date with the comic by visiting its site, or subscribing to its regular news feed.

I just spent an hour manually bingeing the archive of a comic. Can I make my custom feed update from where I'm up to now?
Yes. Edit your feed and set the "Start with strip number" to the last strip you have read.

I'm going on a big vacation! Can I pause my custom feeds?
Yes. Just set the strips per day to 0, and set it back to a positive number when you get home. (We're planning to add a new feature to make this easier to do, and allow you to pause/restart all yor feeds with a single click. We'll let you know when it's ready!)

Can other people read my custom feed?
Yes, all custom feeds are publicly accessible. Feel free to share the link around so other people can read the same comics you are reading. But only you can edit or delete the feeds you create.

I have a feature request/bug report!
We'd love to hear it. We maintain a list of feature requests and known bugs on the mezzacotta wiki, so please check there first.

For webcomic artists

Why should I let you add my comic to Archive Binge?
Comics that have large archives can be turn-offs for new readers, no matter how good they are. Some people enjoy the act of spending several hours at a time going through a newly discovered comic's archives, but some don't enjoy it or can't spare the time. Archive Binge is designed to let those potential new readers get into your comic at their own pace, without needing them to remember where they're up to or to keep reading.

I write a webcomic! Can you let people create Archive Binge feeds for my comic?
Sure, we'd love to! Well, as long as your comic has over 100 strips. There's not much point for comics with a shorter run. See the next question for what we need from you to get you set up.

What information do you need to include my comic?
Get in touch with us at the e-mail address shown on the bottom of this page. Here's what we need to set up custom feeds for a new comic:

The author's permission - but if you're the author and you're asking us, that's a formality.
The URL of your site.
An index for every strip in your archive. This is how you refer to each strip. It could be as simple as strip number, or might be the strip date, or something else.
The URL of every strip page in your archive, in publication order. The site URL at the front can be chopped off.
Whether or not you want to let our feeds hotlink your images. We recommend that you allow this, for the convenience of your readers, however you might want us to always just give people a link, to make sure they visit your site and see your ads or something.
If you want to allow image hotlinking: The URL of every strip image in your archive, in publication order.
If your comic has a text title for each strip: The strip title for every strip image in your archive, in publication order.
If your comic uses mouseover text for an additional gag: The mouseover text for every strip image in your archive, in publication order.

As an example, here's a listing containing what we need:

index,     page,                      image,                 title,          mouseover
2009-08-23,/20090823-comic.html,      /strips/firstcomic.gif,"Hello, World!","first mouseover text"
2009-08-25,/20090825-bananacomic.html,/strips/banana.jpg,    "Fruit for all","bananas are fun"
2009-08-27,/20090827-mangostrip.html, /strips/mango.png,     "More fruit",   "mangos are more fun"
... etc.

If you can generate such a listing for us, fantastic. The exact format doesn't matter, as long as the information is there, in the right order. We're okay with: CSV, tab-separated text, Excel file, output of an SQL SELECT statement, or anything else reasonable.

There are also a few shortcuts that will work for some comics. If your comic is indexed by strip number, and the strip pages and/or strip images are generated using that number, then that makes things easy, especially if you don't use strip titles or mouseover text. If your data would look like something like this:

index,page,              image
1,    /comic.php?comic=1,/strips/0001.png
2,    /comic.php?comic=2,/strips/0002.png
3,    /comic.php?comic=3,/strips/0003.png
... etc.

then there's no need to list it all out. Just tell us how you generate the URLs from the strip number.

Once we have this information, we'll figure out a way of keeping the information up to date, and of knowing what your most recently published strip is. We can usually scrape this off your comic's home page or RSS feed.

I'm using ComicPress or some blogging software and don't know how to generate the list of data you need. Can you help me?
There are things we can do to extract the necessary information from your website, but it requires significantly more work on our part. Your comic will be up and running much faster if you can manage to get all the data for us. If you really don't know how to get it, we may take several days to get your comic fully entered into our system.

Why are you doing this? Are you making money out of other people's comics?
We came up with this idea because we thought there must be a better way of catching up with all those good webcomics out there with archives large enough to scare people away. Archive Binge is non-profit: we guarantee we will never run ads on the site or any of the custom feeds, nor will we make money from Archive Binge in any way whatsoever.

Readers are telling me they can't see my images on their Archive Binge feeds!
If you have put referrer restrictions in place to prevent hotlinking of your image files, this may interfere with Archive Binge being able to access your images. These are usually implemented in your .htaccess file.

To allow readers to see your comics via Archive Binge, you need to allow image linking from the referrer archivebinge.net, plus major news aggregator sites such as Google Reader (google.com/reader). See the Archive Binge wiki page for a current list of common RSS aggregators and a sample .htaccess file snippet.