MangaDex Announces Network for Scanlation Groups

New Service Aims to Help Smaller Scanlation Groups

Otaku Voice Staff

Late last night, the popular manga hosting site announced their new network initiative. MangaDex Network aims to bring a centralized service to scanlation groups looking for free hosting in an otaku friendly environment. One of the moderators of the site, Zephyrus, detailed what to expect from their new service. 

From the site –

Custom mangadex.com domains for free
Bring your current domain with you
Import your blogs with ease from WordPress, Blogspot, and even Tumblr
Support for all free plugins compatible with the WordPress platform
Seamless integration between hosting images and blogs
It’s FREE with a dedicated support channel on our Discord

Zephyrus – Moderator

For those that don’t have the resources to maintain a full site, it is an opportunity to have a small space on the internet. It appears that this will be built upon WordPress Multi-site, which is why the folks behind MangaDex are able to provide free hosting. Even the “Seamless integration between hosting images and blogs” sounds particularly promising. 

It is free, with support, and you can bring our own domain if the *.mangadex.com URL is not enough. There aren’t many hosting sites out there that offer this level of services for this price, free. Obviously MangaDex benefits from the network. It demonstrates how much they value the groups doing so much of the hard work translating and providing us with the goods. Bringing them closer into the fold is a great two-way partnership between the site and scanlators.

There is a concern about the continued centralization around ManaDex. They are already one of the most popular manga hosting sites currently, and their bid to bring everyone under their umbrella is likely to ruffle some feathers. The obvious drawbacks are a lack of backup when MangaDex goes the way of the dodo like many manga hosting sites before it. Different groups come and go, but losing potentially a few dozen or hundred groups at once would be pretty devastating to the community. Hopefully, the benefit of having this service outweighs the bad.

Check out the announcement of the MangaDex Network below.

[Source]
[Announcement Thread – MangaDex]