Of Cataloging and Digital Comics

Back in January, I talked a bit about how I had set up an old laptop to act as a media server, hosting whatever music, movies, and TV that I threw on it. I was willing/able to do that, in part, because I had an old laptop lying around anyway. I've had it for three or four years, and I would occasionally pull it out to try to get it up and running again but generally with only partial success. However, I did finally seem to get it to a relatively stable state last fall.

It still doesn't work 100% though. The wifi in it is spotty at best, so I need to keep it hard-wired to my router to ensure a continuous connection. There's also something going on where any browser that you open will suddenly and randomly crash for no reason that I can see in the logs. Other programs can be hit or miss whether or not they're impacted. I set up Plex to serve up all my media files locally because Jellyfin -- a platform that seems better aligned with why I wanted to set up a media server to begin with -- would keep crashing.

But it occurs to me that I can host digital comics from the same device. Plex does not handle books or comic books, but I did learn there are similar platforms out there that cater to comics. I have hundreds (thousands?) of digital comics sitting on my laptop hard drive, and it would be great to have ready access to them from any device.

My first attempts were Komga and Kavita, based on some reviews I'd seen. Komga installs but won't open, while Kavita simply wouldn't even finish the installation process. (To be clear, I am NOT citing these as failures of the programs. As I said, the old laptop I was using for this purpose was already not fully functional with a minimal amount of stuff on it, so I'm in no way blaming the developers who made them; it's just something wonky with my computer. I did get YAC Library up and running, but it seems to require a separate app installed on whichever device you're using; you're unable to run it through a browser or otherwise directly connecting to the server. Also I'm not sure if it's pulling in the meta data correctly. That's not critical, but it is an annoyance.

My next experiment will be LANraragi. It does seem more focused on manga, but we'll see how it does with US style trades and floppies. Of course, that's assuming it installs in the first place, and that it doesn't crash a lot in the second.

I'll also try looking at ComicBase. I used to use them just to catalog my physical collection, but a cursory read suggests I can connect digital editions of the books directly to that as well. There is a much higher cost factor involved here, but if I can get it to work across a home network, it would solve two problems as I've been without a comics catalog for far too long.

Of course, much of this would be a moot point if I had boatloads of extra cash that I could just throw at this, instead of using an old laptop that doesn't 100% work properly and having to test out different options. Of course, if I had that kind of money, I'd probably just hire someone to do all this for me; maybe integrate all the elements I want together into a single platform. 🫤 In the meantime, though, I'd love to hear any thoughts, experiences, or commentary anyone out there might have on what's worked or not worked for you!

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