One thing that always owns scanlators is not having backups of their server data.

Each year I hear of about half-a-dozen groups losing all their data over faulty disks, bans or simple mistakes, and I’m sure even more groups I don’t know of are affected as well. Here are some suggestions to make your backups (almost) automatic.

Rule 0: Keep your data in a place where backup is possible

It might sound silly, but it’s the number one cause for scanlation group death. Picture this: a group’s site is a free forum. They can’t back up their data because the provider doesn’t allow that. Their site is suddenly closed for linking to (supposedly) copyrighted material, and the group slowly dissolved. It happens more than you’d think.

When choosing a site for your team’s forums and updates, first check if you can export data and import it to other systems. You should have access to the databases and the server hard disk. You must be able to extract at least the singular databases and all the FTP data.

Backup everything in your WWW folder (to your own hard drive)

A scanlation group usually has less than 8gb of data saved on-server. That’s a quite a large group already, as not even FoOlRulez has that much data, even though we have double copies of our 400 releases in addition to all our raw and worked material in PSD or hi-res.

The data in the WWW folder on-server doesn’t change often. It’s mainly reinstallable software – WordPress, your forum, FoOlSlide. What you have there are the images uploaded for blogposts or chapters uploaded for your online readers. You therefore don’t need to back this data up frequently. Monthly or twice a month is enough to cover you, but make sure it happens.

Lame choice: download via FTP each time

A choice for those who don’t have command line support.

Just select everything via FTP and start downloading. You can leave out less important things. 8Gb isn’t really that large: the problem is more that there are many small files to download, which can slow down the process.

If you can, first compress the folders into zip files before downloading. You can probably do this through your control panel. Compressed files are faster: not because they are smaller, but because downloading one large file is faster than downloading many small ones.

Once you have a copy of the data, you can selectively back up folders you know have changed.

Awesome choice: rsync

A choice for those who do have command line support.

Rsync is an application that synchronizes folders through computers without having to download files twice. It’s installed by default in your Linux server, as well as on Mac OSX. It uses the SSH “command line protocol” to sync files, which means it’s extremely secure, even when used in unprotected networks.

Here are installation instructions for Windows: http://rsync.net/resources/howto/windows_rsync.html

To sync, we use this command from time to time (on our own PC, not on the server’s command line):

rsync -avz --delete -e ssh root@foolrulez.org:/var/www/ /Users/woxxy/foolrulezwww/

This tells rsync to use SSH to connect to our foolrulez.org server as root. It tells it to compress the data before downloading it, and to put it in a “foolrulezwww” folder on my laptop. If it finds that some files have disappeared from the server, it also deletes them from my hard disk.

You can watch the magic happening or simply leave it alone. Do this every few days. You might even keep two versions of your site on your computer: a weekly version and a monthly version. If possible, back up your computer’s hard disk (with the site backup on it).

Save your MySQL database… six times.

You can lose your installation, your files, all your scans… big deal. These are things you can get back from the Internet. For once aggregators provide something useful for us: remote, automatic backing up of files! In the end, losing the files on a site basically means you waste time retrieving and reuploading.

The real core of your backups is the MySQL database. MySQL contains all your hard work: your blogposts, your forum and working data of everything in your server. It’s also extremely delicate. Made a bad update? Had an installation go wrong? Did your server crash? Bam, everything in your database is gone.

Seriously, don’t fuck with databases. Back. Them. Up. Now.

Lame choice: backup manually via browser

A choice for those who don’t have command line.

There’s not much to say: go to your admin panel, and use whatever export systems you have available. Have a monthly and weekly backup. Also keep the previous month’s data, as well as the previous week’s. Redundancy is better than total loss.

Less lame choice: manual backup via command line

You can just save a dump of the database via SSH. The command line to use is:

mysqldump --user=root --password=rootpassword --all-databases > ~/all-databases.sql

This will save all the databases in your server user’s home folder (like /home/woxxy/). You can then connect with your SFTP/FTP software and download it to your computer. Remember to delete the database backup from the server.

Keep a “monthly” backup that you make on the first of the month. Keep a “weekly” backup that you make on Sundays. Again, keep a copy of the previous month’s/week’s backup.

Awesome choice: automatic backups to S3

A choice for those who have command line and like to be awesome.

FoOlRulez has its own script that just does everything automatically. It keeps two monthly backups, two weekly backups, and two daily backups, automatically stored on the extremely secure Amazon S3 service. 99.999999999% durability and 99.99% availability. Enough said.

I have put the script and a short how-to guide in my latest Github repository, so you might as well just read it from there: https://github.com/woxxy/MySQL-backup-to-Amazon-S3

The cons: they ask you for credit card info (bet you already use Amazon anyway). The first year is free as long as you have less than 5Gb stored, and, after that, you’d pay around $0.42 a month if you have 3gb of databases stored (that’s a lot of database, believe me). If you have a normal-sized database, you’re likely to spend just $0.05/month. That’s crazy cheap, considering how secure is the S3 backup. I think it’s 100% worth it.

Why not Dropbox? Because Dropbox is not the right kind of service for critical data. Its name explains its purpose. Amazon S3 is an enterprise service, and won’t look into what you host. MySQL databases are extremely precious, as they contain hashes of passwords, so you want them to be stored in as safe a place as possible.

More

If you have questions about the code or about ways to back up your server, you can just use http://ask.foolrulez.com to send questions our well. We’re happy to answer.

Additionally, if you want anything added to this article, feel free to ask in the comments section.

I’m overworked, to the point I don’t really edit anything anymore. It’s very important to help other groups with their server and FoOlSlide, and I want to keep doing this.

Since FoOlSlide became really popular really soon, I have to put limits to whom I give support, and put a stop to giving help to people who don’t contribute actively to the community.

I will give free support, given the time, to:

• active scanlators
• mangakas and publishers
• web comic artists

I will give paid support, to

• people who make lots of legal bucks out of FoOlSlide who would also like to contribute to the cause in an open source way

I won’t give support of any kind, to:

• people trying to create manga aggregators
• people trying to use FoOlSlide in unconventional ways
• people trying to illegally make money out of it

It’s not rules I have to formally abide to, and it’s still up to me to decide if giving support or not.

Notice that our software doesn’t come with support included. It’s just in my interest to support scanlation and whoever wants to share their work. I will also help mangakas and publishers if possible, because we owe them.

Being a developer, anything that goes out of this scope, and is legal, will be naturally dealt with like a freelance job. The features requested will possibly become open source too, like themes included, plugins, and so on (this especially allows easier updating).

I don’t need to say why I am not going to support people making illegal money with FoOlSlide. Even less I have to explain why I really hate aggregators.

To the point FoOlRulez.org became kinda a mess to keep using for our projects, as it’s not really a proper place where to share code like a tech team.

FoOlRulez.com: FoOlRulez tech

We’ve bought a new domain to separate the tech section, and the scans/anime/manga section. We’ll use the second site less often, as it will be mainly become a hub for downloading the software, plugins, themes and so on.

Remember FoOlSlide, the new version of the now popular manga reader for scanlators? It’s already open sourced on FoOlRulez.com, though it’s not yet functional (NOT FUNCTIONAL AT ALL, DON’T TRY USING IT).

Go over to FoOlRulez.com to see more.

This also means we’ll be recruiting programmers. Be ready for this.

Achievements

That’s right: FoOlRulez has now achievements! Click around the site, keep visiting, and you’ll make points.
It’s obvious what these points could be used for, be it prizes, decisional power, veto power on hentai, admin power for a week, control on scanlation for a day, raging flames in blog for a year and so on!

Now GO! When there will be enough players, a table will appear, telling us who’s winning!
And notice: achievements are over 50, and are constantly updated and added. The amount of points you can get is not related to how difficult is to get to the achievement.

I have rewritten the blog theme from scratch, remade the forum theme, remade the manga reader theme. I still have to revamp the downloads section. I’ll do it tomorrow, or never…

Note: this code can’t be exported, it’s deeply integrated with our framework, so don’t ask for our theme :|

If you’re not in the right mood to read a little story, just go to the end of the post.

Back when I was more loli than I am now, I tsundere’d all the time when I tried to read my manga. All the groups who were delivering the high quality versions didn’t have a reader at all, and I, like the greatest majority of the readers, just went to the next manga aggregator site, just to read it, despite of the lower quality, and tons of ads, some of which spoke, scaring me all the time. Very soon, despite my young age of 11, I grew a bad eye-cancer, a disease that is very diffused between scanlators. Luckily, The Doctor cured it.

Thank God there’s nanomachines! I couldn’t have my “naisu boddi” violated by needles and horrible stuff like that. At that point though, I was totally over my limit, and went in my Onii-chan’s room and screamed in his face: «Get me a freaking group so we can get the stuff rolling will you?!»
With a smug face, he answered: «Here. Go from these guys, they’re stupid enough to code with a kid like you.»

And so I went out and bought FoOlRulez stocks. After I got majorty, I got the project rolling. Bam, badam, gave a random name like FoOlReader. Nobody cared anyway. One year later, all was done. And now it was running for quite a while, with an amount of satisfied customer in the order of

Gentlemen, this is FoOlReader, the best web-based manga reader to date.

Why is it the best? Well let’s see…

• It doesn’t need a reload of the whole page to change image.
• Because of this, it uses less processor.
• It uses (still) no database, so it works on any server.
• It makes it kinda easier to keep your projects listed, with thumbnails and descriptions.
• It supports pagespreads automatically.
• It helps the search engines to find your manga.
• It helps you gathering followers (forum, twitter, facebook…)
• It doesn’t make people run to other, low quality, slow readers.
• It has integrated advertising functions, that reload each time the image changes.
• It uses a ton of JavaScript.
• It just looks cool.
• It allows themes and plugins.
• Works on mobile.
• Much more that would just make this post look even uglier!

Want to try it? Just jump over to our manga reader.

Here’s not the place where I should get technical, so I will just redirect you to the readme in our server, so you understand what do you need (basically, the most simple server will do!).

The next thing you will want? The download. Just go in the usual download section for the manga, or on IRC, and download it. You will find the readme.html in the ZIP too, just to be sure.

Want some help, fast? Just jump on the IRC and hope I am online.

Want a custom version, a theme or anything that would take me quite some hours? Well, in the interest of FoOlRulez, I can work for you. Be ready with a donation, though!

What if you like it, but your favorite group doesn’t have it? Go and tell ‘em.

It’s a very weird situation, the one that comes with our community: we’re the ones releasing our translations, but we give the least liked way to consume a manga to our readers, so that everyone just jumps to their favorite manga-reader. I can understand the love for IRC, and we even built from scratch our own special tsundere BOT Tanline/Curves with our own protocol, but, being real, most people like reading in their browser. And, truth stands, there’s not many groups with their own cool manga reader.

FoOlReader is an open-source project that we work on at FoOlRulez, with some partner groups, as RedHawksScans and SC-Scans, testing different versions and themes and giving us suggestions. Since it’s open-source, we’ll release the code when it’s baked, and issue updates for new features.

It’s a whole different manga reader system, extremely easy to install, with in mind people who aren’t familiar with code, but also with enough tools to make programmers happy. How does it work? You just paste the folder anywhere on your server, and put the manga in it. Could it be any easier?

FoOlReader’s interface is not meant for “commercial” manga readers like MangaFox, but for scanlation groups. That’s why there’s less interest in making money, and more interest in making the reader feel at ease.

Current features:
-image preloading (you can select how many)
-easing effects
-themes
-plugins
-simple ads insertion
-shows synopsis, image and last chapter available of every manga in index
-needs no database
-Facebook/Twitter integrations
-works also without JavaScript
-works even on cellphones!

Features currently being implemented:
-manual and precise zooming for any page (not only spreads)
-uploading
-automatic update

Future features:
-graphic stats
-download system
-bookmarking
-network between FoOlReaders to share bookmarks (?!)

Right now it’s not available for download, because I have to set precise standards for the updating system. Considering the very positive reaction of the people to the reader, I expect a lot of teams at least trying it, and, knowing how good it is in the eyes of people, I’d expect a little revolution.

You can use the most recent stable version in our manga reader or Redhawk’s manga reader. If you can come up with any suggestion, I’ll welcome them.

There’s as usual a lot going on at fools.

Ok, first news, we’ll take up Seitokai Yakuindomo 4koma manga, with all its sex references. But this is just news, wait for facts. The decision should be final though, and the release come quite soon, as in 24-48 hours.

Second: I wasted 1 hour from the release to draw the yukkuri. So make sure you praise me.

Third, and surely more massive, it took a load of work by guorbatschow. We’re (guorbatschow is) working on Curves, a new bot framework written in Java, which means Tanline, our gangsta-moe black haired twintailed bot is now also going to give you the downloads, beside being almost living on artificial intelligence. If things go well, Curves will become an Open Source project that you will be able to use yourself.

Fourth, we have Sora no Otoshimono 40!

Please, if you can waste 40 seconds more of your life, go on IRC to try downloading from the new bot. Use the command “!get sora 40″ or “!download sora no otoshimono 40″ or any command in this page. And please, report in this thread if things didn’t go well.

Sora no Otoshimono 40:
DDL&IRC | Read it

If the new bot doesn’t work, just use “/msg fool xdcc send 290″ to use the old bot.

Proof!

Credit to: valkr1e from the IRC channel

I decided that it’s worthy some working, and here it is, a fully CSS3 Durarara “The Dollars” twitter client working via browser.

AWESOME CLIENT.

It’s as similar as I could make it in a short timespan to the original one. It was a real pain to build it in truth, but the result is definitely amazing.

You can go using it directly here.