Store chapter lists instead of only latest chapter

[DakuTree]

Having been considering moving to storing chapter lists instead of just the latest chapter. I'm somewhat hesitant against doing this, but as long as these lists aren't public (essentially turning us into another manga aggregator), there shouldn't be much issue.

What this would be useful for:

• Per chapter read status, just incase you miss one.
• Keeping track of deleted chapters.
• Inline chapter dropdown (#91).
• ???

The main problem here is this would pretty much require overhauling how we handle chapters currently, which is a ton of work. It isn't just a simple tweak, it's overhauling everything.
Also need to consider the speed costs of actually having to deal with every single chapter (instead of only one) when updating.

Need to look into this a bit more.

[Vesnyx]

Would it be easier to make this more of a local database rather than server side? Users could opt-in to having a local cache in exchange for gaining access to these features.

[DakuTree]

It would be easier, but not by much. Would mainly require rewriting a bunch of the userscript to account for the fact that we aren't actually checking the chapter via a chapter page, as well as moving from using $.ajax over to GM_xmlhttpRequest due to CORS limitations.
Even then it isn't that great due to efficient compared to us just tracking it on the backend instead.

I actually did some work about a month ago that did something similar to this, but have abandoned it since.

[Vesnyx]

But then, wouldn't it be as you said; the site would essentially be another aggregator. Except, it could be abused by others if the chapter lists were stored online.

And this also pushes the question, how much of this project should be offline vs online? Moving it offline would relieve much of my assumed "server stresses", but would result in many things having to be rewritten. It would also turn into a rehash of AMR and things like it. Moving it online would result in the dangers of it getting abused as well as the server costs from a hopefully expanded userbase. There are probably a number of other pros and cons, but I suppose it depends on which of the two you would prefer.

[DakuTree]

But then, wouldn't it be as you said; the site would essentially be another aggregator. Except, it could be abused by others if the chapter lists were stored online.

As long as we aren't providing a way for users to find manga, I'd say we avoid the aggregator label.
Users would also be required to be following the series already to see the chapter list, which should help stop it being abused.

And this also pushes the question, how much of this project should be offline vs online?

We should really be online as much as possible, as it tends to be better & more efficient in the long run.

Moving it offline would relieve much of my assumed "server stresses", but would result in many things having to be rewritten. It would also turn into a rehash of AMR and things like it.

There actually isn't much server stress at the moment, and it's unlikely that will change even if we somehow get a massive influx of new users due to the way everything is setup.
Moving to the old AMR way of doing things isn't really any better, as all we're doing is shoving all the work onto the user & the aggregator sites.

Moving it online would result in the dangers of it getting abused as well as the server costs from a hopefully expanded userbase.

At the moment, there isn't any real way to abuse the system outside of mass-adding series we don't have, and even then that can only be done once. It's also easily preventable.
As for server costs, it's already pretty cheap ($7~ per/month) since we barely use any bandwidth. Won't change much even with a massive influx of new users.