We have become aware, as part of the userbase of FA (FurAffinity) that our beloved website is down. They have been down for almost 3 days now with no sign of coming back online anytime soon.
According to their post on LJ (another site we frequent):
"Imagine how we feel when our ISP, which supposedly has redundant links, seems to have perennial peering issues.
Pretty much the only way you're going to be getting your wholesome, furry goodness *cough* at this point is by throwing a party in the server room. (And I'd imagine that S&D would take issue with that.)
tl;dr - ISP's shit's broke. Nothing we can do about it. Patience is a virtue. Etc, etc, etc.
PS: I totally just noticed that I haven't done stats in like... two months. Not that I can do it now. Servers are inaccessible.
Lack of update: 2009-12-01 15:30 UTC 10:30 EST
Well, what can I say. Our ISP is still not talking to us. (And I'm sure anyone who is resourceful can dig up who our ISP is.)
Going on 24 hours with no updates. When we know something, we'll post it.
We also have no plans to ask for donations for this problem. Because it won't actually solve the problem, in this case."
Maybe you guys should have thought about redundant servers vs redundant links? Rednudant ISP links means nothing if the issue is on the ISP side, since most ISP issues will knock out the ENTIRE system.
At least with redundant servers, the site is hosting in many locations around the world...on MANY ISP's. So if one ISP gets knocked out, your site stays up.
(On a side note, that could explain how a DDoS can take out FA for days on end. Maybe we just imagined up the problem here??)
Well, on another note. Since our beloved FA may not return for some time, since their ISP refuses to talk to them, how about we offer an alternative.
We know its a smaller site, and runs on a more "basic" backend. But its running on redundant servers (that we don't even have to pay for--think about that FA Staff).
So, our alternative can guarentee more stability and offers much of the same FA does.
Some of our servers (again we don't pay for) also allow adult content. (Something the FA staff "supposedly" had a hard time finding. There's thousands of them on Google.)
That means you can share and post your furry artwork and images, regardless of rating. (Yes, we even want you posting the porn...we like looking at it.)
We allow stories to be shared and commented on.
Chat rooms.
Forums.
Hell, we even have our own e-Mail service and Radio Sation!!
(For those musicians out there, feel free to submit your music to TNSC Radio.)
Let's just run a quck comparison of issues between FA and TNSC this year alone:
FA - 8 issues
TNSC - 4 issues (Since a full site re-build earlier this year)
Back in May of this year. TNSC had a major overhaul done on the site and we moved it from a non-redundant server onto its new redundant servers. Since then, the site has never actually gone down. Parts of it were moved after the old server we moved from shut down completely before we had the chance to grab the rest of the services from TNSC. That only affected the forums. We had a login server issue for the chat room and moved to a more stable system.
As of right now TNSC is fully stable and running without any glitches.
(All of our issues since the rebuild in May have not taken the site offline. Most of FA's issues take the site fully offline.)
We'd say that is a decent track record for a website that only moderated by 2 Active DWS Team Members.
So, you all can wait for FA's eventual return.
(We're not sure how serious FA's staff is about site stability, but we have faith that they at least wake up and go to bed praying the site stays stable--Which honestly is the most we can say about any other webmaster team. We are so serious about site stablity that we have moved sites from unstable servers onto newer ones--a rather large and tedious task, mind you. Hell, that's what TNSC's "rebuild" was all about.)
But while waiting, there is no need to be bored. Feel free to check out The TNSC Community, share your furry artwork and images. (Yes, we allow people to post more than just mere art.) Listen or add to TNSC Radio, join the chats and forums. Let's have a party on TNSC while we wait and see what will happen with FA at the very least. That way the sharing of art doesn't have to stop at FA. (Nor should it solely rely on FA.)
Join us on The TNSC Communtiy, come and celebrate the Creations of the People!!
You can find TNSC at http://tnsc.ath.cx
(Hell, you might call TNSC your second home away from FA, even after FA returns..you know..just in case FA crashes again.)
(Go ahead and call this a semi-shameless plug. But it is an alternative. And no, we're not saying FA is a bad site. Hell if it were so bad...would we visit it regularly?)
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TNSC Art Contest
Alongside FA's Downtime is the change of theme for TNSC's Art Contest.
(This may come to a disadvantage to anything that was submitted last month if it was on FA)
This month's theme is:
Halos - Submit anything with characters with Halos. (Angels included.)
Submission Deadline: January 1, 2010
Voting Deadline: January 10, 2010
You can still vote on Last Month's Entries until December 10th, then we will announce a winner.
You can submit and vote at http://tnsc.ath.cx