Planetfurry BBS

[Kellan Meig'h]

Just read this and confirmed it.

FurNation, a websystem that I have operated for the furry fandom since 1996, almost 14 years, will be closing and going offline forever on May 16th, 2009 at Midnight.

FurNation Worlds, the sims we run on Second Life, will remain for now in name only. FurNation Prime, the main center sim will go offline this week.

I am sorry to announce this, but for FN to continue at the present time while paying the debt that I still have for the hosting fees going back to the beginning of operation we would need a little over 2K in cash along with this month's hosting fees of 400 dollars. I do not expect nor wish to ask for further donations to run the service, nor can I afford to continue to add to my current debt.

All Supporting Members will be able to keep using the email system (I will provide a new URL for the web interface). I will provide further information later this week.

For those hosting sites on FN, the FTP service will remain in operation until the end of this month for all those who need to collect any data they may have stored.

I have met many friends in the fandom, and I can say that the last 14 years in the fandom has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. To bring FurNation to a final close is one of the hardest things I have done, and I will always feel a part of myself is missing.

So long furs and furrets, and thanks for all the carrots.

Nexxus

Hey gang (me included)- we should take a hint here (nudge, nudge) before this is us.

Kellan, the old warhorse

[anthony]

I'm surprised it hasn't happened a long time ago...

Furnation has been overfilled with bad art, half-assed websites with banner ads(none of the proceeds goes to Nexxus, of course... ) and generally, crap everywhere.

The good thing about the internet is that anyone can publish, the bad thing is also that anyone can publish...

Nexxus is a nice bloke, but letting just about anyone publish, with no quality control or revision of the sites was not a good idea.

[ChrisFoxx]

I've long said that Furnation is the Apple Records of Furrydom.

Thankfully, TGIF told me about this too, so now I have to gear up and yank down anything that's up there that I may still want.

I won't knock Furnation, they gave me my start!
And Nexxus is indeed a *really* nice guy -- and a fan of The Story!

The really fun thing was in 2000/2001, when if you checked their WebTrends trackers, Foxx Den led them in almost every catagory

Furnation, it was a fun ride while it lasted.

Chris

[Sparky Lucario [TGL]]

FurNation is not closing >.<

Ghost Menjou & Vulpes Sapetina are gonna move the forum to Menjou's server host thing ... so FurNation is safe


I'm a member of the forum so you really shouldn't doubt my word

but the only funny thing is ... Nexxus sent out an Email saying FurNation was closing, but yet, when a rescue plan was created, no Email was sent out to say FurNation isn't closing; Panic over etc etc

[Kellan Meig'h]

Found this in a link that was edited into the front page sometime after Saturday over at Furnation;

(copy&paste)

By Ghost Menjou:

Plans.

We will back up all data, and as soon as possible we will return. Maybe not managed by Nexxus anymore, but by me and others.
If I get the Ok by Nexxus, I will try to get the domain redirect to a chatroom on my domain.
So we can still contact each other.

I promise you friends, We shall rise again.

If we return, and its kept up by me, we will lose all directories and the gallery. Only the forums will remain. As long we can keep the community.

Long live the Nation.

Thank you guys, for staying here all this time.

(/copy&paste)

Sounds like an admirable plan to me but it doesn't sound 100%. There are some ifs in there so even he's not sounding so sure. I hate to see something go down like that but at least there were warnings.

I'm not sure what kind of debt Nexxus was dealing with but I have two domains that are unlimited storage/unlimited bandwidth @ $81 USD a yr. for each one of them.

Kel

[anthony]

Very few hosting sites that offer 'unlimited' bandwidth delivers that.

If you look into the fine writing you'll find that they have some clause that allows them to terminate without warning the account of anyone the find to be 'abusing' the service. Or they need the 'legal' sites to look like a proper hosting while they're really delivering 'bulletproof hosting' for spammers.

In other words, bandwidth cost money, and they need to get the money from somewhere.

Anyway, Furnation has NEVER paid for itself. Not one single month.
(Neither donations, banner ads or the magazine pulled in enough money to keep it running. )
And the sad thing is that if everyone who had a site there paid one lusy $ per month, it would have been possible to keep it floating...

[Marble Didymus]

[Kellan Meig'h]

I did find this at my host's policy page;

"Regardless of the disk space quota set on a web site, a fixed limit of 40,960 individual files is enforced by file limit quota"

That could be a deal breaker, along with 'No Adult content' warnings. I know this isn't a spammer host because it would be on a black hole list somewhere.

So anthony, as far as unlimited its not really unlimited but they did say over the phone I could bring in a server and they could hook me up to the backbone there. Being that I'm in NorCal and they are in SoCal, that would not be an option.

I may eventually consolidate all three of my domains onto a co-lo server here locally. The local ISP's price for co-location wasn't too bad, close to what I'm paying right now. I would also have 24/7 physical access to my server.

Kel

[Asalis]

Nexxus owns his own server so somehow I doubt it was his payment for another service alone that broke him. He's more than likely falling into a rut that most of us Jobless americans are falling into. I hope we come out of this soon.

[Kellan Meig'h]

[anthony]

I've seen some of what's on FA (the interface there gives me a headache... ), Y***star, the TSA and quite a few other sites/archives...
(I checked out 'rather a lot' of what was linked up by Miavir while it was still updated)

And the problem with all the brown matter filling up the sites is that you have to browse it to find the good stuff. And browsing means using bandwidth.

Nothing much more annoying than loading a large .PDF from VCL and finding out that the story is heavy M/M content, and knowing that had it been marked as such, you wouldn't have wasted 1MB of their monthly bandwidth, or if it'sreadable, you could at least have saved them 990KB if the file had been in .TXT.

On Y***.com you might think that a 5star story is good... But no...
Often it has been rated up by the author's friends. (Or the author himself, using a few 'extra' logins)
The 'editors' or whoever that's supposed to weed out the worst crap doesn't seem to care if it's Borged, the spelling is as if done by a chinese with a russian keyboard and bad eyesight...
And suggesting corrections...

Well, there's a reason I don't do that there, anymore...

[Teric]

Makes you feel grateful for a certain grey raccoon that proofreads any submissions before publishing them to his bookshelf...

*cheers for Mike Regan*

[Kellan Meig'h]

[Nicolai Borovskaya]

[Asalis]

You can add my cheers to that as well. I don't know where I'd be if it wasn't for Mike's help.