Information AboutFuraffinity |
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FurAffinity is an online art community mostly for members of the Furry Fandom , combining functionality of DeviantART and SheezyArt and the openness of the VCL . It allows the uploading of art from multiple genres and ratings without fear of repercussion or banning due to content. half- Ferret mascot of FurAffinity, drawn by Mutley James]] As of December 5 , 2005 , the website is in the process of returning to functionality. From the latest statistics available July 2005 , it had a little over 12,174 registered accounts. It was thought that many accounts were hacking attempts or abandoned due to unresolvable bugs. An average of 350 users were actively using the site at any one time. HISTORY Formation FurAffinity was created in late 2004 , shortly after SheezyArt banned all pornographic material from its servers. The ban caused many members of SheezyArt to depart, and several attempted to create their own art communities to host adult content. The majority of these envisioned projects either went into obscurity due to lack of commitment, or were completely ignored. FurAffinity is one of the few art communities which not only went into development, but actually went online (in February 2005 ) and gained popularity. Despite its name, FurAffinity welcomed and hosted many former SheezyArt members whether or not their work was Furry in nature. Early troubles From February to April 2005, the site encountered frequent downtime through server changes, database errors, or attempts to the site. The most recent attack was on 26 June , 2005 , when a hacker exploited a security flaw in the site's software to retrieve several hundred user passwords. The retrieved passwords were posted in several public LiveJournal entries, including the FurAffinity LJ community, as well as the hacker's website. Administrator functions were used to post on the main site messages which were Anti-Semitic , anti-Jheryn (the owner of FurAffinity), and anti-fat-fur. The user also posted the portions of the database that he was able to access. Despite the damage done, the hacker was never banned or punished, and was later consulted to help find exploits and give advice on security issues. In late July 2005, disputes among the administrators forced the site to be shut down temporarily. The main cause of this was disagreements between the site owner, Jheryn, and the server owner, Arcturus, over website security and management practices. When a compromise could not be obtained, the server owner resigned, and pulled the plug on the website's server. FurAffinity was thus forced into downtime due to the lack of a server. The existing content of FurAffinity was rendered inaccessible to the general public due to being removed from the DNS record, but technically existed on its original server for backup purposes until 1 August , 2005 . The owner of FurAffinity's original server, Arcturus, intends to launch a new community called ArtPlz (formerly ''ArtFu''). While both archives have been under development, some displaced users were filtering over to Y!Gallery , which is another "rival" art community that sprouted up over the SheezyArt debacle. Current status FurAffinity's site owner held a fund drive in August to raise over $1500 to purchase a new server. The money was raised and the hardware was purchased, although difficulties have delayed its return. On December 3 , 2005 , FurAffinity attempted to return, but several problems, such as corruption of the MySQL database, brought the site down again quickly. However these problems were fixed, and on December 14th, FurAffinity was back online. As of January 11, 2006, the site was mostly functional though some problems still remained in some features that are still being worked on, though they were generally minor in severity. However as of January 21, 2006, a new problem mainfested in regard to MySQL that while mainfesting at an extremely low frequency makes the site unviewable. As against that, this new problem does not appear to have any impact on the integrity of Furaffinity (i.e corruption of data.) The site is currently being censored in China . EXTERNAL LINKS |
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