I went to http://unicorn.wereanimal.net/ for the first time in a long time and found that it's unfortunately going to be closed down imminently. It's full of content, including quite a lot that I would call unique and unlikely to reappear. I'm somewhat new here and would frankly like some help getting it off the sinking ship. Even if I don't, at least I brought it to everyone's attention. I hope to see a lot of familiar images on here soon.

I remember that place. Used to go there all the time. That site's as old as the hills. Sad to see it go, but such is life...

Anyone know why it's closing down?

Not me. Seems there's some kind of draconian download rate-limiting in place on the site. Combined with some disappointing throughput from the site, that makes archiving kind of a pain.

Well, okay, either they're enforcing draconian rate-limiting policies or the site is being hosted on a 256kbps DSL line. Dare I run a tracert on their hostname and find out?

The timing of their shutdown seems to be 3 days before the domain is set to expire. Maybe the admin is just tired of hosting pr0n?

NOOOOOOOOO

The worst part is that the Internet Archive apparently stopped saving the site about 2 years ago, meaning we can't just go back afterward and take our time.

asdfzxc said:
The worst part is that the Internet Archive apparently stopped saving the site about 2 years ago, meaning we can't just go back afterward and take our time.

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine only saves the general design and layout of the page, it' doesn't actually save all the downloadable links. I found that out when I tried surfing the 1999 version of CNET. I couldn't download any software...all the links were not in the database, or were broken. :-(

ikdind said:
Not me. Seems there's some kind of draconian download rate-limiting in place on the site. Combined with some disappointing throughput from the site, that makes archiving kind of a pain.

Ja, I realized that too. Only two downloads at a time...IIRC, you used to be able to download 5-6 at a time...

I'm going to try and see if I can pull down a full copy of it; chances are I can spider the entire site and all content, regardless of what anti-leeching measures are in place.

Would any of you be interested in me offering to host them for free? Do you feel this is a worthy, useful, substantial resource that needs to stay online?

In addition, is there any indication of the reasoning behind closing the site, other than 'hosting space' and 'money'? There's almost always a reason other than that, such as the maintainer not wanting to be responsible for it any more.

Varka

Varka said:
Would any of you be interested in me offering to host them for free? Do you feel this is a worthy, useful, substantial resource that needs to stay online?

I say that the site in question has some decent materials, and it would be really nice if it wont just disappear.

Varka said:
In addition, is there any indication of the reasoning behind closing the site, other than 'hosting space' and 'money'? There's almost always a reason other than that, such as the maintainer not wanting to be responsible for it any more.

Am skimming through their forums, and I stumbled upon this exchange:

Random poster: "It´s sad to see this place being closed. I always enjoyed my stays here, but now it looks like I have to look for another place. Maybe one day this place will return."

Aradd the webhost: "yes. sometimes you loose, sometimes you win. this time furaffinity won..."

I also see mention of, like, update after christmas? but I can't understand what's going on exactly..

Varka said:
Would any of you be interested in me offering to host them for free? Do you feel this is a worthy, useful, substantial resource that needs to stay online?

Honest answer? After browsing through a good portion of their stuff, I'm not sure how much is worth saving, unless you have a strong wish to preserve it for purely historical reasons.

There are comics and mangas on there that seem interesting, but the videos, flashes, and one-off images seem either freely available everywhere in higher quality, or would never have been posted on this site to begin with.

SnowWolf said:
Aradd the webhost: "yes. sometimes you loose, sometimes you win. this time furaffinity won..."

What does fur affinity have to do with anything?

Aurali said:
What does fur affinity have to do with anything?

I dunno either. Maybe FA has more furry artwork to satisfy the users than Wereanimal does? Why dontcha ask him (Aradd)?

http://voy.com/196148/1165.html

Varka said:
I'm going to try and see if I can pull down a full copy of it; chances are I can spider the entire site and all content, regardless of what anti-leeching measures are in place.

Before you do that, take note that all the mangas/comics can be viewed as individual files or downloaded as a single archive. That way you won't be wasting bandwidth on the same files twice.

WolfieWolfie1992 said:
I dunno either. Maybe FA has more furry artwork to satisfy the users than Wereanimal does? Why dontcha ask him (Aradd)?

http://voy.com/196148/1165.html

I really don't want to. The fandom has enough drama.

Alrighty then, since everyone here is apparently afraid to ask questions, or just doesn't give a shit...but for those that do care to know, I took the liberty of asking Aradd what happened myself. Here is his response:

since 2009 mostly artwork that have being posted at the forgotten empire also have being posted at furaffinity and/or sofur.com.
sometimes it have being added artwork with higher resolutions than fa but it seems that people mostly get their artwork from fa as in all forum repost it have always being the lower resolution versions posted.

the old artwork, well, some of it, is not avaible anywhere else but it have not being asked for in any forums for several years.

when people asking for links to artist, it is always pointed out to fa or sofur so the website is never mentioned, even as some artist have bigger collections here than on fa, so i think the site is not needed anymore.

we shall also remember that mostly artist never get any feedback from the forgotten empire. today many mail addresses is not working, but that doesnt matter as i think
you understand.

so this can be so that fa was the winner as it doesnt matter if you do anything good, or bad, as it is mostly importent that you have people using it.

remember microsoft windows, it is the worst os in the world, but as 95% use it, maybe some lesser now as many, also on my work, use mac for private use, they want something that works...
so is it...

aradd

Summary (aka TL:DR version):

The majority of people get their furry fix on SoFurry or FurAffinity now, and don't give a shit about the older art that was produced years ago. The website's traffic is dwindling fast, and it is costing too much money to maintain a "ghost-town". Thus, it is easier to just close up the shop and say goodbye.

...and Windows PC's suck
----------
It makes me sad to see this thing happening a lot now though...
All the furries nowadays go to big-box websites like FurAffinity, SoFurry and e621, and completely forget about all the mom-and-pop websites that started this fandom to begin with. The old furry sites that can be still viewed on the Wayback Machine are just so nostalgic and bring back many memories. When you see big banners like "ANTHROCON IV: Sign Up Now!" or "Optimized for IE 5" or "You are the ___th visitor since June 7th, 1998" just makes you think back to simpler times, yunno?

Thank you very much for the research Wolfie, and everyone else for their respective contribution. My opinion shouldn't be worth much but I think we should take this opportunity to take on Aradd's responsibility for him, while simultaneously adding his soon-to-be-former patronage to our own. Perhaps we could even have a redirect, if I understand how that works.

There seems to be little to nothing of worth on that site.

That's sad. I always saw Aradd's site as an animal porn resource first and foremost. Only youtube has more videos, and I hate youtube for making crappy low-resolution phone camera videos look even worse through FLV.

Pah.

Aurali said:
What does fur affinity have to do with anything?

I (didn't) know, jsut quoting what info I found before I had to run out for the day. :P

Thanks for figuring that out wolfie. :)

ExplosiveBlaziken said:
There seems to be little to nothing of worth on that site.

But, the question is.. is there little-to-nothing of worth on that site because of your personal tastes, or due to the quality of the material? Personally, I see a lot of art who's style I don't really like, but clearly reflects what "american" art styles were prior to the anime explosion some time back. This is a reflection of when people said "This turns me on, but there's next to no art of it. I'll draw some"... Compared to now when someone can say "I want 'My Little Toaster'x'My little Pony' art and find a dozen pieces. the art may not be manga-master, or 'photoshop king', but it definitely represents another time and place on the internet. I've been browsing for a while and it's pretty amazing seeing so much art from the 90's. I've seen art from 2005 be called 'old as dirt' here on e621.. and the stray pieces from the 90's stand out because they are so very different from what sefeiren and demicoeur and so forth put out... but it's amazing to see.

I, personally, think that the website is worth hanging on to. there are MANY artists archived, and I would imagine that much of the art stored there can not be found anywhere else on the internet. And it'd really be a shame to give it up just because it's drawn with an american comic style, or because the photoshop used was 'primitive' compared to what we can do now.. or god forbid, not digitally created at all! (going back 5 pages on the front pasge, I found 5 pieces of work which might have only seen minor changes in photoshop (colored backgrounds, tweaked line art.. and of them, there's only ONE that I'm positive is pencil, and not a low opacity brush or something.) and also in those 5 pages, only one work that I can tell was done with markers. ... oh and that one was grabbed from Aradd's site. :P)

So.. there's my two cents. :) I think this is worth saving.

So someone is quitting because FA gets more traffic? And SoFurry? Bleah. no one really uses that site. Meh, I dunno, I guess comparing FA to Wal-Mart seems a bit off to me... at least Wal-mart cares about things XD

Anyhow, Aradd's just causing drama, like most people do. I'm a site owner as well, so I guess what I'm saying is "Suck it up pussy, rebuild your website (How can you look fucking WORSE than FA..) and advertise"

Well, as I understand, his problem is more that artists update these other websites and don't ever sent him updates, people don't say 'my art is on aradd's site, people don't send artist's feedback saying it was from aradd's site... he, in general, feels redundant and pointless.

Which I can understand. His service is old and out of date. why email updates to someone when FA lets you maintain an archive with so much ease? I bet his bandwidth is a few sporatic browsers, and several people who's whole goal is to doanload every time... and none of these people come together to for m a 'community' of any sort.

Add in also that his website, put bluntly, feels old. if I had to guess, hand coded. no CSS, nothing more fancy then animated gifs and tables. He "should" update to a more modern appearance. But then he'd essentially have to redo every single individual webpage.

and why SHOULD he bother? A thankless job for providing a service that no one appreciates anymore because it can be done faster and 'better' on FA,. all th e while draining money away slowly... I don't see a donate link, so it's probably all out of his pocket.

Imagine how many more thing he could do without that money being drained and that responsibility pulling at his soul?

To be honest, I agree with you: He should just pony up, clean up and rebuild and advertise... but I suspect he's /tired/ also... and that can be a very hard thing to fight with.

SnowWolf said:
Add in also that his website, put bluntly, feels old. if I had to guess, hand coded. no CSS, nothing more fancy then animated gifs and tables. He "should" update to a more modern appearance.

His website is done by a script he has to manually run every now and then after he updates the folders. However, I don't see anything bad about it. It does feel old, but it's perfectly designed and has no annoying stupidities added. KISS in motion. The site is also nicely themed to be a dungeon sort of place. With rooms and everything.

All in all, e621 is at the top of the furry food chain if you ask me. A nice wall of images after typing in the keywords and/or artists you're interested in. Nothing is more convenient.

Thanks for your feedback, guys.

On one hand there is a large amount of artwork which runs the risk of being forgotten or lost; but on the other hand, it's really hard to fight against fatigue when it comes to maintaining a site. Sometimes it's all you can do to watch your visitors slowly trail off, until there's only five or six like-minded people still hanging around - and at that point, aside from storing it as a piece of history, there's not a lot you can do.

I don't think that there's much I can do that'll be worthwhile for this site if the owner has given up on it; as I said before, fatigue is very hard to fight, and despite the fact that reworking everything to be shiny and new and competitive in today's furry art marketplace is basically what'd be required for this site to continue existing, it's clear to me that it'd be pretty unrealistic to expect that to happen - either with the current owner, or anyone else, at the helm.

I'll see about getting a full archived copy, just so there's something to remember it by, but it looks likely that this one's gonna be a wrap.

Sorry guys.

Fum said:
However, I don't see anything bad about it. It does feel old, but it's perfectly designed and has no annoying stupidities added.

Well, I saw auto-playing audio and 5-second-loop animated GIFs for navigation (meaning you can't tell what button goes to what page unless you wait for the GIF to get to the frame with the name of the link...).

Thank you for the help you're giving Varka, it's more than I would humbly ask for. I actually feel the same way about this being the site's natural death, and I'm just glad that we get to continue it's work at least in archiving it's life.

Varka said:
Thanks for your feedback, guys.

On one hand there is a large amount of artwork which runs the risk of being forgotten or lost; but on the other hand, it's really hard to fight against fatigue when it comes to maintaining a site. Sometimes it's all you can do to watch your visitors slowly trail off, until there's only five or six like-minded people still hanging around - and at that point, aside from storing it as a piece of history, there's not a lot you can do.

I don't think that there's much I can do that'll be worthwhile for this site if the owner has given up on it; as I said before, fatigue is very hard to fight, and despite the fact that reworking everything to be shiny and new and competitive in today's furry art marketplace is basically what'd be required for this site to continue existing, it's clear to me that it'd be pretty unrealistic to expect that to happen - either with the current owner, or anyone else, at the helm.

I'll see about getting a full archived copy, just so there's something to remember it by, but it looks likely that this one's gonna be a wrap.

Sorry guys.

An archive'd be good enough to me.

LOL, thats the website that showed me what a crocodile penis looks like (terrifying by the way).
You know that site is a bestiality site right?

I'm not hating on the rest of the site, but I thought it was common knowledge...
http://unicorn.wereanimal.net/Kondor/Animals/Index.htm

tony311 said:
Well, I saw auto-playing audio and 5-second-loop animated GIFs for navigation (meaning you can't tell what button goes to what page unless you wait for the GIF to get to the frame with the name of the link...).

Good point. I never install sound support on my browsers so I never noticed that there was any music there and as I know the site by heart, I don't generally look at the images, just read the descriptions.

baracudaboy said:
LOL, thats the website that showed me what a crocodile penis looks like (terrifying by the way).
You know that site is a bestiality site right?

bestiality is a human and an animal going at it. Unless there are pictures of humans "playing" with animals, it's not technically bestiality. Now, people might fap to it anyway, but it's not the intent of the website. I'm actually sitting here looking through the pictures marveling at the variety. bats look like itty bitty horses :D The croc cock looks pretty cool too, if you set aside the fact that it's covered in blood >< (Maybe the next BD toy will be Craig the croc? :D the shape looks interesting!)

it's a shame people don't draw more 'realisitic' animal parts.. not so much because I get off on it, but because it's nice to see furs with something other then a) Human b) canine c) overly proportioned cat d) dog/cat/human mnixture. (because it's murry) or e) random phallic object with no real basis in reality with 3 knots and some squiggly bits and odd lumps specifically decided For Her Pleasure (tm) :D

SnowWolf said:
bestiality is a human and an animal going at it. Unless there are pictures of humans "playing" with animals, it's not technically bestiality. Now, people might fap to it anyway, but it's not the intent of the website. I'm actually sitting here looking through the pictures marveling at the variety. bats look like itty bitty horses :D The croc cock looks pretty cool too, if you set aside the fact that it's covered in blood >< (Maybe the next BD toy will be Craig the croc? :D the shape looks interesting!)

it's a shame people don't draw more 'realisitic' animal parts.. not so much because I get off on it, but because it's nice to see furs with something other then a) Human b) canine c) overly proportioned cat d) dog/cat/human mnixture. (because it's murry) or e) random phallic object with no real basis in reality with 3 knots and some squiggly bits and odd lumps specifically decided For Her Pleasure (tm) :D

I agree, more crocodiles and hedgehogs that AREN'T sonic.

baracudaboy said:
You know that site is a bestiality site right?
http://unicorn.wereanimal.net/Kondor/Animals/Index.htm

Kondor is animal porn, not bestiality.
Ellgar is bestiality porn.
http://unicorn.wereanimal.net/Ellgar/Index.html

Get your facts straight :P

but those are all illustrations, not pictures so it's okay :D

Nevermind. Found what I was looking for.

Contact me if you want info about the mirror.

Did anyone ever get a mirror up?

Whoa dood, way to pop up a necro...

SniffHeinkel said:
Did anyone ever get a mirror up?

It's a good question, but I don't know sorry

Locked: Must stop the zombie apocalypse! If there's one, there will be more!