This is the home page of UK Furry
community. This site hosts the main UKFur forum, mailing lists, and member sites. You can have one too: find out more.
By being here, you agree to follow the terms set out in the AUP. We suggest you read it, in case it says something like, "I agree to buy Makali lots to drink".
The site is dead, long live the site!
UKFur.net is undergoing some pretty deep changes, which you'll see soon. This is less in response to recent events than that those events proved that I just don't have the time or the will-power to maintain the site in its current form. The creation of the forums was a response to the problems on the LondonFur mailing list, but it brought with it a lot of redundancy. You need two separate user accounts to use the site as it stands. Each has its own profiles and avatars, each has its own administrative overhead and backend systems, both doing pretty much the same as the other.
Three things are going to happen as a result. First, the UKFur site is going to be cut down to its barest components (about us, services, forums), second, I'm moving the site to a new, cheaper server, and finally, I'm minimising my involvement with the system as it stands. This isn't because I hate you all and want to die, but because I cannot give the current site the attention and dedication it requires and, to some extent, deserves. By cutting down the stuff I actually need to do to keep the site running, I'll be increasing the chances of me being able to work on it when it needs work, and fix things when they need fixing.
Moving the site is the most disruptive part. It's been down a lot recently already, and I apologise for that. This time the downtime is under my control, and I'm taking steps to minimise the damage. These are the big problems I anticipate:
- DNS update slowness
- When you move a server to a new IP address, DNS servers across the world need to update to point to the new IP address. This usually takes 2-4 days, during which the site is either not reachable at all, or you get pointed to the wrong site. On the other hand, registering a new domain name takes effect almost immediately, because of the way that DNS works. Therefore I'm buying UKFur.Org, which will point to the new server right away. The old IP address will point users to the new site. Once things settle down, UKFur.net will be reachable on both domain names.
- Scripts will be broken
- Pathnames, passwords, and file permissions on the server don't transfer very well, and this usually ends up breaking something temporarily. We'll be transferring the forum database and running on a fresh installation of the forum software so that all should be up and running quickly on that front. Also, the other parts of this site will mostly be deleted, and you can't break what isn't there.
- Personal accounts may mess up
- Email addresses should transfer just fine, so if you have a ukfur.net address, the only thing to be aware of is that because of the DNS update there might be some downtime. There shouldn't be, because I'm pretty sure the Mail-eXchange part of our DNS record won't change at all, but be prepared for anything up to three or four days without it. Your webspace will also change address, and again there's nothing I can do about that. The ~ will disappear from your URLs, so http://ukfur.net/~kytheraen will become http://ukfur.net/kytheraen, for example. My hosting costs are being halved because of the new server (amusingly the new "lite" package has the same specification as the old "full" package UKFur.net used to be on, but that's by the bye), so those of you who have accounts won't be billed for them any more. This is by way of apology for crap service, and also because administration and accounting is a pain in the bum.
There will probably be other problems, some predictable, others obscure, and I'll work as hard as I can to make sure these are fixed so that I can have a rest. In the long term, I might offer free UKFur mailing lists and web/mail accounts, but don't hold your breath! :) Again, sorry for the inconvenience, and sorry you'll be losing the pretty UKFur.net profiles. The forums won't be going anywhere for a long time, I promise.