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[Announcement] UPFurry.org is no more
14 years ago
It is with a heavy heart that the three current admins of UPFurry.org (
zinkywolfe, 
jaywolfe2007, and 
platero) have decided unanimously to shut down the website for the time being. It's especially disappointing when the site redesign has been 90% finished since July, but we've reached the conclusion that it would not be worth the time, cost, or effort.
TL;DR SECTION:
A couple things led up to this. First, the current staff took over because
furglitch and Phoxtayl both moved out of the state and obviously had no more interest in local events. However, I (the webmaster) unexpectedly left the UP in August, which put a huge dent in that reason. Communication between the staff got a lot more difficult... in fact, I think the three of us have all been in the same room only once since then.
Second, we wanted to replace a mostly dead forum with something that people would actually use. Thanks to a survey I made in September 2010, we learned that 100% of the community would like the option to receive email announcements of furmeets. The decision was made to move from forum-based software to event-based software, and I chose GroupSpaces, which is fairly similar to Meetup.com (and in fact, the Green Bay/Appleton furs use Meetup as their primary means of communication). This was a decent plan in theory but had some issues:
1. Other than the ability to email everyone, there's not more functionality than a Facebook group. In fact, GroupSpaces has built in Facebook integration, and we planned to sync events between the website and our Facebook group. That would mean if you used your Facebook login on UPFurry, you could RSVP to an event on one site, and both sites would register your response. Cool, but a double edged sword. There are of course people here who don't have Facebook or don't want to use their real name for furry things, but they're a small minority. Everyone else would most likely still do everything from the Facebook group. And we're spread across too many websites as it is.
2. The least expensive "good" GroupSpaces plan was over $15 a month, which isn't worth it for a website that maybe 20-30 people would use.
3. Even though the main focus would be on events and the event function is very good, the other features (forums, photo galleries, etc.) were proprietary and very bare-bones. In the event that we wanted to move away from the GroupSpaces platform in the future, we'd have to completely scrap and rebuild most of the site from scratch.
This is not necessarily a goodbye forever. If the existing social networking pages don't do the trick, the website might come back in another form someday. We're going to keep the domain for now and put a little splash page up to redirect you to here, the Facebook group, and the Twitter page. In the unlikely event that anybody reading this has a yourname@upfurry.org email address, we'll make sure that you still have access to it too.
Was a nice 4 years, see you here or on Facebook!
~Platero
zinkywolfe, 
jaywolfe2007, and 
platero) have decided unanimously to shut down the website for the time being. It's especially disappointing when the site redesign has been 90% finished since July, but we've reached the conclusion that it would not be worth the time, cost, or effort.TL;DR SECTION:
A couple things led up to this. First, the current staff took over because
furglitch and Phoxtayl both moved out of the state and obviously had no more interest in local events. However, I (the webmaster) unexpectedly left the UP in August, which put a huge dent in that reason. Communication between the staff got a lot more difficult... in fact, I think the three of us have all been in the same room only once since then.Second, we wanted to replace a mostly dead forum with something that people would actually use. Thanks to a survey I made in September 2010, we learned that 100% of the community would like the option to receive email announcements of furmeets. The decision was made to move from forum-based software to event-based software, and I chose GroupSpaces, which is fairly similar to Meetup.com (and in fact, the Green Bay/Appleton furs use Meetup as their primary means of communication). This was a decent plan in theory but had some issues:
1. Other than the ability to email everyone, there's not more functionality than a Facebook group. In fact, GroupSpaces has built in Facebook integration, and we planned to sync events between the website and our Facebook group. That would mean if you used your Facebook login on UPFurry, you could RSVP to an event on one site, and both sites would register your response. Cool, but a double edged sword. There are of course people here who don't have Facebook or don't want to use their real name for furry things, but they're a small minority. Everyone else would most likely still do everything from the Facebook group. And we're spread across too many websites as it is.
2. The least expensive "good" GroupSpaces plan was over $15 a month, which isn't worth it for a website that maybe 20-30 people would use.
3. Even though the main focus would be on events and the event function is very good, the other features (forums, photo galleries, etc.) were proprietary and very bare-bones. In the event that we wanted to move away from the GroupSpaces platform in the future, we'd have to completely scrap and rebuild most of the site from scratch.
This is not necessarily a goodbye forever. If the existing social networking pages don't do the trick, the website might come back in another form someday. We're going to keep the domain for now and put a little splash page up to redirect you to here, the Facebook group, and the Twitter page. In the unlikely event that anybody reading this has a yourname@upfurry.org email address, we'll make sure that you still have access to it too.
Was a nice 4 years, see you here or on Facebook!
~Platero
buckywhitetale13
~buckywhitetale13
and this is why it sucks to be a furry in the UP
