Recently, we enabled mature ads on submissions which contained mature/adult art or for pages where mature/adult content was visible (such as in thumbnails or search results). Previously these pages did not have third party ads.

However, in enabling the ads, the initial crop of ads which were served were well above the acceptable rating, and adult pornographic ads were being displayed on mature/adult submissions. This was not our intention, and the vulgar ads were filtered out and limited while we worked on the issue. This did not happen fast enough, and we limited the rate at which the ads would be displayed while we fixed the problem.

While we intended to have mature ads (such as ads which may feature vapor or mature communities) pornographic ads were NOT the intention on FA or IMVU’s sides. We both agree the ad content was too extreme, and not acceptable for our communities.

We want to apologize for the inappropriate ads, and we have been working with our advertising team to ensure this does not happen again. We’ve also made some additional changes to the ad coding to help prevent inappropriate ads from appearing on General/SFW submissions.

If you feel you encounter an ad which is inappropriate please let us know. Take a screenshot of the ad (hosted off-site) and, if possible, right-click the ad and copy the link address and submit it in a ticket (General Issues > Other). Taking action on a screenshot alone can be difficult. The reason we need users to help report unsuitable ads is that the exact ad selection is regional, and as such the same ads may not be displayed to yourself as are displayed to staff, which would result in those ads more easily slipping through.

==Banner Update==
After an exceptionally long winter, we're happy to have Nightlinez jump in with an amazing new banner. We will work to ensure Summer is not a excessively long one, and is followed up by Fall.

 nightlinez
==Server Upgrades==
We will be transitioning to new servers soon, and are in the process of migrating our data. Our database server is being upgraded to full SSD with redundant HDD backup server mirroring the main database. This should help users with faster response on the site and make day-to-day usage better overall.

In addition, our new storage server will be going live, and with it we will be greatly increasing upload caps to help, for example, better accommodate musicians and podcasters by raising audio files will be raised to 50MB.

While we do not expect any downtime with the server changes we will notify the community in advance should any need for downtime arise.

==Advertising Changes==
We've enabled mature third party ads on submissions which contain adult content. These ads will also show up on any page where adult content is visible (such as in a thumbnail). The system was recently updated to detect whether a page has general-rated content or contains adult material, and displays ads accordingly.

We understand the general community concern with third party ads, especially adult ones. We will be monitoring the content of the ads and pruning those which exceed the lines. While the ads may contain strong language, the ads are setup so as to not show extreme content.

Users who find malicious ads can report them directly by sending a note to Dragoneer. Please be sure to include a screenshot of the ad, and (if you’re able) a link to where the ad’s URL.

==UI Updates==
We have been monitoring feedback regarding the UI Beta and fixing reported errors (missing keywords, display problems, general fixes) and will be making some significant changes. In the next few weeks (by mid-July) m.furaffinity.net can be used to access the mobile version of the site while the standard https://www.furaffinity.net will work with the desktop. Changes are also being made based on your feedback regarding zooming, font size and other fixes to the site templates.

[EDIT]
The mature ads have been scaled back while we remove campaigns which violated the limitations we implemented. Users should only see a limited amount per 24 hour period while we evaluate them on our side.

[EDIT 2]
When reporting ads, right click the ad and copy the link address. Provide a screenshot (hosted OFF site) and paste the link address, then note it to dragoneer so we can review and filter out ads which may not be in spirit with the site.

The FA United 2015 site is live!

http://www.faunited.org

This year's special guests include Greg Weisman (producer and writer of Star Wars Rebels and Young Justice) and creator of the hit TV series Gargoyles. We also have Thom Adcox (voice of the Lexington from Gargoyles and Felix the Cat), Sophie Cabra (fursuiter and artist extraordinaire), Pepper Coyote (musician and life of the party) and Kanthara (the talented artist behind several Gargoyles comics).

 peppercoyote
 sophiecabra
 kanthara

==== DEALER'S DEN ====
Dealer's Den registration is OPEN! We have dealer's spots open in the den for all table sizes (wee and not-so-wee).

http://www.faunited.org/#!dealers-den/caxz

==== EVENTS ====
We're currently seeking talented individuals, hobbyists, crafters and entertainers to host events and panels at FA United! We're looking for talented and unique individuals to help run panels and events! Does that sound like you? Great! We've love to hear from you.

http://www.faunited.org/#!event-registration/c128k

---

More information to come soon (including dance contest, art show registration).

We've made some large changes to the Beta site (as well as some minor changes to live, such as giving users the ability to disable comments). As we mentioned in a previous journal, we are integrating some 3rd party ads (provided by Google) into the site and have done so as of this update.

With these changes come additional updates, such as new servers (coming online soon), continued work on improved features and upgrading the site's functionality.

Changelog:
* Ads - Implemented Google ads to help fund the site.
* Submission Views: Improved how all submissions are displayed, and made tweaks to improve their view on mobile devices.
* Disable Comments NEW FEATURE- Submission comments locking feature. Allow submission owners to lock commenting on their submissions either when uploading them, or by editing existing submissions and setting the flag. Once enabled the option will become unavailable for 24 hours. Existing comments are left as-is, only the posting of new ones is prohibited.
* Mobile - Made improvements to the mobile navigation. Pages still need to be updated to better support mobile navigation, and fixing those styles to incorporate proper divs, mobile & desktop and the continued erdication of the dreaded "nested tables" will continue after this update.
* Messaging - Vastly improved the message center (new Comments, Shouts, Favorites) so it's more readable.
* Consistency - Fixed various issues with fonts being far, far too large. Font sizes will continue to be tweaked across all pages.
* User Pages - Made minor adjustments based on user feedback. Additional fixes/tweaks will be added to the pages soon. The user page will be updated with some additional fixes (e.g. Featured Submission), tweaks to the gallery and additional adjustments soon.
* Journals - Added pagination and improved views to Journal views. If you have 1,000 journals the site will no load all of them. In addition, we fixed the journal view to look more like a natural post.
* Fixed search page pagination links not working because they were leve outside of the form tag.
* Fixed missing quote in the profile settings input tag leaving "maxlength" being part of the content.
* Fixing a typo in the registration email.
* Adding user account status symbols (!, ~ etc) to more places in the classic template.
* Classic template now has a consistent "user nav bar" with submission/journal/gallery/etc links across all pages.
* Adding the missing "website" icon to the user contacts area on the user page.
* Commission info tab in the user nav bar will now only appear if the artist has commission info set up. The tab will always be visible when viewing own userpage.
* Bugfix for the general maturity rating image not displaying when editing an existing submission.

[update 1 & 2]
* New ads have been made to work gracefully with Adblock without breaking site functionality.
* New ads will automatically collapse if the service didn't find an ad to load.
* Image submission view page on classic theme will now scale the image to fill the column width, up to the image's own width in size.

[update 3]
* Reverting back the submission page's sidebar addition for the classic theme.
* Changes to the story/poetry pages: limiting content by 75em width and adding quick font size change buttons in the title, right side. The buttons save their state

[update 4]
* Removal of the sidebar on the beta theme.

Important
We are getting reports of site functionality like "Select all" buttons, the note UI etc. being broken for some people.
Those features are powered by Javascript and will not work of Javascript is disabled, the loading of .js files from FA is being prevented with AdBlock/NoScript or other means, or Javascript breaks because page elements have been removed or moved around.
As such, and seing how the site coding has had a number of changes in the past few days it is suggested that you disable, at least for testing purposes, the use of third party site modifications like site specific addons and Greasemonkey/Stylish scripts, and try again.
In one case it has been determined that a Firefox addon "Blur" was responsible.

We're happy to finally announce the preview of our UI Beta is now available! To opt-in to the UI Beta, simply click My FA > Account Settings and select "Beta" from the Site Layout option.

The Beta is still a work-in-progress. Pages are still being converted, edited, updated and revised, especially as we make improvements for tablets and smartphones. While development is done in a separate environment, changes to the templates can and will be updated during live usage and may cause momentary impact while updating (we'll try to keep live updates minimal).

Why a live beta? We felt that it was best to show the community that progress is being made, and we felt the community would be interested in watching the UI develop and would be interested in participating in the UI's development through feedback via Fur Affinity's Forum and watching the site's transformation.

FA Early Beta Preview: https://forums.furaffinity.net/foru.....-Beta-Feedback
FA EArly Beta Preview Changelog: https://forums.furaffinity.net/thre.....read-Changelog

NOTE: While code changes and fixes will be implemented during the beta this is NOT a full site recode. We are, however, fixing quite a few things and will list them in the Changelog/Update Thread.

NOTE 2: Per the changelog update on the forums, we know that A) some fonts are showing much larger than intended. We'll be fixing it and B) the site is NOT mobile friendly(yet). We do not recommend using the UI on a mobile device until we can fix a few issues which have cropped up.

You asked and IMVU’s CEO has answered. We've collected and took your questions to Brett Durrett - IMVU’s CEO. He has not only reviewed these representative questions but also the discussions that have been taking place on FA regarding the acquisition. We've taken some questions from responses to our recent journals.

Here are his responses... in his own words.

Why the Acquisition?

IMVU is a 10 year old community built entirely by customers for customers; it is sustained by creative individuals finding like-minded people online, who accept and encourage their creative, expressive sides, anonymously. At a high level, while the art form is entirely different, the guiding principles - inclusiveness, celebrating creativity, embracing diversity - are the overarching umbrella that unites the two distinct communities.

IMVU is not today, and will not be tomorrow, an exclusively furry community. Furries are one of the many, many, many diverse audiences that meet on IMVU, to socialize and find others that understand them and share their same interests.

During discussions with Dragoneer we found FA had huge potential, a passionate community, and a dedicated leader, but was struggling with financial and resource challenges. Dragoneer has the vision but was not able to devote his full attention to the site. We realized that working together we could help FA get the support it needs to make improvements. When talking to Dragoneer about the possibility of an acquisition, every one of his requirements were based on wanting to make sure the end result was right for the FA community… this is when I was convinced that FA will have an amazing future.

IMVU is making a commitment of money and resources to FA that far exceeds what FA was able to achieve on its own. I believe FA will grow to being a self-supporting community if it has the focus, people and resources to make customer experience improvements. With IMVU’s support and keeping a hands-off approach to how FA is operated, I’m looking forward to a rewarding outcome for everybody, most of all FA’s community.

One of the most asked questions: "Why IMVU?" which ties well into a question asked by user Sketh, "How is IMVU even remotely relevant to FA? An online 3d avatar chat system acquiring a furry art gallery...?"

FA is a community of creative people sharing their artwork. IMVU is also a community of creative people sharing their artwork - 3D models and fashion creations. While FA is dedicated to the furry audience, IMVU welcomes and celebrates many, many diverse audiences, furries being a significant one of them.

"And what does it meant for us furries?" asked by DirtyPaws

Other than FA having a lot more resources 100% dedicated to improving the site, it shouldn’t mean anything different than before the acquisition. You will see advertising, but FA is being run by Dragoneer, not by IMVU. Oh, and FA won’t need community donations to survive, so no more pledge drives. :)

"What does IMVU get out of this?" asked by Michichael

We think that by supporting FA they can build a better experience and bigger community and make something more valuable for IMVU, FA and the furry community in general.

"What will IMVU do with FA?" asked by Roycefox

That’s a better question for Dragoneer. We really believe that FA knows what is best for the FA community, so we have committed support both financially and through other resources. We want to let it run independently and see it thrive.

A LOT of users seemed concerned that the ads coming will be trying to auto-install spyware/malware

The ads being delivered come from a top advertising provider for websites (Google ad network) and are screened thoroughly as part of their review process to ensure no spyware/malware is included.

Among the other general questions:

"Does IMVU plan on changing FA?"

IMVU plans on supporting FA changing the site to make improvements, but FA is run independently, so changes will be determined by Dragoneer and team.

"What is IMVU doing to help furry artists who have had their work stolen?" and "What's the best process to protect my art?"

Stolen content is bad for everybody in the community, from the author that sees their hard work being exploited to the community that misses the opportunity to connect with the author, explore their other works and even make a new friendship. IMVU wants to ensure that people only share content they have the rights to share. If stolen content is posted on the FA site, the process is likely to stay the same. If stolen art is posted on IMVU, the legal owner of the art can file a DMCA Takedown notice.

Thank you all for raising the concerns about products you have seen in IMVU's catalog. Its important to remember that IMVU's shop has over 16 million items and all of them are user-generated (not created by IMVU). Products are submitted to the catalog and reviewed by peers before they are made available for sale. Of course as with any UGC (user-generated content) situation, this means inappropriate or copied content may get through.

IMVU community has a large segment of customers who like furry-themed products - avatars, furry outfits, posters etc. Some of their creators have accounts on FA as well and may be selling their own artwork on both sites. Some of the content may be copied. Do note that the content being there is not related to IMVU's acquisition of FA and has not been added to the catalog as a result.

There is a process to deal with this that is followed by IMVU. It is called DMCA process and details of that process can be found in their TOS toward the end. IMVU must comply with the DMCA process exactly as it is specified and therefore all required information is needed before products can be taken down. Do remember that the original content must be yours before you can initiate a DMCA takedown request - you may not file it on someone else's behalf.

We may have stated before that you can flag and report products if you believe them to be copied from you, however, that is not correct information. DMCA is the only way to request action on such content.

We have heard your concerns about not being able to view content that is AP-rated in IMVU's catalog and therefore not available for viewing to the general public. FA is currently with IMVU to figure out a solution for that issue.

We understand and appreciate everyone is reacting to the news and there is a lot of information going around - facts as well as rumors. We are doing our best to monitor your feedback and concerns, respond to them and sometimes work with IMVU to get you the appropriate response.

Some users have brought that up that there is artwork on IMVU which was uploaded by users without the permission of artists. While IMVU does NOT have the right to use your work without your permission, that does not stop unscrupulous users from posting your work without permission in to such websites as IMVU, eBay, Amazon, Red Bubble, Café Press or others.

If you find work which has been uploaded without consent we encourage artist to click the "Flag" button and report the submission.

http://www.imvu.com/shop/

Neither FA or IMVU condone content theft.

As discussed in a previous journal FA was sold to IMVU. This has naturally lead to some concerns by users, and we're answering some of the most common concerns. We'll be adding to the list as we go, as we want to be up front with our users.

---

1) Why Sell to IMVU?
IMVU's offer and their genuine desire to leave Fur Affinity as a completely independent group is what convinced me that this was the right thing to do. They offered us a budget and financial assistance to improve the site, while still leaving us independently run.


2) How does this affect me?
It does not. FA is run independently of IMVU, and will continue to be a furry site RUN by furries. The only difference you will see is IMVU will add some unobtrusive third party ads and, with their financial help, the site will improve. You get a better site in the end.


3) What are the details of the agreement?
Business documents like terms of sale are not shared publicly and this is not an exception to that standard. It falls under under NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement). In addition, there has been talk about IMVU being a publicly traded company - it is not.

IMVU (and their board) are well aware of our content and what we host, and are fine with the site as-is.


4) What does IMVU get out of this?
They get to use our site for advertising from their third-party partners who are interested in engaged users like ours who share a common interest - art. In addition, IMVU has a rather large furry segment which benefits from FA, and likewise, FA members can benefit from IMVU’s offerings.


5) Who is the site admin now?
Dragoneer, and he has been given complete independence and authority by IMVU to run the site as he sees fit, and has been given budget to make the improvements the site has sorely needed. He works for IMVU, and is tasked with improving the the site full time.


6) What about our content? Does IMVU now own rights to it?
No. IMVU does not own, have any rights, take commission from etc for any of your art shared/sold here. It is business as usual, and there are no changes planned in regards to that. You will not be required to sell your content as part of IMVU’s catalog, nor will IMVU have access to use your content as they see fit. Some quotes about “Section 9” of a document have been floating around but that section does not exist.


7) Do we have new content policies?
No. IMVU's [Terms of Service and content policies do not apply to content shared/sold on our site. There is not going to be any banning of content/users. FA's site policies that are currently in place will continue to be applicable. While there are minor changes (mostly clarifications) to the AUP coming next week, IMVU has not suggested, nor requested, any changes be implemented to the site other than some upcoming advertising changes. It is our goal to integrate the ads in a non-obtrusive way (like our current ads).

And on that note: all existing advertising will be honored, and will be kept as-is.


8) Have you given IMVU our information? Do they have access?
No, and the sharing of FA user data/personal information is NOT part of our agreement and thus will not be happening in the future. FA data is FA data, and will not be shared with IMVU or used for marketing purposes.


9) Are you going to have paid accounts/subscriptions etc?
We have no plans to introduced paid account/subscriptions. If that were to happen in the future it would be site’s the decision, and one which would have to be thought over very carefully. However, we have no plans to do so at this time.


10) Are any IMVU staff on the administration/mod team?
With exception of Dragoneer (who was brought on to IMVU staff to maintain and run the site), IMVU is hands-off and the site will continue to be run as it always has been: by furries, for furries.


11) How does this apply to FA United (www.faunited.org)?
Just like the website, nothing is changing in regards to the FA United’s direction (except that we may have a larger budget for nicer events!). The convention will still be held September 11-13, and the site is launching early next month.


12) What happened to the funds from the donation held in Oct 2014?
The money raised for the donation drive went to several things:
A) Upgrading our DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) protection from Cloudflare
B) Purchased a new server (replacement app/advertising server)
C) Upgraded existing servers (e.g. doubled the RAM in our main DB)
D) Extensions to the site’s SSL certificates
E) Purchased promised donor rewards

In addition, there have been rumors that the discussion of sale happened during this donation drive. This is incorrect. The donation drive (a reaction to constant DDoS attacks) was held mid-October. The sale of the site did not take place until January.


13) What is IMVU?
IMVU (www.imvu.com) is a 3D avatar-based social network with over 130 million registered users from around the world. It is available on desktop and mobile platforms. People come together to dress up, chat, role-play, make friends and express their creativity in various ways including creating products for the world's largest virtual catalog with over 16M products. IMVU is free to register and play, with opportunities to earn Credits (IMVU currency) in multiple ways as well as purchasing them along with account upgrades. The community is open to 13+ users and does have an Access Pass section for mature-themed content.

Q: I heard/read IMVU has the right to repost my content and use it however they want?
A: "Fur Affinity is governed by the site's terms of use, not Google's, Apple's or IMVU's." - IMVU

Rest assured, IMVU is *NOT* taking FA content, redistributing it, reposting it, using it in-game, etc. It's your content. Only FA has the right to show it if you upload it to the site. No one else.

1) IMVU's policies do not govern content posted/shared/sold on FA

2) IMVU does not have any rights to or will take a cut from content posted on FA

3) IMVU has not been given any user information from FA

---

This journal will be updated with additional Q/As later to address specific concerns.

We are proud to announce Fur Affinity has joined the IMVU (link) family. Fur Affinity (formerly a part of Ferrox Art LLC) was acquired by IMVU earlier this year in January 2015. We are looking forward to the partnership allowing both FA and IMVU to grow and foster the furry community and to celebrate its unique talents, creativity and self-expression.

As you know, IMVU has previously advertised their services to our community, which led to further discussions about the obvious overlap among our members. Both IMVU and FA community members love to socialize and connect anonymously with people from around the world with diverse backgrounds, talents, and creative histories. They both express their artistic and creative skills in a variety of ways - via artwork, storytelling, fursuiting, crafts and more! Our partnership was the natural and reasonable conclusion to bring these similar and often already connected communities together officially.

Going forward, FA will continue to operate independently but with IMVU’s support and resources to upgrade our services. We can now work on improving our infrastructure, adding more storage, making performance improvements and improved coding support to reach our full potential. As a community member, the only difference you will notice is a better, smoother experience and increased functionality of the site as time goes on.

FA started with a dream and a roll of duct tape, but grew and thrived thanks to the support of our community. We became one of the top 5,000 sites globally, 1,500 sites within the United States. The future remains bright, and together we can aim to reach even higher.

We look forward to having you continue to participate in our community, be creative, be proud, and, above all else, have fun. You are unlikely to notice any changes apart from an improved experience on the site and some added advertising.

Naturally, we understand you will have lots of questions regarding this change, and we are here to answer them. You can check the forums for the official question/answers (link). We'll be compiling a Q/A to help address concerns and response to questions!

---

Q: I heard/read IMVU has the right to repost my content and use it however they want?
A: "Fur Affinity is governed by the site's terms of use, not Google's, Apple's or IMVU's." - IMVU

Rest assured, IMVU is *NOT* taking FA content, redistributing it, reposting it, using it in-game, etc. It's your content. Only FA has the right to show it if you upload it to the site. No one else.

1) IMVU's policies do not govern content posted/shared/sold on FA

2) IMVU does not have any rights to or will take a cut from content posted on FA

3) IMVU has not been given any user information from FA

Greetings, citizens!

It’s been a while since we last spoke. Let’s get caught up, shall we?

Tickets, Mods & You:
We’ve brought on several new moderators to help with the ticket queue. While we still have a backlog, we’ve made quite a bit of progress in getting your tickets responded to faster. There’s still a long ways to ways to go as the mods are still going through training, and the second wave of recruitments is slated to come on board mid-March. Upping our customer support game is one of our primary goals.

UI Enhancements (Beta):
As some of you may have heard, the UI Beta we've been working on has been delayed somewhat (we're aiming for early this month!). However, rather than hold back, we've published part of the UI improvements early while we wait for fixes to our templating system to allow for the new and old UI templates to co-exist.

This update includes some features/notable fixes like:
* Users can now edit their comments and responses.
* Some general fixes and improvements to the notes system (fixes to both how they work AND how they look).
* Smaller fixes and tweaks to how FA caches avatars (no more F5ing to see your updated avatar).

New Storage Server:
We've ordered parts for a new storage server (which comes equipped with 12X 4TB hard drives). Once the storage server is online we'll be able to remove FA's somewhat antiquated file storage limits and allow users both larger uploads file-size AND resolution-wise. No more 10MB limits.

GoFundMe Update:
For those waiting on their GoFundMe items we're in the process of packaging your items, and should have then start shipping out no later than next week.

UPDATE:
* Fixed the notes view to revert to the old system for people on smaller screens or mobile devices (viewports below 1280px width will get the old notes layout)
* Smilies on notes related pages should now be inserting at cursor position and not at the bottom of the page.
* Removed extra "RE: RE: RE: " strings from note titles. Only one "RE:" will ever be displayed.
* Comment editing is now showing the correct countdown timer. Premature hiding of edit links via Javascript on pages fixed.
* Added automatic highlighting of journal notifications with the word "stream" in them, as well as the "Select streams" button at the bottom of the journals list for quicker selection.

Just a quick update (with a larger update to follow soon): the banner was done by  applepup.

Also, we apologize for the disruption/site accessibility earlier. We were making some changes to the database to prepare for a small site update.

This is dragoneer broadcasting alongside chase to bring you all some fresh new site announcements for 2015!

Moderator Recruitment
We are opening up staff recruitment! We have finished an internal restructure behind the scenes, and are ready to recruit new staff to help improve the site and reduce our ticket backlog. Ever wanted to help the site? Now’s your chance! We’re looking for dedicated, talented people to help lend a hand to improve the site across the board.

*Note: Previous applicants from 2013-2014 have been under review since 2014-12-13 and are still receiving preferential treatment due to their initial enthusiasm and wait. If your application has been reviewed and we have declined your assistance at this time, you will receive an email from us.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1kz.....by5QQ/viewform

DDOSing, Fur Affinity and You
Since October, we’ve been DDOSed on a regular basis. This has caused some disruption in the community, and we’ve been working hard on identifying the sources of the DDOS, blocking them and upgrading our DDOS mitigation to prevent disruption.

To that end, all of our domains have been upgraded to Cloudflare’s Business plans ($200/mo per domains). We’ve also identified some of the DDOSes coming from Wordpress’ PingBack application and have actively blocked the sites and user agents to help mitigate impact.

Site accessibility and performance is always one of our primary concerns. We’ve been continually working towards improving those goals. As such, even with the best mitigation, a DDOS can still have impact (see Xbox Live and PlayStation Network).

Site Infrastructure Updates and Concerns
Within the next 10 days we will be performing site maintenance to improve our hardware and make necessary changes.

The maintenance is as follows:
* Update RAM in Finn (DB Server) from 64GB to 128GB. We have ordered the parts, and are simply waiting for them to arrive so we can schedule downtime.
* Install new app server ("Phoenix Down"), a processing server with 32GB of RAM and 4X Samsung Pro SSDs.

Estimated downtime will be roughly 60 minutes. We will give 48 hours notice prior to the outage, and attempt to schedule it during FA’s non-peak hours to reduce user impact.

There has also been some concern/rumor that our DB server Jake has not been in use (and according to some, is sitting in a closet). We’d like to assure you that Jake IS installed in the colo and sitting comfortably next to Finn. We will admit that while the server is in use, it is underutilized at the moment. We are in the process of updating and converting the site to process on multiple servers. Until that time, Jake is being used to process additional data and has been in use before StarryKitten volunteered his assistance, but is not one of the main DB servers.

In addition, we will be removing old servers from the rack and sending them out on their Long Walk. Trogdor is being retired, and we are working on a general clean up/inventory for our section of the datacenter.

2014 Site Stats (And More!)
Unique Daily Visitors: (121,000+ registered users, 49,000+ guests).
Average Uploads Per Day: 7,500
Average New Submissions Per Minute: 5.6
Average New Users Per Day: 635
Total New Accounts Created in 2014: 198,820

Total submissions from 2014: 2,441,645
Total submissions from 2013: 2,099,824
Total submissions from 2012: 1,743,669
Total submissions from 2011: 1,449,450
Total submissions from 2010: 1,170,350
Total submissions from 2009: 823,635
Total submissions from 2008: 494,768
Total submissions from 2007: 330,576
Total submissions from 2006: 152,040
Total submissions from 2005: 17,764

Transparency Progress
You can now visit http://donations.furaffinity.net/ to view expenses made by the site from the GoFundMe campaign. We will be adding in copies of the receipts (with personal information redacted) to each expenditure to help show better tracking.

We will also be going back and listing all previous donations made prior to that point and time (we have to update the layout/data first to try to get a more accurate count).

Site Code Updates
* Implemented better scripts to help prevent duplicate comments, shouts, notes and submissions.
* Improved memory caching to help submissions/thumbnails under heavy load.
* Improved the way the site creates and handles notifications (notices of new submissions, comments, journals, etc).

UI Progress
Our UI revisions were significantly delayed, but are still in progress. We should have updates for you within the next few weeks.

Phoenix Update
Phoenix development is still underway. Our goal is to show progress when we have something that users can see and actually use (let's be honest, we have a bad habit of going "Hey, look at this!" and then...)

Our Phoenix Github repository was recently moved, which has raised a lot of questions. The Github was removed at request of the Phoenix devs so they could focus on development. They found they were being bombarded with questions, suggestions and more and were spending too much time addressing those, not on progress. Hence the decision was made to pull the Github until we had substantial progress to show.

GoFundMe Gift Rewards
The rewards and goodies we promised users from our GoFundMe campaign have been sent to us. Once they arrive, we will start boxing them up and getting them prepared to ship!

Hello Fur Affinity!

This is  Chase broadcasting to you today alongside  dragoneer. I’m the Director of Operations for the website and I am currently working with our digimon overlord to help improve the website for everyones’ use, including staff relations and communication. I wanted to address some concerns that our users have had as well as some recent issues of which I have been made aware, and then comment on other things that may be weighing on curious minds.


2014 DDoS and Fundraiser

Dragoneer had been exploring options to provide users with a way to donate to the website since this option had been unavailable for about 3 years. Originally, users were able to use Paypal and AlertPay; however, those options were removed due to Fur Affinity hosting mature artwork. He originally had settled on GoFundMe; however, I protested against opening for donations until we could provide users with meaningful updates to the website as a show of good faith.

Soon after the GoFundMe was created in preparation, Fur Affinity was DDoS’d by unverifiable assailants which resulted in loss of access to the site. Smaller attacks have been launched in the past with varying levels of impact on the site, including financial, but this one was the largest. With the intent to alleviate these issues, Dragoneer launched the GoFundMe. Unfortunately, the donation site was closed due to people filing reports stating that Fur Affinity was a pornographic website in an attempt to prevent him from collecting the maximum allowance. There were also unfounded conspiracies posted about the timing of the DDoS and the creation of the donation page, falsely leading patrons to believe that Dragoneer had paid to attack his own site and other furry art communities in an attempt to collect money for his own personal gain. These lies unfortunately lead to approximately $500 in chargebacks against the donation drive.

In spite of these setbacks, Dragoneer was able to raise $18,932 in donations for Fur Affinity to help combat future DDoS attacks and improve the website.

$18,932 (Gross Total Donations)

-$1,827.77 (GoFundMe Fees and Chargebacks)
-$2,500 (Taxes)
-$2,500 (Supporter Gifts and Shipping)
-$1,710 (Promised Donation to SoFurry)

=$10,394.23 (Net Total Donations)

The money set aside for taxes and supporter gifts is a rough estimate. Any additional funds necessary or leftover will be accounted for and used appropriately.


Supporter Gifts

For our amazing patrons who have donated, we are providing the following gifts:

$25 Level: Thank You card
$50 Level: Fur Affinity T-Shirt
$100 Level: Fur Affinity T-Shirt, Patch & Lanyard
$250 Level: Fender Wall Sticker

We are working diligently to garner these supplies and send them out to patrons; however, there is a setback concerning T-Shirts. We do not know the sizes of the patrons who have earned this gift and we do not have access to email accounts to send inquiries. In lieu of this, we will be sending out letters to the addresses we have on file to seek out these sizes so that we can batch order the shirts and get them out. These letters will be sent out no later than Friday, December 5, 2014.

All other gifts are scheduled to be ordered no later than Monday, December 8, 2014. We will keep you updated on the status of these gifts.


Fur Affinity Taxes

There has been concern about the donation drive and taxes that Fur Affinity owes. Fur Affinity currently owes approximately $10,000 to government agencies for taxes on advertisements and
Fur Affinity United. These taxes were not correctly appraised. I have discussed this with Dragoneer, and to prevent this error in the future, he has asked his certified public accountant to calculate taxes on a quarterly level, resulting in higher accuracy when estimating taxes and saving more money to cover any unforeseen issues.

Dragoneer originally stated that it would be ideal to use part of the donations to alleviate this burden; however, I have dissented against this since supporters were not told originally when donating and would constitute a breach of trust. As a result, none of the donations will be applied to any owed taxes and will be only used to support the website. And whenever any of this donation money is used to support the site, it will be publicly announced.

Donation Money Uses

$10,394.23 (Net Total Donations)

-$25.00 (Cloudflare: 2014/10) [Monthly]
-14.99 (OVH VPS: 2014/10) [Monthly]
-252.72 (Pingdom: 2014/10) [Yearly]

-$25.00 (Cloudflare: 2014/11) [Monthly]
-$9.31 (Amazon SES: 2014/11) [Monthly]
-14.99 (OVH VPS: 2014/11) [Monthly]

-$25.00 (Cloudflare: 2014/12) [Monthly]
-$9.31 (Amazon SES: 2014/12) [Monthly]
-14.99 (OVH VPS: 2014/12) [Monthly]

=$10,002.92 (Donations Available)
=391.31 (Spent to Date)

Expense Reasons

Cloudflare (Monthly Expense):
Offers a limited amount of DDoS protection and asset caching that decreases page load time, thus increasing site performance.

Amazon SES (Monthly Expense):
A bulk-emailer utility that provides cloud storage for site resources, increasing email reliability to ensure users receive emails concerning account registration and password resets.

OVH VPS (Monthly Expense):
An email host system that provides the site with separate bandwidth for staff communication.

Pingdom (Yearly Expense):
An uptime and monitoring suite which provides both users and staff to active server monitoring. Text alert notifications are sent to technical staff in the event of downtime to increase response times to server outages.


Bugs Affecting Site Performance

Missing Notifications:
You may have noticed that when you attempt to upload a submission or post a journal that it takes an excessive amount of time before the content is available on the website. This issue is compounded when a user has a significant following. The reason for this delay is due to the notification system attempting to send out messages to all of these followers in unreasonably sized batches. In order to counter this issue, which also causes site lag as a byproduct, our tech team moved to a new system which staggers the batches. Unfortunately, this system inadvertently allowed these messages to start building up in bulk to the point where messages were lost or never sent out at all.

To counteract this issue, the tech team has made changes to prevent notifications from being sent to accounts that are permanently banned or deceased and is in the process of deleting millions of rows of notifications on those accounts. This process is estimated at about 1 week and may impact notification delivery during batches that time out. The work began last Friday and is estimated to be completed on Thursday, December 4, 2014. Many of you may have already noticed an improvement in the system, and when the process is complete, performance should increase greatly.

Furthermore, we are discussing pruning notifications that are old to further augment the system being put into place to increase performance further. In the meantime, we apologize for any inconvenience and will keep you updated.

Icon Images Not Loading:
Cloudflare offered a feature to increase mobile performance. Unfortunately, this feature resulted in improved mobile performance at the cost of overall site performance. It has been removed and icons should be loading properly now.

Uploading Content Errors:
Users have reported timeout errors when attempting to upload content. These errors were often accompanied by a Cloudflare message. This issue is tied to length of time it takes to upload content to the website. Upload times should be drastically reduced when the notification system maintenance is completed. In the meantime, the timeout windows have been increased to compensate and users should no longer be experiencing this issue.

Database Error When Accessing Deceased/Banned Accounts:
We have recently been made aware that some users are encountering database errors when attempting to access deceased accounts and their content, including favoriting. This issue is the result of current maintenance, and will be resolved once it is completed.


How Do We Improve Fur Affinity?

Currently, our tech team is working diligently to correct all of the aforementioned bugs which promises to deliver a great deal of performance improvements; however, site performance is not the only issue at hand.

Increase Content Capacity:
Dragoneer is looking into the possibility of purchasing additional servers so that we can increase content upload sizes for all users. This will also come with new coding to properly provide site resizing in addition to being able to download the full resolution.

Conquer Trouble Tickets:
Fur Affinity is a massive website home to 1.15 million accounts and we do not have enough staff answering tickets, resulting in a backlog. Hiring and training more staff is a necessity that I will discuss shortly.


Transparency and Accountability

There are those buzzwords again, but can Fur Affinity stay true to its promises? I think the issue with saying that “Fur Affinity is going to be more transparent” is that there is nothing attached. Are we going to be completely transparent across the board like a public agency or are we going to be more transparent in specific areas of our business, like the private company we are? Furthermore, how does accountability play a role?

As Director of Operations, I am making the promise to you to uphold the standards I present in this journal. If my position is ineffective in making a difference to this website whether due to my own incompetence or due to roadblocks outside of my control that I am unable to overcome, then I will resign. Like many of you, Fur Affinity is my home and the website has given me so much for nothing. I’ve used this site for over 8 years. I have volunteered to serve this site for half of that time, and now have reached a position where I feel I can do a great deal of good, helping transform this outdated site to something modern of which we can be proud.

Transparency Subsection:

Money:
Fur Affinity will be transparent with all donations made to the website and how those donations are used.

Staff:
Fur Affinity will be transparent with our System and Community Administrators, Directors, and Owner.

The Owner is Dragoneer. He’s ultimately responsible for the total management of this website.

Directors have a broad range of responsibilities, including overseeing daily operations, reviewing staff performance, training, etc. Currently, I am your Director, and I hope I’m making a good impression!

System Administrators have access to Fur Affinity’s code and database.

Community Administrators supervise Moderators and primarily answer disputes made via the Trouble Ticket system against actions taken by Moderators.

Moderators will operate under anonymous accounts, which is standard business procedure; however, their responsibilities are restricted and communication between them and users will mostly take place via the Trouble Ticket system.

Site Performance and Bugs:
I am doing the best I can to ask the questions I see raised by users in tickets, on the website, and experience myself so I can help resolve performance issues and bugs. As you have seen, I have provided you with a great deal of information concerning this topic earlier. Hopefully, this section will be mild while performance is awesome. Either way, I will do what I can to keep you all in the loop!


Accountability Section:

Staff:
Since I’ve worked for Fur Affinity, there has not been a unified way to train new staff members. Typically, a new volunteer is taken under the wing of a veteran and taught the basics before being allowed to work solo and without any supervision. There were no checks and balances nor any way to maintain performance standards.While Sciggles served as a member of staff, she saw these issues and did her best to enact reform by creating moderator teams based upon content to improve training and provide a supervisor to lead and instill company policies. This was a big improvement, but was left unfinished when she stopped volunteering to focus on personal projects.

I have taken it upon myself to finish where she has left off and will be providing staff with a handbook that will not only provide training, but serve as a reference guide to ensure uniform and efficient performance. I will be building upon her team skeleton and providing Fur Affinity with a true business model to augment professionalism and treat Fur Affinity with the respect it deserves.

Although content removal notifications are sent by the Fur Affinity system (@SystemAdmin) and communication may be with anonymous Moderators, rest assured that all removals and conversations via the Trouble Ticket system are documented and can be appealed. In addition to the handbook, I will be working to provide users with clear information as to how staff actions can be disputed for easy reference. Lastly, staff will be subject to nondisclosure agreements and will need to provide documentation of identification to protect your privacy and the website’s.

I am currently estimating that interviews for new staff members (Mods, Admins, etc.) will commence on Monday, December 15, 2014. If this timeline changes, I will note it.


Zidonuke/StarryKitten:
On November 13, 2014, Zidonuke was made Lead System Administrator of Fur Affinity under the alias StarryKitten. He was volunteering for Fur Affinity since Summer of 2013 (about a year) as a consultant under supervision and had no direct access to the site’s code or database at that time. Dragoneer was aware of Zidonuke’s past and wanted to give him an opportunity to start anew within the community and try to make things right due to his checkered history as a black hat hacker. It should be noted that it is not unusual for companies to hire reformed hackers to help improve performance and the security of websites due to their desirable skill sets and experience.

Unfortunately, since Zidonuke was introduced under an alias and was eventually outed for his past hacktivities, many users felt unsafe with him and his new role on Fur Affinity. This led to outrage and serious threats made against him, ultimately resulting in his resignation.

As a user of this website, I sympathize with everyone who was uneasy with the decision to appoint Zidonuke to a System Administrator role. I do not condone his past actions nor was I involved with this decision. I only knew of this appointment after the announcement was made. Although this appointment was intended to be both beneficial for Fur Affinity and Zidonuke’s future, the way that it was handled was embarrassing. I have been assured by Dragoneer that I will be kept aware of all future staff nominees and will be able to appropriately give weight to decisions in accordance with my position here on Fur Affinity.

0) Site Status Postings
Beginning today, we will be making semi-regular site postings regarding the status of the site, developments or things in the planning stages. We aim to keep them posted roughly every 1-2 weeks (depending on what's going on).

1) Russia Blocks d.facdn.net
We've been notified that Russia is partially blocking one of FA's content server (d.facdn.net) which is preventing a good number of users from viewing images on the site. We're looking into getting the site unblocked and restoring access for the Russian furry community. In the mean time, we suggest using a VPN or proxy service to access the site if you are able.

2) New Coder/Tech Added
Starrykitten is joining the Dev/Ops team to help us better organize our tech efforts, improve site performance, answer tech/bug-related tickets and bring more transparency to what we're doing (all good stuff that's sorely overdue). To that end, we're making our bug/dev tracker public. This will help users know what we're focusing on and monitor progress and improvements.

https://trello.com/b/f7USczsS/furaffinity-devops

3) Funding Status
We are still compiling a list of funding and planned expenditures, and will have that posted as soon as we are able (note: Things got delayed a bit due to a recent move -- Neer).

We have also sent 10% of the total funds raised to SoFurry ($1,710.40). The rest is currently being held aside while we look into making hardware/software investments into the site.

4) Caching & Email Bug Fixes
* We recently migrated email services to Amazon SES (cloud-based email distribution) and upgraded our mail system after the DDOS. This transition caused an issue for some users (notably those using Microsoft's email services) as all outgoing mail was flagged as spam. This has been fixed, and Microsoft has worked with us to remove all blockers.
* We offloaded caching to Cloudflare post-DDOS. During the migration we encountered an issue where Cloudflare was aggressively caching images (preventing revised submissions from showing up right away). We made several changes to the way this works, and this should be resolved now.
* We are continuing to tweak performance and increase site response time. Cloudflare has helped a great deal with that, and we figured it'd be be spiffy to share some statistics on that, so here you go:

FURAFFINITY.NET STATS
299,400,768 requests saved by CloudFlare
1,480,826,825 total requests

Bandwidth Saved
1.9 TB bandwidth saved by CloudFlare
27.9 TB total bandwidth

FACDN.NET STATS
241,970,915 requests saved by CloudFlare
3,191,480,734 total requests

Bandwidth Saved
22.1 TB bandwidth saved by CloudFlare
61.4 TB total bandwidth

5) Site Status Monitoring
We've made several small changes to better monitor all of FA's sub-sites and CDNs to show more accurate uptime monitoring.

http://status.furaffinity.net/

During the recent DDOS, we put out a call for donations to help bolster and improve the community. The purpose behind this was three-fold: A) to raise money to help directly improve the site and response (afford better DDOS protection), B) improve infrastructure (improve FA’s storage servers) and C) help pay existing debts the site has incurred over time. We are currently in talks with our host to improve and expand our DDOS protection and are looking into increasing storage space.

The site was able to raise $18,932 ($17,104.23 after fees and some charge backs). We want to personally thank everyone who was able to contribute (you will be receiving follow-up updates to your contributions within the next 72 hours). While our GoFundMe may have been closed early we still have the contact and contribution information for all members.

10% of the total funds raised ($1,710) will also be donated to SoFurry. Toumal stated over Twitter that he may not be able to accept the money, in which we case we will donate 50% of the $1,710 to the NJSPCA with the other half going to St. Jude’s.

With the remaining we plan on re-investing back into the site. We do not want to rush into decisions, and will keep the community abreast of our plans to best utilize the funds. We know you put a lot of faith and trust in us and we will return that with full transparency.

We will create a sub-site on FA that lists the funds raised, how much is left, what it went to and copies of receipts. We know transparency is valuable to the community and aim to deliver that to you in full.

We will also be scheduling a time to discuss our ideas and plans with the community to keep people informed once we have discussed it with the site staff and tech team. We will announce the date once we have a solid plan in place.

Note: We also have reports of a few people have connection and submission issues post DDOS. We are looking into the issues and will make another post once we have more information and a solution in place.

UPDATE 1: We spoke to Toumal who stated he will be able to accept the money. We will inform you once we've donated it to SoFurry. =3

The site is currently in Read Only mode, but we're posting an update as to the Who/What/Where/Why/When

The DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack started sometime Tuesday night at around 10PM. We're not sure the exact time, we just know that when it hit things hit hard. The site was offline within roughly a minute. After contacting our host, they quickly confirmed that they were seeing massive incoming bandwidth and had to blackhole our IP (blackhole essentially isolates FA from the rest of their network).

What's a DDOS? A massive network of computer systems flooding a target's with so much bandwidth and data that it knocks it offline. It's like driving down an empty highway and having 100,000 cars appear, causing instant gridlock.

We DO NOT KNOW who was behind the DDOS, nor do we have any speculation. We're not looking to point fingers. Our host is looking into the details and will be taking legal action if at all possible as this impacted many of their customers.

The DDOS persisted and caused massive lag spikes and connectivity problems for our host and spread through over four facilities. Emergency maintenance had to be done for router upgrades. Unfortunately, that didn't fix the problem and the attackers DDOSed the site and services again. Some of you may have noticed FA popping in and out at times.

The last 24 hours have been very hectic among site staff. Waiting on responses from our host (which were slow and far between). We still do not know the extent of the full DDOS as our host has not given us the full run down, but it was more than enough to saturate a 10 Gigabit fiber link.

We had to wait for the DDOS attacks to subside and for our host to update their firewalls and prepare for further attacks. The DDOS attack was out of our control, and we're taking some steps and measures to prevent it from happening in the future. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet to stop a DDOS, but there are steps that can be taken to mitigate the damages done by them. SoFurry, Weasyl and Inkbunny were also hit with similar attacks. We'd also like to assure all users NO USER DATA was lost or compromised during the attack.

We are currently looking at migrating our hosts to a new system (we're still researching where) and are raising donations to do so. We're looking into a distributed cloud or dedicated server based hosting (we're still looking into the finer details). If you'd like to donate you may do so here:
http://www.gofundme.com/ftrtc8

We will be donating 10% of the donations to SoFurry since they've suffered outages and attacks almost on par with FA. As a community, we feel it's our job to try to look out for one another.

We know there are many questions, concerns and more, and we will be working on addressing those in the next few days. For now, we're just happy to have FA back and will be focusing on clean up from the attacks.

EDIT: The GoFundMe was shut down, but we still have the money and contact information for those who helped. And we will still keep to our word and give the 10% to SoFurry.

Fall is rolling in, and we're overdue for a new banner. Far, FAR overdue! Thankfully, wintersnowolf has stepped in to help us usher the arrival of Autumn!

 wintersnowolf
== UI Update
We are almost complete with our (incredibly not overdue) UI update which updates the site's look and feel to a more modern, clean look. It will also come with minor fixes for usability as well as improvements for our mobile users. We aim to enter into open beta early October. We had intended it for the final part of the Summer Update, but will are pushing it back to early October (and thus, will be dubbed the "Autumn Update!"). Duke Nukem was not available to comment on the update at this time.

http://www.furaffinity.net/img/submission_view.png
http://www.furaffinity.net/img/site_settings.png

Additional details will be available soon. The UI update will be an open beta - no sign ups are necessary! Also, please note that this is NOT the Phoenix Update. Phoenix (our open source site recode project) is still in the works, and progressing.

== Advertising Server Upgrade
We will be upgrading the advertising server to its own unique server within the next two weeks. We do not expect downtime for advertisers as we will be copying over the virtual server it is hosted on to the new system. The new server comes with a Xeon 1270v3, 32GB of RAM and 2X SSDs.

== New Advertising Banner & Price Increase
We are now offering the "Large" format ad banner size to users. This is a unique ad size which will only have FOUR OPEN SLOTS. Once filled, they will not be available for grabs until the campaigns expire. These ads will offer higher exposure, click yields and views!

Those without ad block know the Five Night at Freddy's ad has been in the slot for almost two weeks. In that time, it has generated 38 million impressions and over 35,000 unique clicks (you like Foxy, we know it!).

http://help.furaffinity.net/article.....vertising.html

We are raising the cost of our standard banner from $20 to $25. Since we introduced our ads in 2007, we have maintained the same price point. The costs are being raised for two reasons: To reduce the number of banners on the site (which, in turn, will help offer our advertisers more successful campaigns). Second, the additional money will go to cover new hardware, help upgrade our services (including offering "feature" and "bug bounties" for coding) and to cover the site's finances (hello, taxes!).

The cost increase for standard ad banners will go into effect October 1st, 2014.

Fur Affinity will experience short downtime this weekend from this weekend (time TBD) while we carry out maintenance and software upgrades on our servers. The site will be inaccessible for periods of time while server upgrades are carried out and we will take steps to minimize this downtime.

We will post updates via Twitter furaffinity regarding progress and once we have an estimated time.

#1 - CODE OF CONDUCT
The Code of Conduct has been completely re-written and updated. These changes are effective as of right now.

http://help.furaffinity.net/article.....nduct-COC.html

#2 - SUBMISSION AGREEMENT
With our recent Terms of Service update, the Submission Agreement is no longer applicable as the Submission Agreement and Terms of Service were merged together. We will be removing links to the Submission Agreement later in the day.

#3 - ACCEPTABLE UPLOAD POLICY
We have made the following changes/clarifications to the AUP based on user feedback.

2.5 - Images Content used as part of an upload that is royalty-free or under Fair Use (such as a royalty-free background image copyrighted material used for a limited and “transformative” purpose) must cite the source of the original content.

3.6 - Photography containing bodily fluids, gore/injuries, or death is prohibited, unless the content is fake, special effects, or the final product of taxidermy when the pelt is kept preserved in good condition and the presentation is in good taste. This includes freeze dry and wet taxidermy as well as bones and finished pelts, but excludes anything raw or gory.

3.9 - Photography of animals feeding eating on other animals, living or pre-frozen, is prohibited. This does not include Kibbles 'n Bits® or foodstuff like chicken breasts and steak.

4.1 - Screenshots of applications, games (e.g. GMod, Second Life, Minecraft), movies or websites that do not showcase new, original, user-created content are prohibited. The use of in-game resources, such as blocks or purchased parts, to create the aforementioned content is permitted.

6.2 - Some content may only be uploaded to the Scraps Folder. Please see sections: 2.2 2.4 and 3.2 above for more information.

8.3 - Violations of the following sections may be escalated immediately to the 7th Offense Level: 2.3, 2.11, 2.12, 2.13, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7. These sections have been highlighted for your convenience.

#4 - TERMS OF SERVICE
We have made the following changes/clarifications to the TOS based on user feedback.

1.5 - You may appeal any action taken against your account either via our Trouble Ticket system or email support@furaffinity.net appeals@furaffinity.net.

3.7 - You agree that we reserve the right to remove, reclaim, or rename any account which has violated site policy or has been abandoned by its owner. An abandoned account is one which has not been logged into for a minimum of one year, is un-established or is otherwise devoid of content. At this time, they become eligible to be transferred upon user request. All content and information contained within the account will be deleted before the transfer is complete. Accounts marked as “deceased” do not qualify as abandoned.

#5 - OTHER
We are constantly listening to user feedback, and are working to further be more transparent in our actions and better highlight plans and changes.

#6 - BROWSE BY RATING
Due to the recent changes to categories, we stated we were implementing a "Browse by Rating" system to further allow users to have more control over the content they are searching for. This feature is now active, and offers users more flexability than our previous system.

The system is coded is that mature/adult ratings in browse are only available to those who have the ability enabled. Users on sfw.furaffinity.net or with the SFW option flagged will not see these options per the system rating.

#7 - TEMPLATE FIX
We fixed a little, but highly annoying bug which would cause the template to revert to the older blue template when updating system settings. This was annoying, and is now fixed.


NOTICE: There are some formatting issues currently being resolved (spacing, font size, highlighting). Furthermore, the following rule will be updated shortly:

AUP

3.5 - Photography depicting nudity, (exposed buttocks, breasts, bulges, and outlines of genitalia - human or animal, etc.) or indecently-clothed models (undergarments, diapers, lingerie) is prohibited. Exceptions may be made for swimsuits worn in public locations, such as a pool or beach, and undergarments on top of clothed models.

Pre-reg Discounts End Soon!
Aug 1, 2014 is the final day to get discounted registration rates for FAU! You can save $15 by pre-registering before the window closes. You will still be able to register online up until the day of the con, but you'll lose out on the discount!

To Pre-Register for FAU
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/primar.....58803?ref=ebtn

A New Challenger Appears
 macroceli is joining FAU as a guest of honor! The goliath macrosaurus may well be the biggest Guest of Honor of all time. Ever.

Update on Fossil
Due to unfortunate life events, Fossil is unable to make it to FA United.

Art Show Entries Still Open
We've still got space in our art show, but it's filling up fast. Want to highlight your work, auction off pieces and get your work seen? Even get +favs and +watches *at* the con? It's all possible! And best of all, you don't even have to attend to submit your work! It's open to the entire site! Mail-in entries are accepted.

http://www.faunited.org/#!art-show-registration/c1kr9

Furrzy Got Talent
We're looking for fun-loving individuals to put on acts, show off their talents and skills and get wild and crazy on stage. Perform, act, dance -- show us what you've got! Complete with corny, kitschy prizes and more!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/184.....IVIV0/viewform

Dance Competition
Two words: dance off. One word: prizes! No words: ______!

http://www.faunited.org/#!dance-competition/c5l6

Charity Concert
We will be hosting a charity concert for the NJSPCA at FAU. Fox Amoore, Colson and Matt Ebel will be performing on stage. Cost is $10 (all proceeds go to our charity) and you get a spiffy wrist-band to go with it to show your support!

We've made some changes to the category system in a round of first revisions. This is part of an on-going changes that are being implemented in incremental rounds.

New Categories/Changes:
Artwork (Traditional)
Artwork (Digital) (Formerly "Digitalart")
Fursuiting (to help find your fursuing-specific pictures)
Sculpting
Crafting

New Categories for Sellers
YCH
Auctions
Adoptables

New Art Types:
My Little Pony/Brony

Ratings-Specific Themes
We have also merged the [Tame] and [Mature] categories together. This requires the modification of 12 million rows in the database. We will be modifying the Browse section to include a "Browse by Rating" category to keep the same functionality we had before, with added usability.

The reason we are making this change is to have better consistency within the site. For as many types of artwork that had a [Tame] and [Adult] variant there were as many that did not. As we will be adding many NEW types of artwork to these categories we needed to streamline them.

The search engine's index will need to be rebuilt to compensate for these changes as well. We will update this journal once that has been completed.

This is an ongoing process, and is leading up to a much bigger end result in getting things fixed and greatly improved.

Our first update of the Summer: the Terms of Service (TOS) and Acceptable Upload Policy (AUP) have been re-written from the ground up.

More than that, we've gone back and re-examined every rule, every policy, and asked ourselves "Does this hinder or hurt the community? Is this something we REALLY need? Was this rule created out of necessity or a reaction?".

Several policies have been outright removed, others heavily modified to be more lenient. We've lessened a lot of restrictions and worked towards making our rules easier to understand and follow. We understand that some rules did not read well, were too confusing or were just... well, to put it bluntly, bad.

With this update, our goal is to make the policies living documents that will better evolve over time to help address issues and provide clarification. We want to be more transparent about why policies are changing, our reasoning behind them and to help users follow the changes.

These rules will have a two week window (starting today) before we enforce them to give users a chance to digest the changes and work on compliance.

If you have any questions regarding the rules, changes or have concerns please address them in the post. No flaming. We will provide answers and help resolve concerns.

Terms of Service:
http://help.furaffinity.net/article.....rvice-TOS.html

Acceptable Upload Policy:
http://help.furaffinity.net/article.....olicy-AUP.html

AUP Change Log:

Content Guidelines
* Added descriptive guidelines concerning the rating system.

All Media
* Added streaming notification rules.
* Added a rule to prohibit seizure inducing content.
* Added information concerning duplicate submissions.
* Added requirements concerning Fair Use when used to create unique, original content.
* Clarified the definition of a minor and the rules concerning them in content.
* Clarified rules concerning plagiarism when involving user’s intellectual property.
* Revised the rule concerning submission variations.
* Revised the YCH and advertising rules.

Photography
* Added a rule to protect copyrighted content from being photographed and uploaded.
* Clarified the rule concerning taxidermy.
* Clarified the conditions of when adult toy content is permitted.
* Clarified rules concerning personal photography.
* Removed special restrictions for price guides.
* Removed unnecessary special exemptions for derivative works. All content must abide copyright law and the AUP. If you feel your content is being infringed upon, you must either open a Trouble Ticket or file a DMCA for Fur Affinity to investigate and take action.
* Revised the restriction of manufactured items.

Screenshots and 3D Models
* Added a rule to prohibit content created by character or image generators.
* Removed special exemptions for “Fair Use” models since a broader rule was added under “All Media.”
* Removed special exemptions for screenshots and sprites from copyrighted content.
* Removed special restrictions concerning 3D models requiring purchase or sale.

Folders
* Added “Gallery Folder” information for reference.

The Kaiju contest results are in! We apologize for the delay. We ran into a unique problem: there were too many really, REALLY good entries. As you could imagine, that made judging a contest like this harder than not.

To fix that, the correct decision was the only logical one: add more winning slots!

Winners, expect a note from us soon!

1st Place

 megapoly http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13558849/

2nd Place

 Korichi http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13543682/

 usha http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13591197/

3rd Place

 RevaDiehard http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13198144/

 tygerstkuan http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13245374/

 nightlinez http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13212595/

Runner-Ups (Get a free basic reg for FAU -- we just liked your submissions too much!)

 lizardbeth http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13414186/

 flacko http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13216371/

 buibuiboota http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13194346/

 redmatter90 http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13189499/

 iggi http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13218028/

 blondehusky http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13608349/

 myr http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13556796/