Furtopia

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Furtopia is a grassroots furry community website that provides web hosting services to artists, writers and musicians of the furry fandom. It has been doing so at no charge since 2002, under the domain names of furtopia.org and dragoncity.net, with the most recent introduction of Artistsworld.com as a non-furry art gallery. The site is run by Gene Angel (WhiteShepherd) and Kaycy Ruffer (Kada-Ru), although several other staff members and moderators also play a prominent role in the upkeep of the site.

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[edit] Services

The community services at Furtopia include a bulletin board, the furtopia.org forums, which host a broad range of furry topics of discussion. Furtopia also broadcasts its own internet radio station called Radio Furtopia, which currently features radio shows hosted by furry DJs up to twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Other services include FurJournal, an online MUCKing client, and an IRC network.

Furtopia is unusual amongst free hosts in that it offers Server Side Includes, PHP, and MySQL support; few free hosting services offer such resources.

[edit] Staff members

As of June 2008, the following individuals serve in an amplified role on Furtopia's website and/or forums and/or IRC:

Administrators:

Forum Moderators:

Watchers:

IRC Ops:

[edit] History

On March 21, 2002, Furtopia went live. The first incarnation of Furtopia ran on a Cyrix 133 using OS/2 and Xitami running on a 768 Kbps SDSL line (at an operation cost of about $300/month). The original forums were simple, inadequate scripts in great need of being replaced. It was at this point that Benjamin had stepped in to help out.

After some discussions between WhiteShepherd and Benjamin, the furtopia.org forums were initially set up on November 25, 2002. The design that Benjamin created for the forums was so popular that it was later adopted for the main site's design and even made its way onto the t-shirts used for fundraising for the site.

The server was later upgraded to a K6/2 550 MHz (with the Cyrix becoming a backup server), and this was in turn upgraded to an Athlon 2400 running on a pair of 768 Kbps DSL lines.

Eventually, the server became co-located to where it currently resides in Texas at ThePlanet data center.

In March 2008, the forum was hacked and went down, and WhiteShepherd initially blamed LOLfurries for the attack, claiming that passwords had been posted on LOLfurries' own forum. However, regulars of LOLfurries disclaimed responsibility for the hacker's actions. WhiteShepherd later clarified (with quotes from Rabid Rick) that though administrators of LOLfurries did not "directly" themselves do the hacking some admins did support the attack by encouraging the hacker and allowing Furtopia members' personal data to remain posted to the LOLfurries forums, prompting WhiteSheperd's original statement. WhiteShepherd also clarified his position and apologized to any LOLfurries member who did not know of or condone the attacks.

[edit] Charity work

Furtopia is recognized for its charity work. Its parent organization, Two Trees Inc., is registered as a 501(c)3 charity and has made notable donations in computers and art to the underprivileged, most recently through its Arts For Kids program.

On September 1, 2005, as reported on the dutchfurs.com newsfeed, Furtopia also announced they would be helping furries affected by Hurricane Katrina by accepting donations of money, clothing, or shelter. All proceeds were to go towards furries in need. Over $750 was donated by members of the furtopia.org forums, most of which went to purchasing clothes for furries affected by the tragedy.

[edit] Spin-off communities

Furtopia's message boards have come under criticism for the content and enforcement of its rules. The site administrators view Furtopia as their home, and since they "pay the bills",[1] there are some topics that are considered out of bounds.[2] As such, several ex-members have created separate boards for broader topics of discussion. LOLfurries and Furmont were both created in February 2006. Both communities have posters who post or used to post at Furtopia. It has been noted that these communities were created for discussion which interested their creators, not for expression of anti-Furtopia sentiment.

[edit] References

  1. ↑ Post about furtopia being a home by Kada-Ru
  2. ↑ furtopia.org forums posting rules and guidelines

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://furry.wikia.com/wiki/Furtopia"
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