The new MyFursona is on its way.

Read the article on MyFursona over here.

MyFursona has a roadmap for its upcoming return. We will be starting an open beta test in May, 2011 and opening the website in June, 2011. Please read below for the specific details. We hope to see you then!

What about the old website?

In February, the website will be moved to archive.myfursona.com. You will still be able to view the website but you won't be able to register new accounts or log into old ones. Feel free to explore the old website; including users, blogs, and images. If you would like any of your material removed from the old website please email support@myfursona.com with your user name, and a description of the material you would like to be removed. You must email us from the email address you used on the website or we will not be able to honor your request.

When can I register for the new website?

Registrations will begin in April, but users will not be able to use most of the features of the website until the beta test begins in May. We will announce when you can register and when the beta test begins via Twitter.

What about my stuff from the old website?

Don't worry, we wouldn't make you do the same stuff again! Once you create an account on the new website you can use our nifty import feature to pull in all of your old profile information, blogs, and images. All you have to do is enter your old user name and password from the old website and we'll move all your stuff over to the new website. Pretty cool, huh?

Do I have to use the same name I had on the old website?

No, you don't have to. You can use whatever name you want. Even if you choose a different name you'll still be able to import data from your old account. You can even import data from multiple accounts if you had more than one on the old website.

What new features do you have planned?

We want to keep a few things secret, but we will maintain a list here and post any additional ones on Twitter as we add them. Here's the list as of January 29, 2011:
  • Threaded comments: Reply to comments and reply to those replies.
  • Integrated forum: Talk right on the website with no spam in the way.
  • Notifications: Know when something is happening!
  • Private messages: Talk privately with other users.
  • Better search: Add tags to blogs, images and other items and search for them.
  • Filter blogs and images: Don't want to see something? Add a tag to your block list.
If you have any feature requests, please email support@myfursona.com or talk to us on Twitter.

What about the staff members that left in 2009?

I'm happy to announce that AlexGrey and Xerxes have decided to rejoin the MyFursona team! I look forward to working with them once again now that they're back on board. Here's the list of the MyFursona staff as of January 29, 2011:

If you're interested in joining the MyFursona team please email support@myfursona.com. We're always looking for help from individuals in the community. From all of us here at MyFursona: Go furpile!

You didn't answer all of my questions!

Just email support@myfursona.com or talk to us on Twitter. We're always happy to help! We're very much looking forward to the new MyFursona and we hope you are too!

Alright, but what should I do until April?

Keep up to date with the return of MyFursona and follow us on Twitter and LiveJournal. Please direct any questions or suggestions to support@myfursona.com or contact us on Twitter.

MyFursona is closing its doors.

View the article on MyFursona over here.

MyFursona has decided to close its doors for a while. This is temporary and we will be back in the near future! Read on if you're interested in the details.

It's best to tell the story chronologically: it all started around the time of our cookie exploit, which allowed any client to post content as any user. After this happened I spent a week or so programming fixes and such, but one of these fixes disabled the administration panel. I never got to re-enabling it, and didn't want to let anybody else write the code for it. The frustration with this eventually led to the departure of Alex Grey, our designer, and Xerxes Qados, our community manager. I would like to apologize to the both of them; I was wrong, and you both have open invitations to the new MyFursona administration team.

The administration team was down to just NightWolf and me. Our goal was to finish Alex Grey's vision of "MyFursona Eden", with NightWolf working on a new database structure while I handled design and programming. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish my part in time; my classes started back up and I couldn't balance MyFursona and school. This has happened again and again, semester after semester.

I've finally realized that I can't possibly juggle MyFursona, school, and home life. Until I am out of school, I won't be able to give MyFursona the time it needs. Luckily, I won't be moving on to a four-year college and should be out of school for good this Spring.

So what does this mean for MyFursona? The website will continue to function as it does now until December 1, 2010; on that day registrations will be disabled. On January 1, 2011, logging in will be disabled and the website will essentially be read-only, and will just be available so that users can retrieve their data. On March 1, 2011, the website will be taken offline.

At that point, the administrators (whomever they may be at that time) will decide on the best time to reopen a new and improved MyFursona. I look forward to that day. The MyFursona administrators and moderators hope to see you again someday in the future. Until then...

Go furpile!

Thank you to all of the volunteer staff who believed in MyFursona and helped it grow into the great community it is and has been. Your contributions were greatly appreciated.

Keep up to date regarding the return of MyFursona and follow us on Twitter and LiveJournal. Please direct any questions or suggestions to @myfursona on Twitter, or email "support [at] myfursona [dot] com".
Batty - Revolution!

Eden Apologies

Feel free to give me a good slap across the chops for completely stalling on any Eden progress in the last couple of months. To say life's been giving me a rough ride would be an understatement of epic proportions, and I'm still hardly back on track as it is.

Regardless I've had some MyF related chats with @Xerxes and we've formulated a good bunch of ideas for Eden, especially on the design front. Of course, this pretty much means that the current Eden will likely get a whole lot of it chucked out and replaced, but as is such in the world of research and development.

All is not lost however, working on making that public Eden preview has helped me gain an assload of experience in coding practices, and it's given me a good basic view of what you folks like and what you don't. I can use these to amazing advantage when creating newer versions of MyFursona, so it's all good work on your part (well, you who provided feedback anyway.)

The public Eden there will remain available, seeing as so many of you folks seem to like it, plus it comes with many features the current site doesn't have, and it'd be silly to take them away from ya. But for now, don't expect the actual Eden release to look anything like it! I'll give you one clue to the nature of New Eden: Customization, and lots of it!

But for now, go furpile!
Batty - Comrade Belliachi

So yeah, thought I'd update you peeps!

Work is beginning on MyFursona Eden 1.1. This is probably surprising as version 1.0 isn't even finished yet, but we're spontaneous like that. Decided to go for a similar but lighter theme this time, and open up many more opportunities for user customization.

While we were at it me and Xerxes decided to do some naming. The current version is nicknamed "Chrome" (due to being very shiny grey), the in-development version is "Eden" (after the Garden of Eden, of Old Testament fame) and the very first iteration of the site is "Rainbow" (those who were around at the time will know why.)

We'll try to actually get stuff done, especially since progress has been slow for the last 6 months. Kinda hard to run a machine when at least one of the cogs tends to seize up - something I and others are guilty of at some point or another.

But yeah, go furpile!
Batty - Toon Bat

MyFursona on Twitter

Carrying on with MyFursona's attempt to dominate the Internet (and soon, the world) we now have our little Orson-feed over on Twitter! Although it doesn't seem like much at the moment, this will be pretty significant once MyFursona Eden finds it's way out of construction.

So go check that out at twitter.com/myfursona, and then go furpile!

May I also take this opportunity to tell you to take advantage of our new Eden feedback forum on UserVoice, you can go and find that at myfursona.uservoice.com!
Defaultier

MyFursona Is Down So I'm Going To Cry After Making A Livejournal Post

MyFursona.com, .net, and .org are experiencing downtime, while occasionally going back up for 30 second periods with limited functionality.

This is happening to all sites Kovu has, not just the MyF network.

Yes, the forums are down as well, which means Quixotic will have to find something else to do with his life for a bit.

In any case, we're blaming Servage, and the move to HostMonster has been made much higher priority. Not even the Large Hadron Collider could save us here.
Defaultier

3000+ Users, 3000+ Problems - Why MyF is Broken

(Mirrored from the forums, please discuss there: http://www.myfursona.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=624)

It has been a long time since I've been able to make a Xerxes' Wednesday Community Update. Before, all I had to do was go into the admin control panel and post a new update. Ever since Pinecone-gate, the only way to post updates is either directly putting them into the database or some other method that has not been shared with me by Kovu. Doesn't matter, the point is, it's Wednesday, I have a community, and I want to update its members. Also, I'm Xerxes.

Anyone who's been using MyFursona for a while may have noticed that the site's been roughly the same for a good long time, and there are some minor omitted features that cause some major headaches. Ultimately, we look pretty with a shiny interface which adheres to all the vague guidelines of Web 2.0, but our lack of things like threaded comments, editable submissions, and other such niceties make us prettier than but less functional than, say, the gargantuan ferrox-behemoth that is FurAffinity.

Aaaaaaand then FA went down for several weeks.

Shortly after FurAffinity went down, I sent a long email to Kovu, Xeon, and Tori telling them that this was our time: with the most popular furry site out of commission, people would eventually lose interest in pressing F5 and seek alternatives. And maybe if the alternatives were good enough, they'd stay. MyFursona could be that awesome alternative. If we did some major work on every aspect of the site that needed fixing, and maybe added some of the big things we were planning on, we'd not only be well on our way to becoming the best furry site like, ever, but we'd actually be noticed!

FurAffinity has returned after five some-odd weeks, and our biggest (and one of our only) achievements was enabling search again. WIthout tag support.

I'm very frustrated and disappointed. Not just because I feel we as a staff have failed our users, but because I was powerless to make anything work differently.

I am nowhere near as good at programming things as my fellow admins, so I generally sit back and handle the community. Except I can't. Recently, there was a dispute over whether a piece of artwork violated the terms of service of MyFursona. A huge controversy flared up around it, and everyone looked to the Glorious Purple Fox to save everyone. Well, guess what? I can't edit or remove the artwork submission. The most I can do is talk to the user and say what they need to do: delete the work and resubmit it with changes to the description. Now, I'd like to do this privately, except I cannot see their email address, and they're not on AIM right now. Thus, in the current state of MyFursona, I cannot do my job.

Theoretically, I could read up on web languages and add this administrative functionality that I need all by myself, right? Wrong. That requires access to and, by extension, knowledge of MyFursona's databases, and the only person who can touch that with our current hosting plan is Kovu. Well, XcXeon can too, he just has to hack into it.

Now, that would be all fine and dandy if Kovu and Xeon would help me out. Xeon has a very time-consuming day job, so he has an excuse. Kovu, by contrast, has had most of the summer completely free. So why haven't the admin features I've been bugging him about for so long materialized in any form?

At the moment, MyF-ers, I am the Queen of England - I have a pretty face and everyone loves me, but other people wield the real control over things. Except unlike the Queen, the powerful people don't listen to me.

And what about Tori, you ask? Why haven't I yelled at him yet? Tori's in a similar situation here, meaning he has no database access, but he does know quite a bit more coding than me, and is very good at making stuff look pretty. He's often been the catalyst for innovation here, producing working mockups of things we need and asking Kovu to fill in the blanks. Normally, the chain of events is Tori and I discuss something cool, Tori makes the front-end, and then thrusts it on Kovu or Xeon to make it work with the data and systems we have right now. This has worked for the most part.

Tori recently came to the conclusion that the site is very difficult to change or expand right now, and we need to make a lot of changes. I agreed. The problem with this agreement is that now the only work Tori is doing is related to our top-secret redesign of everything, and has nothing to do with making what we have now tolerable until then.

Initially, I liked the idea of a surprise redesign that we'd spring on everyone to make them go "ooooh!" I underestimated just how long we'd have to wait for that day. Tori doesn't have all the new pages finished, so Kovu isn't interested in linking them together yet with a backend, and Xeon is making money for food because he no longer lives with his parents. So it's not surprising that when Tori pointed out that we should do something for MyFursona's first birthday this month, he was quick to mention that 2.0 will not be ready by then. How about we commission a picture of Orson in a party hat, he asked? Unfortunately, that's probably the most that will happen at this rate.

So, yes, I'm putting the blame on my fellow administrators for making the decision that it makes no sense to improve things before the sitewide change. We try to pride ourselves on putting the community first, but usually that implies doing everything in our power to make our users happy. Of course, ultimately I have to give the greatest share of the blame to Kovu, because he has the most power and the least excuse to do nothing. And that's what he's doing. Nothing.

Before the other admins (or anyone else) start telling me to cool it because this is a hobby for us all, and nobody's paying us, it has to be said that there are over 3000 registered users of MyFursona, and when you tell all of them that it's your goal to give them the best service you can despite paying nothing, you had better live up to that. You cannot renege on a promise just because you're not being paid to keep it.

So am I exonerating myself? Is none of this my fault? Well, actually, I am to blame. Despite having no direct control over the site, I trusted others to give it to me without a problem. I trusted everyone else to give users the features they wanted. That didn't happen, because I have not spoken up until now. And now I'm doing my job in the best way possible.

Community, consider this a managerial statement: do not stand for this crap. Demand improvement and demand it now. And if it doesn't happen, don't stick around to see if the redesign is ever done. We're not the only furry site on the Internet, but our claim to uniqueness was the fact that we actually listen to our users and get things done when they want them done. And that is not happening. Be loud, be vocal, and ask my fellow administrators why you should be here. Make them give you a reason.
Batty - Goggular

11 July Downtime

We got DDoS'd by some sort of automatic bot thing, simple as.

Most painfully is that I'm the only bleeding admin online right now... it's gonna be a slow night...

Edit: Now working on it, check the forums or IRC for updates.

Edit (again): Okay, seems the extra security and quick response unit that is me sorted it out. We were attacked a few more times, but I seem to have deferred these without too much damage.