History of this place

[foxs 1]

As a young member of the community connected with this fur love & passion site, I was wandering what is the history of this place.

There are multiple posts copied from the old Fur Den and a couple post explaining a recent admin change of this site - FrBrGr, White Fox, neo, ... in the Articles area. It is obvious that there was an "old" site and a "new" one. But I wasn't able to find information or any detail about this categorization -- were there multiple sites which are now deemed as "old" or at least different stages of what now seems as one?

While searching the forum, I also noticed people mentioning almost a mythical place called Library. But there are no posts talking about it after 2015. Was there a site change or was this place deleted? Or was it caused by a simple decline in number of users and thus less mentions?

Thank you!

[Worker 11811 29]

On 2/7/2021 at 5:11 PM, foxs said:

While searching the forum, I also noticed people mentioning almost a mythical place called Library.

On the previous incarnation of The Fur Den, we had a wiki where any member in good standing could create articles and pages about almost any subject they wanted.  The wiki was called "The Library."

The Library had a lot of information about fur, different types of fur, how to identify them and how to care for fur, in general.

There was also a section of The Library for fur stories and fur erotica.  We had collected many old, classic fur stories that were written by past members and we had many new stories written by then-current members.

The Library was administered, mainly, by three people.  White Fox (R.I.P.), AKCoyote and myself.  Very few other members contributed anything and, when those few people did, it was usually up to me and the others to come in, afterward, and tidy up.

Eventually, The Library turned into a little-used backwater.  Few people, outside of a select group, contributed and, when there were contributions, few people read them.

At that time, I had access to the web server where the Fur Den resided and I had full access to the IP and visitor statistics.  To put it mildly, they were dismal at best.

The Library fell into disuse and decay.  After White Fox's passing, The Fur Den changed ownership and the site was converted to a new version.  Most of The Library's content was folded into other areas of the new website but was no longer in wiki format, leaving it, essentially, static.  People could not add to it as easily.

The Fur Den website was updated another time, to the format you see now and much of the content that was previously archived was buried even deeper.  Most of it seems to have been lost.  I was told that the old content is still here, somewhere, but I have never been able to find all of it.  I have only found bits and pieces.  What I did find was full of broken links and was misformatted.

Most of the old Library is gone.

Back in the day, when I was co-administrator of the Fur Den, White Fox, AKCoyote and I ran regular, automated backups of the entire website which were stored on our own computers, at home.  The theory was that, if SHTF and the website went down, at least one of the three of us could restore the Fur Den from one or more of the saved backups.  With each of us being at three of the four corners of the continent of North America, it would have taken a worldwide disaster to destroy all three copies of The Fur Den.

Now that the three of us are scattered to the winds, I have no idea whether any of those backups exist.

White Fox is no longer with us and AKCoyote has retired.  I haven't seen him visit the website for a good six months or more and I have lost contact with him.

As to me...  I still visit The Fur Den, occasionally, but I have no responsibility of the site's operation or upkeep.

Somewhere, deep, down in the far reaches of my computer archives, I might still have a saved backup of the old Fur Den.  I am one of those people who never deletes anything.  With hard drives being as cheap as they are, I just fill them up and, when I can't cram any more data onto them, I just buy a new one.  The old, drives get removed and stored in a closet.  I've got three hard drives running in my computer, right now.  I have one or two, sitting idle, within easy reach where I can re-install them and I've probably got a dozen or more stacked in my closet or basement.  I have, probably, ten or twenty terabytes of data, containing the majority of any computer file I have ever received or generated since the year 1998.  If you count archived floppy disks and CD-R disks, I have stuff that goes back to the early 1980's.

I am 90% certain that I have one or more backups of the old Fur Den website squirreled away, somewhere, in those piles of hard drives.

I suppose, some day, somebody might be able to inspire me to dig around and look for them.

Edited February 11 by Worker 11811

[furs limited 32]

We all appreciate what you did, what you contribute, and all you may do. 

Thank you.

[Redman27 2]

I don't post often but I go back to the NTCweb.com days too.  Back when you had to wait 30 seconds to download a photo on a 36.6 modem lol.  I appreciate all that's been done in the efforts to keep a fur forum alive!

[furlvman1 6]

56 minutes ago, Redman27 said:

I don't post often but I go back to the NTCweb.com days too.  Back when you had to wait 30 seconds to download a photo on a 36.6 modem lol.  I appreciate all that's been done in the efforts to keep a fur forum alive!

I remember those days fondly. Then came the Fur Fashion Guide Forums.

[Marcel 183]

23 hours ago, Redman27 said:

I don't post often but I go back to the NTCweb.com days too.  Back when you had to wait 30 seconds to download a photo on a 36.6 modem lol.

and saved the pictures on floppy disks lol

[paul2809 48]

Nostalgia Marcel.. 

[foxs 1]

Thank you for your time to write such a long and detailed post! It is beautiful to see that there are still many members who have been here since the beginning.

[Redman27 2]

On 2/12/2021 at 6:49 PM, Marcel said:

and saved the pictures on floppy disks lol

Wow, that brings back some memories!  Thanks for sharing that!  :)