“At risk” - gay story websites and others

[Zombie]

Last year (13 March 2022) at the age of 85, Dame Shirley Bassey sang a live performance of her most famous song “Diamonds Are Forever“.

And she’s right. Except under extreme conditions diamonds are and will last forever.

But websites aren’t and won’t. Every experienced web user will have clicked on site links only to find the site’s gone, replaced by a stark message from a cyber squatter trying to flog the domain and all the contents have presumably just been deleted.

In the recent Lounge thread on CRVBOY.org @Carlos Hazdayposted “the site's a one-man show, and the webmaster faced some health issues” which suggests that this gay story site, and all the other ones like it, could be at risk and at some point end up as a“domain for sale” with all the stories deleted. Obviously where the authors have themselves died there would then be no way to recover those stories (unless they had been published which, of course, most aren’t).

It’s a bit of a worry that our gay literary legacy, which perhaps we take for granted, could just start disappearing. Not “are forever” but gone forever.

Or have I missed something? Perhaps the bigger sites (GA? Nifty?) have a backup plan to preserve the best?

[raven1]

3 hours ago, Zombie said:

Last year (13 March 2022) at the age of 85, Dame Shirley Bassey sang a live performance of her most famous song “Diamonds Are Forever“.

And she’s right. Except under extreme conditions diamonds are and will last forever.

But websites aren’t and won’t. Every experienced web user will have clicked on site links only to find the site’s gone, replaced by a stark message from a cyber squatter trying to flog the domain and all the contents have presumably just been deleted.

In the recent Lounge thread on CRVBOY.org @Carlos Hazdayposted “the site's a one-man show, and the webmaster faced some health issues” which suggests that this gay story site, and all the other ones like it, could be at risk and at some point end up as a“domain for sale” with all the stories deleted. Obviously where the authors have themselves died there would then be no way to recover those stories (unless they had been published which, of course, most aren’t).

It’s a bit of a worry that our gay literary legacy, which perhaps we take for granted, could just start disappearing. Not “are forever” but gone forever.

Or have I missed something? Perhaps the bigger sites (GA? Nifty?) have a backup plan to preserve the best?

This is sad, but true especially sites with only one owner/administrator.  I've seen many disappear over the last 20 years.  I wish there were some mechanism to insure the stories on the other sights would be saved.  GA has a great organization, so has little risk of folding.  Unfortunately, there are only a handful of sites where there are enough administrators to keep things going.

[ReaderPaul]

I know that there is at least one single-owner website that has a succession plan, but I am not aware of others that do.  I have seen several good erotic fiction websites go dark over the years.  I would hate to see many others do the same thing.  

It is a guess, but websites owned by a corporation probably have a better chance of continuing, but as i said, that is only a guess.  I am aware of at least two single owner websites where the owner is in poor health, and neither of them, as far as I know, has a succession plan.  It is a valid concern.  One single owner has multiple websites, and it concerns me that all but one of those could go dark.

[drpaladin]

Shirley Bassey, what an incredible voice!

[Zombie]

https://tedlouis.com

@Paqman alerted in the CRVBOY thread that the “tedlouis” gay story website is going to disappear soon. The home page contains this message:

“While my site will technically go away, some long-time friends of mine have been busy working on an archive of all the stories on my site. The archive will be available to all of my site's readers. I will post more info as I receive it.”

It’s good that there seems to be a rescue plan underway by the site’s readers for this particular gay story website, but other websites may not be so lucky eg if the domain holder is elderly, suddenly dies or becomes seriously ill when it may then be too late to launch any rescue plan

[Mancunian]

3 minutes ago, Zombie said:

https://tedlouis.com

@Paqman alerted in the CRVBOY thread that the “tedlouis” gay story website is going to disappear soon. The home page contains this message:

“While my site will technically go away, some long-time friends of mine have been busy working on an archive of all the stories on my site. The archive will be available to all of my site's readers. I will post more info as I receive it.”

It’s good that there seems to be a rescue plan underway by the site’s readers for this particular gay story website, but other websites may not be so lucky eg if the domain holder is elderly, suddenly dies or becomes seriously ill when it may then be too late to launch any rescue plan

There is a further message on the home page that states the site will disappear in 115 days.

[raven1]

8 minutes ago, Zombie said:

https://tedlouis.com

@Paqman alerted in the CRVBOY thread that the “tedlouis” gay story website is going to disappear soon. The home page contains this message:

“While my site will technically go away, some long-time friends of mine have been busy working on an archive of all the stories on my site. The archive will be available to all of my site's readers. I will post more info as I receive it.”

It’s good that there seems to be a rescue plan underway by the site’s readers for this particular gay story website, but other websites may not be so lucky eg if the domain holder is elderly, suddenly dies or becomes seriously ill when it may then be too late to launch any rescue plan

I've read many of the stories on "tedlouis" and hope they can archive them safely.

[Mancunian]

3 minutes ago, raven1 said:

I've read many of the stories on "tedlouis" and hope they can archive them safely.

All I will say in answer is that there are many good stories on the site, I am taking my own measures to enable me to read them in the future.

[raven1]

6 minutes ago, Mancunian said:

All I will say in answer is that there are many good stories on the site, I am taking my own measures to enable me to read them in the future.

Good idea.  I think I will do something similar.

[raven1]

21 minutes ago, Zombie said:

https://tedlouis.com

@Paqman alerted in the CRVBOY thread that the “tedlouis” gay story website is going to disappear soon. The home page contains this message:

“While my site will technically go away, some long-time friends of mine have been busy working on an archive of all the stories on my site. The archive will be available to all of my site's readers. I will post more info as I receive it.”

It’s good that there seems to be a rescue plan underway by the site’s readers for this particular gay story website, but other websites may not be so lucky eg if the domain holder is elderly, suddenly dies or becomes seriously ill when it may then be too late to launch any rescue plan

Thanks for the update Zombie!  I really appreciate this thread you started in the Lounge.

[Zombie]

7 minutes ago, Mancunian said:

All I will say in answer is that there are many good stories on the site, I am taking my own measures to enable me to read them in the future.

as far as I can see there’s no option on this site (and likely GA and others too) to access multi-chapter stories in a single file (eg pdf) which means each chapter would have to be opened+copied individually then pasted over to a wp file in order to create a single story file “book” - quite tedious and time consuming if you have a lot of favourites, unless there’s a better way?

[Mancunian]

Just now, Zombie said:

as far as I can see there’s no option on this site (and likely GA and others too) to access multi-chapter stories in a single file (eg pdf) which means each chapter would have to be opened+copied individually then pasted over to a wp file in order to create a single story file “book” - quite tedious and time consuming if you have a lot of favourites, unless there’s a better way?

I don't know of any quick way, if anyone please of one please share. Although it's long and tedious I'm going down the copy and paste method. I'll also be keeping a record of the copyright ownership so that I know who has written each story that I record.

[Dhpiet77]

Tickie Stories is either have tech difficulties right now or has disappeared this evening.

[Dhpiet77]

2 hours ago, Dhpiet77 said:

Tickie Stories is either have tech difficulties right now or has disappeared this evening.

It's back up!

[PBax]

Everyone always assumes Mom and Dad has everything taken care of until the car accident happens. 

My question....

Do the admins have the ability to download the site data to a separate private disc? The admin owns the data, I think? 

Yes, I'm asking probative questions...

But I haven't seen admins address here. The website I owned, I could access and download assess at my liberty. I know stuff is different here, but do we know the contours of the admins thoughts here? what they think on this? how would they help?

I haven't seen admin offer thoughts on this thread.....

 

[Myr]

I don't usually weigh in on how other sites handle their stuff... Gay Authors is run and controlled by an LLC and when you set up an LLC you have to define what happens when the people involved change or go away.  This has occurred several times over the years here as we've lost various people for various reasons.  It's been pretty transparent for you as members.  I'd imagine it'll be rougher when my time comes, but, I did set things up to continue.

Gay Authors is backed up in full on our server, on the datacenters backup and on an external backup site.  On top of all that, I periodically download my own copy of everything.  There are instructions in place to ensure that's recoverable by our companies successor if that should become necessary.

The Internet Wayback Machine, archive.org: https://web.archive.org/  has backups of a lot of sites.  In fact, if the site is still up now, you can manually request they archive certain pages... like those stories you are concerned about.  This stores it "forever".

Gay Authors from March 2004:

 

Let's see... Gay Authors does have the ability to display the entire story at once, at least for members.  Just click the printer icon on the Table of Contents page.  All relevant information is there along with all the chapters.

As for other sites disappearing, if other website owners wish to reach out, Gay Authors is already paying for our own dedicated server... other than Nifty, we can simply add dozens of other sites with little to no impact or cost to us beyond the regular domain registration fees, and additional backup costs.  I've offered in the past to a couple of other sites and got a no thank you.  So, I don't bother to ask any more.  20 years ago, I decided if Gay Authors was going to stay a thing, I wasn't going to be in the month-to-month panic of do we have enough to stay open asking for donations and living with that stress.  So I went a different path and made Gay Authors self-supporting.  So long as our premium members and our ad revenue stay above a certain level, all the payments are handled by automatic transfers.  This decision allowed us to grow to where are on a pretty solid dedicated server that is rated for hosting hundreds of sites.  Or Gay Authors and snappy as it does.  The way others run their sites, they have a much smaller footprint in the database (the reactions, comments, notifications, etc all have a pretty heavy load, believe it not). 

If anyone knows of a site disappearing and the owner is interested in keeping it around or moving the stories into our archive to keep them available to people, we are open to discussing it. (we are in the position to keep things running, not in the position of buying anything)

[raven1]

13 minutes ago, Myr said:

I don't usually weigh in on how other sites handle their stuff... Gay Authors is run and controlled by an LLC and when you set up an LLC you have to define what happens when the people involved change or go away.  This has occurred several times over the years here as we've lost various people for various reasons.  It's been pretty transparent for you as members.  I'd imagine it'll be rougher when my time comes, but, I did set things up to continue.

Gay Authors is backed up in full on our server, on the datacenters backup and on an external backup site.  On top of all that, I periodically download my own copy of everything.  There are instructions in place to ensure that's recoverable by our companies successor if that should become necessary.

The Internet Wayback Machine, archive.org: https://web.archive.org/  has backups of a lot of sites.  In fact, if the site is still up now, you can manually request they archive certain pages... like those stories you are concerned about.  This stores it "forever".

Gay Authors from March 2004:

 

Let's see... Gay Authors does have the ability to display the entire story at once, at least for members.  Just click the printer icon on the Table of Contents page.  All relevant information is there along with all the chapters.

As for other sites disappearing, if other website owners wish to reach out, Gay Authors is already paying for our own dedicated server... other than Nifty, we can simply add dozens of other sites with little to no impact or cost to us beyond the regular domain registration fees, and additional backup costs.  I've offered in the past to a couple of other sites and got a no thank you.  So, I don't bother to ask any more.  20 years ago, I decided if Gay Authors was going to stay a thing, I wasn't going to be in the month-to-month panic of do we have enough to stay open asking for donations and living with that stress.  So I went a different path and made Gay Authors self-supporting.  So long as our premium members and our ad revenue stay above a certain level, all the payments are handled by automatic transfers.  This decision allowed us to grow to where are on a pretty solid dedicated server that is rated for hosting hundreds of sites.  Or Gay Authors and snappy as it does.  The way others run their sites, they have a much smaller footprint in the database (the reactions, comments, notifications, etc all have a pretty heavy load, believe it not). 

If anyone knows of a site disappearing and the owner is interested in keeping it around or moving the stories into our archive to keep them available to people, we are open to discussing it. (we are in the position to keep things running, not in the position of buying anything)

Good to know @Myr GA has been a special place for me.  I'm even more impressed by knowing the how and why of its existence.  Thank you for taking the time to write this response.  

[PrivateTim]

This topic triggered a memory in me. In the nascent days of the WWW and me exploring the more hidden side of my life as a youth coming to terms with my sexual orientation, I discovered a site called "The Fort". It wasn't very sophisticated, but it did have stories in it and forums to discuss just about anything and links for gay youth resources.

Does anyone know of this site? Remember it? Know what happened to it? I remember a lot of the stories seemed science fiction-y, which when mixed with gay characters didn't appeal so I sort of stopped going there as I found other sites like Nifty, GA, IOMfAtS and AwesomeDude.

[raven1]

22 minutes ago, PrivateTim said:

This topic triggered a memory in me. In the nascent days of the WWW and me exploring the more hidden side of my life as a youth coming to terms with my sexual orientation, I discovered a site called "The Fort". It wasn't very sophisticated, but it did have stories in it and forums to discuss just about anything and links for gay youth resources.

Does anyone know of this site? Remember it? Know what happened to it? I remember a lot of the stories seemed science fiction-y, which when mixed with gay characters didn't appeal so I sort of stopped going there as I found other sites like Nifty, GA, IOMfAtS and AwesomeDude.

Here's a link that might help.  It is to The Mustard Jar, Ronyx's website in the Links section.  The Fort website, became The Fort Family websites.  Check thru the links here and you will find many if not most of The Fort Family sites that working now. There are 10 website links for the Fort Family sites listed. I hope this helps you.

https://www.themustardjar.com/?t=cecAt7uzvUcNixtU

 

Edited June 4, 2023 by raven1

[ReaderPaul]

44 minutes ago, PrivateTim said:

This topic triggered a memory in me. In the nascent days of the WWW and me exploring the more hidden side of my life as a youth coming to terms with my sexual orientation, I discovered a site called "The Fort". It wasn't very sophisticated, but it did have stories in it and forums to discuss just about anything and links for gay youth resources.

Does anyone know of this site? Remember it? Know what happened to it? I remember a lot of the stories seemed science fiction-y, which when mixed with gay characters didn't appeal so I sort of stopped going there as I found other sites like Nifty, GA, IOMfAtS and AwesomeDude.

27 minutes ago, raven1 said:

Here's a link that might help.  It is to The Mustard Jar, Ronyx's website in the Links section.  The Fort website, became The Fort Family websites.  Check thru the links here and you will find many if not most of The Fort Family sites that working now. There are 10 website links for the Fort Family sites listed. I hope this helps you.

https://www.themustardjar.com/?t=cecAt7uzvUcNixtU

The Fort Family of websites is now at    storylover dot us     and there are lots of places to explore.  The row of stuff in the left column will give a lot of hints of what is going on.  Under the list of latest story chapter postings there is news of various happenings within the Fort Family and various other of the websites related to StoryLover and the Fort Family,

[JamesSavik]

I miss Dewey, and Drake was gone before I arrived, but I did get to read some of his stuff.

There are many others who have passed or just dropped offline.

The reason I came to GA was it seemed an island of stability.

 

[ReaderPaul]

1 hour ago, JamesSavik said:

I miss Dewey, and Drake was gone before I arrived, but I did get to read some of his stuff.

There are many others who have passed or just dropped offline.

The reason I came to GA was it seemed an island of stability.

Some of Dewey's stories are on storylover dot us website.

[ReaderPaul]

Good news regarding TedLouis dot com --  Storylover dot us   is in the process of moving TedLouis dot com  -- the whole site -- to their server.  And, the message there said, there may be one or more days of outage while the site is moving to the new server.  However, ALL the stories on the TedLouis site will still be at the same address.

So, @Mancunian -- @raven1 -- @PrivateTim -- @Paqman -- @Zombie -- TedLouis dot com will continue, but there may be one or more days where the site will be temporarily unavailable while changing servers.

The home page will now read "Ted Louis' Bookshelf."

Edited June 16, 2023 by ReaderPaul

[chris191070]

1 hour ago, ReaderPaul said:

Good news regarding TedLouis dot com --  Storylover dot us   is in the process of moving TedLouis dot com  -- the whole site -- to their server.  And, the message there said, there may be one or more days of outage while the site is moving to the new server.  However, ALL the stories on the TedLouis site will still be at the same address.

So, @Mancunian -- @raven1 -- @PrivateTim -- @Paqman -- @Zombie -- TedLouis dot com will continue, but there may be one or more days where the site will be temporarily unavailable while changing servers.

The home page will now read "Ted Louis' Bookshelf."

That's good news, there a lot of fantastic stories on Ted Louis site.

[Mancunian]

Thank you @ReaderPaul for all of the updates, many of us have found them very useful. We all appreciate the work that you have put into keeping us updated.