ASSTR

[Nizzgrrl]

Does anyone know what's happened to ASSTR.org? Is this a temporary problem? Oh I hope so, but that's what I first thought about Ask Jolene and now it's gone the way of a great number of other sites.

My mama told me to be a Nizzgrrl

[Deadly Ernest]

I'd say they're under some sort of attack as their domain registry entry is gone.

[william rice]

same thing happened to my site, they shut it down and Siath was able to bring it back up.

 

monbade

Author of the Destroyer Series and the Travelling Science Project series at
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/monbade or at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/william-v.-rice

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "storiesonline" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to storiesonlin...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

[Gauthier]

That's not what I see:
asstr.org host their own name server (ns1.iflc.org & ns2.iflc.org)

which are responding correctly.

Incidentally both name servers are responding and ns1 share an ip with the web server which also respond to ping

It's just the web services which are down.

[Deadly Ernest]

When I ran a Whois I get back the answer NOT FOUND. However, when I run a traceroute it gets as far as ns1.iflc.org at 65.19.175.52 and dies there, but I can ping that, just can't get a respons of any sort beyond it.

[Gauthier]

ns1.iflc.org is www.asstr.org (same ip) there is no beyond it reachable by visitors.

[Anne]

Not to be too ignorant, but what does that mean beside the fact that all you can see it their greeting page?

[parthenogenesis]

I asked on ASSD, so let's see what turns up.

[Crumbly Writer]

Damn, I was going to post a new chapter today (Saturday). I saw this thread (and noticed the site was unavailable) and thought: "How long is it likely to be down?"

Looks like I'll have to play 'catch up' next week when I post my regular chapters. That is, if they've managed to come back by then. But there have been SO many sites that are here one day and gone the next, that you can't really count on anything. If it's a software bug or service attack it's one thing, but if their software/data got corrupted, or if it costs too much to make necessary repairs, then ... who knows?

[Magraal]

asstr has been 'up' pretty much uninterrupted since I found it in 1996.....presumably this is just a hardware issue with their servers and it will be back online within a day or three.

[Gayth Montgomery]

Its reliability is what makes this outage so strange.

[parthenogenesis]

No response/no traffic on ASSD in 24 hours.

[Nestor Ryks]

hey readers and authors.

am very disappointed too and wondered if there was some means of contacting our favorite authors and see about alternatives they'll be using?

the asstr email page hide that.... i'd like to get the new fertilemind postman series. the start was hot.

don't suppose fertilemind hangs out any?

thanks 

[Gary Layng]

Site still down, although apparently some direct links might be working sporadically:

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

--

[Deadly Ernest]

check this page out

http://storiesonline.net/a/FertileMind

[Nestor Ryks]

thanks...i tried registering but not getting an email confirm....do you go there and would you know if fertilemind has the newest ones there (the postman)?

[Jeff Smith]

On Friday, November 8, 2013 5:15:56 PM UTC-6, Nizzgrrl wrote:
> Does anyone know what's happened to ASSTR.org? Is this a temporary problem? Oh I hope so, but that's what I first thought about Ask Jolene and now it's gone the way of a great number of other sites.
>
> My mama told me to be a Nizzgrrl

Per an email from the Admin. The data center had power supply glich which caused a hardware failure. They are working hard to resovle the problem. Which it looks like will reguire replacing one of the severs and doing a restore. So far they say it will cost them about $4000 but they intend to be back online ASAP.

[John Hazlewood]

good to hear that it was just technical difficulties I hope they had things backed up be disapoinint if lost things especially from authors that may not be around anymore

[Deadly Ernest]

He has an incomplete story called The Mailman that's a few years old about a guy called Conrad - most stories are incomplete

[Crumbly Writer]

My comment earlier about being paranoid about sites/companies disappearing was based on ASSTR's continuing problems with financing. Their business model is a little questionable, and not only do they have problems with adaquate hardware but they've suffered some significant staffing problems as well (thought they seem to have those largely solved lately). I just find myself wondering just which straw is going to break that camel's back: hardware failures, server errors, lawsuits, criminal prosecutions by an overactive regional prosecutor or what?

Call me paranoid, but companies going out of buisiness because of uncontrolled expenses is something we're reminded of daily (Facebook and Twitter not counting since they represent bubbles waiting to burst).

[vandamn]

if this is just a hardware failure thats going to cost $4k to fix, thats good.  as for the business model, as i understand it, asstr exists only on donations.  i have donated a few times.  i think everyone who finds this site as valuable as i should add them to your annual donation plans.  they are certainly worth it.  so send some bucks to keep them up,as they certainly keep me up!!!

On Friday, November 8, 2013 6:15:56 PM UTC-5, Nizzgrrl wrote:

[Mutz]

I'm not saying I don't think they will try, but I hope that violence and an active imagination can keep government strong arming bully tactics at bay, in the spirit of freedom of speech/press. free ideas and expression.
and when that is not possible, Fire.. money and more violence..

[Fried Coyote]

Thanks for the info, good people.  I'm now retired, but I can relate to the Admin headaches when Murphy's Law kicks in.  I previously helped maintain California's Highway Patrol network, and NO two server failures were ever identical.  A sad fact is that asstr has a repository of files available nowhere else.  I'm glad I pulled a copy of Artie's folder while it was still on the fttp server.

On Friday, November 8, 2013 6:15:56 PM UTC-5, Nizzgrrl wrote:

[Daniel]

True, but it's not exactly right.

There is a copy of the whole ASSTR ftp server out there, even if it is outdated by more than a year by now. Should the site not come back, despite the positive news that have been shared here, you can use your favorite search engine and look for 'asstr siterip'. What you will find is a torrent containing the whole asstr ftp server as of April 2012 for a total size of about 5GB in form of compressed archives.

I don't think it's right for someone to make a copy of others creative works and publish that himself, but as a reader one has to be happy to have that kind of backup.

[neicesRMYpassion]

We just have to wait and see what happens....While the discussion is about asstr...does anyone knmow why lollywood studios has finished up.

[art...@gmail.com]

this is really frustrating...does anyone have any other similar sites that they can recommend?

Art. 

[Deadly Ernest]

As for websites, after SOL and ASSTR the next best large story source is really the Gutenberg Project

http://www.gutenberg.org/

After that you're down to sites like Wes Boyd's Spearfishlaketales

http://www.spearfishlaketales.com/

and the author related Yahoo groups sites like DotBs and EzzyBs sites - the way yahwhosawanker programmer site works now I can't get it to sit on the URL long enough to copy it for you - and after I sign in the URL is useless to give you as it wants my login to let you in.

Apart from that you can try the baseline newsgroups of alt.sex.stories.moderated and the associated groups.

Ernest

[Invid Fan]

On Monday, November 11, 2013 11:01:17 AM UTC-5, art...@gmail.com wrote:

this is really frustrating...does anyone have any other similar sites that they can recommend?

Art. 

 Actually, I'm wondering at other options for putting my web pages. Keep a portal on ASSTR, but have the rest of the site be somewhere else. It would have to be erotica friendly and cheap, which may be an impossible combination :)

[Jace Mindue]

does any one know of another site like asstr.org I really enjoyed reading those stories nifty.org doesn't cut it 

[Crumbly Writer]

I don't know of any other decent posting sites, but I've been posting chapters to ASSTR that link to my own pages for a long time. Anyone that feels uncomfortable clicking on a new site is free to go back to the previous page and find the next ASSTR page, but everyone else gets redirected to my site. I learned a long time ago NOT to trust ASSTR with my data. I trust myself to display stories correctly, depending on other sites to do it is risky. Just like Lazeez did here recently, changing indented text from normal to italics doesn't sound like much, but it can screw up all the work an author puts into getting a story to appear correctly--and those changes typically come with little or not warning.

Smashwords (the site I publish my stories from) does that all the time. I'll make a small correction to a specific chapter, making no other changes, and it will reject the entire book listing a whole bunch of new errors it never had problems with before. I don't mind behaving according to a given sites rules, but being expected to read the developers' mind is expecting a bit much.

That aside, though, both ASSTR and SOL were developed by authors who grew frustrated with their inability to display their stories correctly and started their own sites. When other authors asked to be included, they expanded their sites to incorporate the other authors and, after a little while they ended up spending all their time maintaining story sites rather than writing themselves. (Kind of a doubled-edged sword).

[Phil Granere]

I honestly think.... that this is much more than a "Technical Hardware Failure" call me paranoid but I can't even ping ftp.asstr.org or www.asstr.org anymore.   You would think they would redirect their DNS to a simple html page that can be created on EC2/AWS or even a cheap rackspace account with a single page stating they are offline and working on getting it back up.

This doesn't make sense.  I do not believe that ASSTR.org is going to be back online, i guess call me paranoid/pesimistic etc.  Most of the new stories i saw recently where all german and things appeared to be getting very unorganized anyhow.    

I am not a developer, but have been a Systems Engineer for 18 years.  I have access to many hosting providers, if there is an author/developer willing to develop a new site for such stories i may be willing to entertain the idea of donating bandwidth and my experience with Linux/LAMP environments.

Feel free to e-mail me directly.

[Tim Merrigan]

On 2013-11-08 15:15, Nizzgrrl wrote:

Does anyone know what's happened to ASSTR.org? Is this a temporary problem? Oh I hope so, but that's what I first thought about Ask Jolene and now it's gone the way of a great number of other sites.

My mama told me to be a Nizzgrrl

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "storiesonline" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to storiesonlin...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2014.0.4158 / Virus Database: 3615/6809 - Release Date: 11/04/13

ASSTR appears to be back, though the most recent updates are from the 8th.

-- 

I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America,
and to the republic which it established, one nation, from many peoples,
promising liberty and justice for all.
      Feel free to use the above variant pledge in your own postings.

Tim Merrigan 

[Gayth Montgomery]

So, it is.
On Monday, November 11, 2013 3:33:40 PM UTC-8, Tim Merrigan wrote:

SNIP
ASSTR appears to be back, though the most recent updates are from the 8th. SNIP

[Invid Fan]

I even got a download update that should have shown up Sunday.

[Ylee coyote]

ASSTR appears to be back, though the most recent updates are from the 8th. SNIP

Well, since it was down, there were not any updates so that to be expected.

I even got my weekly report  from Sunday morning.

Happy it is back.
:) :) :)

[Dayvid Notellin]

So I thought I'd make a donation to ASSTR to help them pay for that $4000 blow-up that took them down for several days.  I can't believe that in this day and age, Paypal and Credit Card companies are trying to stop ASSTR from receiving contributions!  What a f'ing joke!

I think we should all sent PayPal a note telling them to pull their heads out of their arses on this!

[Phil Granere]

I stand corrected it's back online

[Homer Vargas]

What about Literoticia?  Theme limited, of course

 

My stories can be read on:

http://storiesonline.net
http://www.theimpregnation.com/
http://www.asstr.org/files/Authors/Vargas
http://www.asstr.org/~Vargas/stories.html
http://www.mcstories.com
http://www.eroticstories.com
http://www.literotica.com

--

[Dayvid Notellin]

ASSTR is back online.  Apparently there was an equipment problem.  An expensive one.

Found that PayPal and Credit Card can't be used to make donations.  That sucks.

I found that BillPay is a convenient way to make recurring donations.  Set it up so they cut a paper check.  Since there's not phone number (required field) for IFLC (ASSTR's parent corp), I just put in my own phone number.  :)  Seemed to go through okay!

Personally, I'm okay with my bank knowing I give money to adult sites.  It's not like they don't know already anyway - I've used my credit card for adult sites before!  :-)

[Crumbly Writer]

They've been up for a while, but haven't processed more than a couple files from last Friday. I don't think they're completely functional yet.