utopiastories.com offline

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icy
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utopiastories.com offline

Unread post by icy »

Hi,

I noticed utopiastories.com is offline (timeout when tryingt to view main page) for a some days now. Is this a result from the anounced changes to the site? Somebody knows anything about that?

Thanks

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gaggedutopia
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Re: utopiastories.com offline

Unread post by gaggedutopia »

I have not decided what I am going to do with the site. Due to the outdated code and database requirements, hosting is far more expensive than it should be. The amount of time needed to rebuild the site into a modern language and use a different database is too much of a commitment for me to make for the foreseeable future.

I have not made a final decision, but for the foreseeable future, the site will be down.

EDIT 2022-01-30: Because I'm being flooded with (well-intentioned) people who seem to think I'm an idiot and "only" need to put the server on some rando $10/mo service. As I mentioned above, the site has very special requirements. Aside from server/db requirements, the host has to allow adult content. Also, I'm not giving the site away to anybody; the fact people are thinking I'll give away a site like Utopiastories to someone I don't know is just... wow.

No decision is final yet. I am toying with the idea of converting it to a static website (HTML only) without comments and search.
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icy
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Re: utopiastories.com offline

Unread post by icy »

Thanks for your answer.

If the site closes down for good, that would be an end of an era for me. It was one of my favourite story sources over the years...

SallySubby
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Unread post by SallySubby »

That's a bummer. I always enjoyed strolling through the stories and every once in a while finding a real gem.

Would it be possible to somehow get a dump of the stories, even if it's just some database without user interface?

mrocker
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Re: utopiastories.com offline

Unread post by mrocker »

Sorry to hear that, it’s a great site. In the meantime, is there any way to access a specific story if someone has the istory ID, like 86762, for example?

JustMe68102
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Re: utopiastories.com offline

Unread post by JustMe68102 »

It appears the stories are available on the ARCHIVE.ORG web site. For example, here's a link to Venom's stories: https://web.archive.org/web/20200705183 ... thor/Venom

JustMe

icy
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Re: utopiastories.com offline

Unread post by icy »

mrocker wrote: 25 Jan 2022, 12:49 Sorry to hear that, it’s a great site. In the meantime, is there any way to access a specific story if someone has the istory ID, like 86762, for example?
You can use the internet archive: archive.org
http://web.archive.org/web/202112291924 ... ecid/86762

blobblob37
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Unread post by blobblob37 »

Unfortunately archive.org does not have copies of the more recent stories or their updates :(

I'd love for the site to come back, even if it was only for a month, to give people time to grab their fav stories.

edgarking12345688
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Unread post by edgarking12345688 »

is it possible to update story on this blog form utopiastories site? for example the new chapter of story almost finished? new chapters not published

blobblob37
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Unread post by blobblob37 »

Im curious how much hosting is? Im sure a number of us would donate to keep the site up for a month as a chance to collect our fav stories :)

glowing
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Unread post by glowing »

Just wanted to +1 bringing it back online for a month, so everything can be archived and the content isn't lost forever. Thanks for running it as long as you did even though it was a financial burden.

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ruru67
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Re: utopiastories.com offline

Unread post by ruru67 »

Totally get not wanting to push to some random in the Internet.

I wonder if it's worth passing the stories to an existing site like Gromet's Plaza. I'm not sure if Teann (teanndaorsa) is up for curating a bunch of stories, not all of which will be appropriate for that site or its sub-sites, but it might be worth exploring. Gromet's has picked up stories from dead sites before, or even archived whole sites, so it's not like it's totally outside the realms of possibility.

Hamilton
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Unread post by Hamilton »

Some writers have added thier stories to this site. https://www.thefetlibrary.com/

I prefer this site now and stopped posting my stories on utopia before it ceased. (Different name as writer). As a writer I can add the story instantly instead of waiting weeks foor it to appear. Also remove and more importantly edit instantly. Also revise if people point out errors or major typos. .

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Unread post by captbb »

gaggedutopia wrote: 23 Jan 2022, 22:45 No decision is final yet. I am toying with the idea of converting it to a static website (HTML only) without comments and search.
Just to say...
I'd pay a moderate subscription fee to see the site survive.

teanndaorsa
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Unread post by teanndaorsa »

Hamilton wrote: 18 Feb 2022, 08:48 Some writers have added thier stories to this site. https://www.thefetlibrary.com/

I prefer this site now and stopped posting my stories on utopia before it ceased. (Different name as writer). As a writer I can add the story instantly instead of waiting weeks foor it to appear. Also remove and more importantly edit instantly. Also revise if people point out errors or major typos. .
I have to say, after running the Plaza for a couple of years now, I think I have come to the conclusion that there's no perfect answer.

A site with no gatekeepers is great, as long as all (or most) of the people posting are invested in keeping the site great and can be trusted. But by making a site where you give less trusted people access to upload content, you give yourself some management headaches. You've got to constantly monitor for bad (illegal, copied, or just plain offensive) content getting uploaded, and you've got to manage the users with that access. If all authors held themselves to the high quality bar you do, it would probably be fine. And sites that start fine might stay that way for a while. But with popularity and scale comes problems: many authors are happy to upload dross, unaware or uncaring about the quality of their work. Now you've got a problem where the low quality work starts to drown out the better stuff, and it drives the reader away. Or you start to see things like this where it's kind of just trawling for visitor traffic to a pay site elsewhere.

You can add additional features to try to combat that; rating systems that let the reading community rank the stories and hide the rubbish ones, or moderation systems that spread the load of finding "bad" content out amongst authors. Only, those features aren't free - they take development time to implement, and they mean that the site servers have to do more work, which means they need to be larger, so now they cost more, and you've made yourself a problem where the site is more expensive to run than you can bear as an owner, or recoup through advertising or donations.

The converse approach is just as difficult. As you point out, funnelling all the submissions through one or a few gatekeepers means that you have to wait for that submission to get processed. The site itself is only viable as long as those gatekeepers can keep up with the costs (in terms of time) of that workload. The server costs haven't gone away, they're just slightly lower because those database-only features aren't strictly required just to keep the signal to noise ratio high.

I do believe there's a better solution for keeping the hosting costs low at least, though it's not trivial to get there. The ideal is something where the management of the stories (uploading, editing, etc.) is done on a service with a database, but that it spits out a read-only copy of the site after each change, which is static and can be served through a CDN pretty cheaply. Bells and whistles like comments and ratings can be done in a similar way, if you don't mind a short delay between users submissions and when they show up on the site. Only searching really needs a database, and that's a relatively small section of the traffic; plus technology these days allows you to build that more cheaply than just paying for a big server in a data-centre. With that sort of a model, you can give access to people you sort-of-trust who can edit the site, without having to pay the cost of an expensive database to serve everything.

But even if that solution were to get built, it never really gets away from the management issues, of how to wrangle a library of submissions, to keep quality high enough to keep the readers happy, to encourage enough authors to submit work, and to stop it all getting so expensive and time consuming that it drives the people running it mad and they give up. Part of me thinks the the only solution is more story sites, not fewer. As in niche sites, cheap to run so they don't have to be ad-supported or pay-walled, run by groups of positive volunteers who love that particular kink and want to read and encourage more work like that. The cheaper and easier to run the site, the less likely it evaporates when the sole proprietor of it gets hit by a bus.

lastbeh
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Re: utopiastories.com offline

Unread post by lastbeh »

I miss it too

racoon0371
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Re: utopiastories.com offline

Unread post by racoon0371 »

While being written in asp makes the code rather archaic, you wouldn't necessarily need a beefy host with a little coding.

For example, convert the stories to static content, but rewrite the tag search in php. You'd end up with a db table containing the story ID, name, author, tags, etc, which would be rather small. You can use that as the search, and spit out the results page with links to the static files. This eliminates storing massive amounts of DB-unfriendly text in the database, plus the extra processing power it takes to retrieve and render the resulting page.

nerdjack80
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Re: utopiastories.com offline

Unread post by nerdjack80 »

It is working for me utopiastories. I get the warning that the connection is not private but but you can view the site if you click "if you understand the risk involved, you can visit this website link. It probably depends on what browser you are using. I use Opera browser.
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ruru67
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Re: utopiastories.com offline

Unread post by ruru67 »

nerdjack80 wrote: 08 Apr 2023, 16:07It is working for me ...
The site works, for small values of "works". Static content, including the stories and links, but excluding the image galleries, is present, but no updates are being done, no new stories are being added, and the active components such as keyword search are no longer available.

There has been some papering over the cracks; some things link back to the home page, the search page no longer has a keyword search box, and the tag cloud, only works for one tag - each tag now links to a static index of stories matching that tag - which can't be combined because that would mean a separate list for every likely tag combination.

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