History of FurNation

This article covers the history of the FurNation website and associated franchises.

Pre-2004

 * November 1996: FurNation website established by Nexxus and Rackett
 * 30 March 1998: Nakira reports that Nexxus advised him that upgrades to the FurNation servers failed and that the website would remain offline permanently . The website was accessible again a few days later.
 * 9 November 2001: Nexxus temporarily suspended FurNation due to Sibe's actions.
 * 25 June 2002: Nexxus states he is transferring complete ownership of the FurNation website to Rackett.

2004
Sometime in 2004, Nexxus established FurPlanet, which served as the official FurNation Multimedia online store for the next four years.

On 28 December 2004, Nexxus announced his intent to convert FurNation to AnthroNation, with the addition of Fantasy and Sci-fi websites. He also announced the FurNation toolbar, which was never released.

2005
In 2005, the Luxor sim was built in the recently-founded virtual world Second Life; it eventually became the central area of FurNation Worlds.

Changes
In mid September 2007, Nexxus and Furnation's administrators made some major updates to the website. These changes were mainly to the gallery system and to the instant messaging shoutbox that is featured at the top of each page on the website. The changes to the gallery system apparently made it very hard for the artists to actually upload their artwork. According to some users, they were also confused at the way the website stored their images, making them harder to view than before. Over time, however, most users have gotten used to the new gallery system.

Criticisms
Around June 2007, Nexxus added a shoutbox to the site, which can be seen as the sole reason many non-furries joined the site. The influx of non-furries, and the departure of many of the more respected members of the site around this time, was seen by a few members of FurNation as the reason that the general quality of posts, art and otherwise, on the site, has been going "downhill" since that period, an assertion disputed by the FurNation administrators.

Hacking
Around March 2008, the website was hacked and all user websites, most of which pre-dated the current incarnation which includes the gallery system and shoutbox, were lost. Because those sites were not backed up on the server, all accounts and information on those sites were lost.

In a post appearing on the front page on March 28, 2008, zerodog posted a message in which he stated "FurNation is not responsible for the maintaining or backup of any data stored on personal websites or any other hosted sites. However FurNation owned sites such as FurNation Forums and FurPlanet are backed up regularly as are their respective databases. It is ultimately the End users responsibility to keep up with there data, not ours. If data is lost we will try to recover it using recovery tools but there is NO assurances that we can."

First announcement of closure
On September 7, 2008, Nexxus sent the following email to FurNation users:

Closure and re-opening
On May 9, 2009, Nexxus announced in an email to users and on FurNation's front page that FurNation would be closing on May 16, 2009:

Later, however, Nexxus revised the date of closure to May 23 at midnight. By May 21, the donation indicator had only reached to 35% of the projected necessary expenses for the continued upkeep of the website.

Beginning the morning of May 23, the front page of the site featured only this simple message:

(Many people in the fandom claim the front page statement at one point read "So long, and thanks for all the cocks", also 'So long, and thanks for all the fish", the first of which was taken as blatant disrespect on the part of Nexxus by anyone claiming to have seen it.)

Many people speculate that the shutdown as little more than a severe "temper tantrum" on Nexxus' part.

The site was then re-opened on May 25, with a slightly increased reserve of funds for the server upkeep. This was the second time that the FurNation website had temporarily suspended operations in its 13-year history.

Transfer to community ownership
On May 26, 2009, "The FurNation Support Team" sent an email to FurNation users announcing that the service would continue to operate and would be run by a group:

A further email was sent the same day:

These messages were also posted on the site.

On October 2, 2009 an announcement was made, entitled "No Funds to pay Server Fees":

But apparently the site was not taken offline, as there are archives of the site on Oct 6, 15 and November 25 in 2009.

December closure
On 8 December 2009, Nexxus announced on the site front page and forums that the FurNation PayPal account had been suspended for terms of use violations, and that the site's ISP had also received a complaint. The announcement blamed Fur Affinity staff for the suspension, criticizing The Dragoneer's management of his own site (which was down at the time), and set a closure date of 1 January 2010.

Discussion ensued, one topic of which was the lack of proof for these assertions. The Dragoneer strongly denied the claims on his Twitter account, stating that Fur Affinity had lost its own PayPal account access earlier that year, without blaming FurNation.

Later that day, the FurNation page was replaced with the text: "FurNation is gone. So long, and thanks for all the carrots cocks," as well as "lol bitches" in black-on-black text beneath it. Its Twitter account held the message "FurNation is offline, this time for good. So long and thanks for all the fish."

On 10 December 2009, FurNation's URL address resolved to http://www.furisdead.com/, a site run by PETA. By 12 December it was resolving to a mail portal bearing the FurNation logo.

December reopening
Reyedog took over Furnation around December 23, 2009, with websites due to return on January 1st, 2010. The website is currently hosted on the social network Ning.com (http://furnation.ning.com/). However, in Ning.com's terms of service, adult content (something Furnation has long been known for) is banned.

2010
In early 2010 attempting to look at various websites at FurNation resulted in "If this is your personal website, we have taken it offline temporarily due to low usage. ... If you have not signed in this website will be recycled on June 1st, 2010." Among those recycled were The Official Furronika Gallery on FurNation.

2015
FurNation was hit with a DDoS attack, as was many other furry websites.

On December 10, 2015, FurNation was to be closed permanently. It had become too costly to maintain the site, and after the DDoS attacks, FurNation's ISP refused to bring the site back online for fear of another DDoS attack.

2016
FurNation launched a GoFundMe campaign. As of May 2016, the site is back online.