Furtopia


 * ''This page is about the online community. There is also a series of furmeets in Colombia called Furtopia.

Furtopia is a grassroots furry community website with a forum. It provided web hosting services to people of the furry fandom under the domain names of furtopia.org and dragoncity.net. It also had Artistsworld.com as a non-furry art gallery (now defunct). The site is run by Gene Angel (WhiteShepherd) and Kaycy Ruffer (Kada-Ru), although several other staff members and moderators also play a prominent role in the upkeep of the site.


 * Address: http://www.furtopia.org/
 * Ran from/to: 2001 - present

Services
The community services at Furtopia include a bulletin board, the furtopia.org forums, which host a broad range of furry topics of discussion as well as an IRC chatroom for members to talk in.

Furtopia used to provide web hosting services to artists, writers and musicians of the furry fandom. Furtopia provided hosting at no charge from 2002 to 2011 March 29 and had offered Server Side Includes, PHP, and MySQL support. In November 2010 it was announced that hosting would be closed due to its cost and support requirements.

History
On March 21, 2002, Furtopia went live. The first incarnation of Furtopia ran on a Cyrix 133 using OS/2 and Xitami running on a 768 Kbps SDSL line (at an operation cost of about $300/month). The original forums were simple, inadequate scripts in great need of being replaced. It was at this point that Benjamin had stepped in to help out.

After some discussions between WhiteShepherd and Benjamin, the furtopia.org forums were initially set up on November 25, 2002. The design that Benjamin created for the forums was so popular that it was later adopted for the main site's design and even made its way onto the t-shirts used for fundraising for the site.

In March 2008, the forum was hacked and went down, and WhiteShepherd initially blamed LOLfurries for the attack, claiming that passwords had been posted on LOLfurries' own forum. However, regulars of LOLfurries disclaimed responsibility for the hacker's actions. WhiteShepherd later clarified (with quotes from Rabid Rick) that though administrators of LOLfurries did not "directly" themselves do the hacking some admins did support the attack by encouraging the hacker and allowing Furtopia members' personal data to remain posted to the LOLfurries forums, prompting WhiteSheperd's original statement. WhiteShepherd also clarified his position and apologized to any LOLfurries member who did not know of or condone the attacks.

Charity work
Furtopia is recognized for its charity work. Its parent organization, Two Trees Inc., is registered as a 501(c)3 charity and has made notable donations in computers and art to the underprivileged, most recently through its Arts For Kids program.

On September 1, 2005, as reported on the dutchfurs.com newsfeed, Furtopia also announced they would be helping furries affected by Hurricane Katrina by accepting donations of money, clothing, or shelter. All proceeds were to go towards furries in need. Over $750 was donated by members of the furtopia.org forums, most of which went to purchasing clothes for furries affected by the tragedy.

Staff
As of April 2013, the following individuals serve in an amplified role on Furtopia's website and/or forums and/or IRC: