FurDir

The FurDir (Furry Directory) was designed to be an automated, user-maintained furry search database. The project was taken offline in 2008 due a change in hosting provider that no longer supported all the required code.

History
The FurDir was created by Thumper shortly after entering the Furry Fandom in 1996. He was inspired to create an automated system after experiencing long wait times while trying to get added to manually maintained Furry Directory web sites to meet new people. During the development process is was clear he would not have time to maintain anything manually and employed a variety of user controlled features to make the site “self” or user maintained. In 2008 he was forced to move hosting providers to a system that would not support the code. With no time to recode the system and recognizing many new social media options for Furries to meet, he elected to take the system offline.

General
The FurDir was a first of its kind fully automated and user maintained directory system. It required no direct maintenance from administrators or moderators. Users contributed all the content and users were able to correct information for other users based on majority vote, and also rank/report inappropriate content which was automatically removed at a certain threshold.

The system included features for searching for other Furry users based on location, personal interests, common subjects, and even based on Furry code or Yiff code.

Modules
The FurDir Calendar module contained user contributions for meets, events and other significant Furry dates along with automatically populated convention dates and automatically populated birthday and anniversary information from user profiles unless suppressed by the users.

The FurDir link sharing module contained user contributed Furry web site links, automatically populated convention links, and automatically populated user homepage links unless suppressed by the user. The link module did daily validation of all links and could notify subscribed users when a page has been updated. The system also alerted visitors on login when a link was broken for an extended period.

The FurDir included a convention information system based off the Calendar and Link modules with the additional capabilities of allowing FurDir users to indicate if they would be attending a convention, search for a ride using the route-predicting ride-share system and search for other FurDir user roommates using the room-share system.

The FurDir Convention Photo database shared only the FurDir login system and was never fully linked to the rest of the system. It allowed users to upload and tag photos with user or character names allowing other guests to search by person, character or convention.