Is Avatar Forums (AF) down?
 

I still go here to ToS, and over to AF a lot, but I just tried AF, and I just get redirected to a site saying Avatar Forums domain is for sale?

hi Theorist...it's not just down, it's on the auction block. i have seen it go down several times over the years, and always the same page for several weeks, then it was back up. now it's down hard, and the for sale sign is up...never seen that before. the site is down so far, that every image link to google, chrome, firefox, and safari, is broken. those links were never down on the previous outtages. i think it's done for, this time. sad. very sad only. :(

Indeed, it seems like Avatar-Forums may be gone for good - a sad event for anyone in the Avatar community, as its impact could never be forgotten.

Without Avatar-Forums, Tree of Souls would never exist, and I will forever be grateful for its impact not only on the Avatar community but also myself. Rest assured that Tree of Souls will always remain, even more now taking up the mantle of AF. :)

^Irayo ma tsmukan, that means a lot :) So many memories from there and it's hard to have to let them go :( But I'm glad we still have great aysmuk to come together with.

after ten days of no AF and no apparent hope in sight, i have decided to leave the hopless AF Trail of Tears, and take refuge at ToS. #newhome

What exactly happened?

Chances are it just wasn't profitable - very, very few forums are. That's why ones that survive in the long term are often either connected to a larger site, or run for a different motive than money.

A lot of people here found their first home at AF, and will be sad to see it go. The worst part is the loss of so much early history of the Avatar community - we have archive.org but their snapshots are often incomplete. Either way, once I have a bit of spare time I will look into trying to scrape as consistent a mirror as I can and give it a permanent home on ToS.

I see this as a fresh start and a great opportunity to make new friends. I'm already familiar with many here, but there are dedicated ToS members I've never met. At least with us all together we have a larger community and I'm positive that it will only strengthen the existing ToS community. I really do hope we can get an AF archive here on ToS. The raw reactions of the original AF members must not be lost.

http://www.tree-of-souls.com/suggest...tml#post184501

Hey guys some former AF members are also posting in this thread. ^

It's nice to see more familiar faces. :)

i had a lot of fun and good memories on AF over the years, joined there in October of 2010, almost made it to 5 years. damn. i shall miss it dearly.


Avatar-Forums (2009-2015) rest in peace :(

The months I spent on Avatar-Forums in 2010 I will forever remember as some of the best of my life - it really was a community unlike any other I have ever seen.

More than anything else, it was the warmth and spirit of AF that sparked the creation of ToS! :)

AF was great in its time. I met so many friends on there who I still am lucky to be able to talk to. The Avatar community is bigger than any forum, while we may have to regroup I do believe everything will work out for the best.

Yeah, I don't think you guys (former A-F members) know about this, but Tree-of-Souls split off of A-F due to a disagreement about the direction A-F was going in. Eltu and HumanNoMore were (if I recall) in mod/admin positions at A-F before things began falling apart.

Many of us expected that A-F would eventually fail, because Lon is an incompetent idiot who was looking to make money. He overloaded the site with too many features, and he allowed people to upload far too many photos. I saw new photos uploaded daily that really had little to do with Avatar (as in photos uploaded to the forum member albums, not photo threads). That stuff costs a lot of money; not to sound brash or arrogant, but Tree-of-Souls has never had to worry about ads nor have we ever shoved the donation thing in user's faces.

Mostly correct! Me and HNM (along with a few others) were not in any special positions on AF whatsoever, other than very dedicated members :)

But indeed, ToS originated as a result of dissatisfaction among the at-the-time AF userbase, though the disagreements themselves we have long left behind. Honestly, looking back at the entire split there were definitely unjustified actions on the behalf of both communities, but it hardly matters today - and it did result in two distinctly different and in their own way great forums.

Even though I may disagree with Lon's way to run a community, the actual people of AF have always been amazing :)

Was the split around the same time AF got its makeover? I remember people were not happy about that at all. I think the few of us who were with AF at the end can definitely understand your feelings from when you split. We didn't publicly speak about it on AF but behind closed doors many of us were unhappy with how things were being handled.

I loved the people and it truly was my home on the web so I never wanted to permanently leave but hey that choice was made for us. ;) I do regret that my original Avatar home is gone, however when the owners only interactions with members is to donate and to post new threads about random movies to generate hits then well perhaps it was time. I would love to see AF in the hands of a passionate Avatar loving owner but I really don't see that happening for the price that's being asked. :hmm: