SoFurry 2.0 beta, and Fur Affinity's unfulfilled promises
At the end of 2009, Yiffstar was relaunched with 'completely new code' as SoFurry. Reactions were not entirely positive; the forum was horrible to use, and the main site had numerous performance and navigational issues, though speed improved over time.
In April 2010, work began on SoFurry 2.0, originally planned to release in first quarter 2011. As time passed, various previews of the new Espresso theme were released and covered by both Flayrah and FNN – the latter reporting on SoFurry's 150,000-user mark by interviewing SoFurry owner Toumal and lead designer Alex Vance.
On 8 July, Toumal announced a public beta of SoFurry 2.0, running in parallel with SoFurry 1.0 for 'some time'. The beta launched today, albeit without chat.
In stark contrast, Fur Affinity's plans for new software, Ferrox, were announced in 2006, but stalled in 2009. Since then, the site has been plagued with coding problems.
It took two years for FA to remove the broken commission info tab, two and a half to implement search, and six months to restore registration. Fur Affinity was also meant to be upgraded to a new interface on 21 May. That did not happen. On 1 July new screenshots were shown but no date for an update was set, despite plans to build a new interface on the original codebase dating back to 2007.
In addition to the standard art, story and music capabilities, SoFurry 2.0 is to have groups, an integrated forum, the ability to filter tags and its own chat. The ability to filter by tags – shared with Inkbunny, a project started just two years ago – has often been requested for Fur Affinity.
In an attempt to improve efficiency, Fur Affinity has joined forces with fellow furry site Furocity, hoping to acquire new coders and administrators. However, the ability of SoFurry to answer the call of users and develop itself may make it a more attractive choice for furs.
About the author
Rakuen Growlithe — read stories — contact (login required)a scientist and Growlithe from South Africa, interested in science, writing, pokemon and gaming
I'm a South African fur, originally from Cape Town. I'm interested in science, writing, gaming, all sorts of furry stuff, Pokemon and some naughtier things too! I've dabbled in art before but prefer writing. You can find my fiction on SoFurry and non-fiction on Flayrah.
Comments
IB is 1 year old only, not 2 :)
Inkbunny officially launched in June 2010, but development started mid-2009. (It was meant to take three months.)
This lag time between commitment of resources and deployment is one reason FA users may not see dramatic improvements anytime soon. It takes longer than you hope to write software, and there's always something else to do.
No site succeeds without an effective team. Toumal has groups handling administration and development - this is the payoff.
FA always had an admin team, but by many accounts it was . . . dysfunctional. Recently we've seen efforts to "clean house", and Furocity staff may provide the boost needed to get a handle on the backlog. It's amazing what fresh volunteers can do.
As for development, FA's had several "coders", but the issue has always been leadership and management, not raw ability. Perhaps Gavin will be able to provide that – I hope so – but it's going to take some time to show results.
See what you don't get is FA will ALWAYS be a clusterfuck. Notice how any suggestion about improving the site is met with a "No that's stupid" or "We'll look into it...right." Sad, but true.
Inkbunny and Sofurry will always be the better Furry sites. And if you're looking to just post Non-adult Furry art, Deviantart is a much better choice. Contrary to the hatemongering on FA, DA is quite Furry friendly. Quite a large number of communities on there.
Anyone who tries to improve FA is usually met with responses of "Troll" than support. It's true.
Whole damn site need to be nuked from orbit.
Well, it just went up, but when trying to access it I got this (image by Gaia's Angel):
Launching at the busiest time of day may have been a miscalculation. Still, it's a nice picture! (For those who've not seen it, here's ours.)
Edit: Managed to get in after some prodding. Looks like the site's still a little overloaded, but the presentation is nice when you can see it.
That image shows up every time SF is down.
I really like the Watership Down quote on Flayrah's, though. Also, who did that image?
(As an added note, I find FurAffinity's particularly strange.
It's a random quote each time! As noted on the image, it's Of Inle by H. Kyhot Luterman (used with permission).
(Most of the quotes there are duplicated beneath the recent comment box.)
It's a random quote each time!
When Flayrah was having difficulties a few days ago I got that image, and the random quote was:
Which was rather appropriate, really.
Well, it's still a Watership Down quote each time (or at least that's what I'm assuming, considering the site's name) so it remains wonderful either way.
Uh, I thought there was a "no images in comments" rule on Flayrah. Like an unspoken rule, except for one time, and, uh, I think the guy who spoke it was, uh, you.
It will seriously take me days to find the comment in question, because my Google-fu sucks, but I remember it quite clearly.
That doesn't sound like me. Perhaps you're thinking of this thread back from when I had the forum module enabled?
Image embedding can be fun when appropriate, like in this thread. Most comments should be plain text, though.
That was the thread I remembered.
I'm going crazy.
Yay! It's up. Looks much better now but seems quite buggy, still mostly focussing on the forum. I suppose it is just a beta version so I suppose I should only review the final version. I've submitted a few bug reports though, and some criticisms of parts of the design. I'm VERY glad they now give the tabs names.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
That a play on the Twitter error page image?
Yes – appropriate, since Toumal is an orca (also known as the killer whale).
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