When the original SoFurry launched at the end of 2009 there was a certain amount of displeasure with the new site. Despite this, the user count more than doubled, and by June 2011 SoFurry had over 150 000 users. Staff then launched the SoFurry 2.0 beta, an attempt to completely redo SoFurry, improving the code and addressing user complaints.

During the seven-month beta period, there were regular bug fixes (and a public list of upcoming features). This wasn't limited to submitted bugs; SoFurry owner Toumal also responded to criticisms about the site, for example on Chipotle's review of furry story sites. The project was not without problems, however, and the site at one point seemed to face copyright challenges concerning part of it's code, namely for the chat feature.

The team worked hard and on 23 January, after about three days of down time, SoFurry was reborn. I took the time to ask Toumal a few questions regarding its development and future.

I'd like to ask you to nominate and (later) vote for Flayrah as Best Anthropomorphic Magazine in the 2011 Ursa Major Awards. Here's why we deserve your support.

Nominations are open for the 2011 Ursa Major Awards, intended to recognize the best works published in the field of anthropomorphics last year. Nominations close on February 29; voting starts March 15 and closes May 4 (to allow last-minute voting from Morphicon).

Furry fans may nominate up to five works in each category. The 2011 Awards will be announced and presented in a ceremony at CaliFur VIII in Irvine, CA, June 1–3, 2012.

Available awards include Best Motion Picture, Dramatic Short Work or Series, Novel, Short Fiction, Other Literary Work, Graphic Story, Comic Strip, Magazine, Website, Published Illustration, and Game.

If you cannot think of five worthwhile nominees in each category, see the 2011 Recommended Anthropomorphics List on the Ursa Major Awards website for suggestions.

2011 was a busy year for Flayrah, with over 80,000 front-page visitors. More than half went on to read a story; others jumped directly to them. But which of our 350 stories did they like, and what might occasional readers have missed?

The 2011 Recommended Anthropomorphics List will close on Sunday, January 15, giving fans just three weeks to recommend any titles released at the end of the year. Nominations for the 2011 Ursa Major Awards open on January 12 (the first day of Further Confusion 2012).

All-ages furry art community ArtSpots is to close January 2, as efforts to create a new site could not be reconciled with the existing one. The move was announced by the official staff persona of Seurat:

These last few weeks planning the future of ArtSpots has been full of great ideas. However, we have wrestled with many roadblocks as well. This site has been around for over five years now, and with that has come a lot of expectations. We have come to the conclusion, sad as it may be, that given ArtSpots original goals and its history, it would be impossible to move forward with these new ideas.

The Yerf historical archive, currently hosted at ArtSpots, is to move to a new site built by WikiFur custodian GreenReaper and hosted by Timduru.

The closure will leave a vacuum in the market for all-ages furry art hosting. Many artists are expected to move to deviantART, where a group has been created for trading-post art.

The Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association, which administers the annual Ursa Major Awards, has updated the 2011 Anthropomorphic Reading List to include the titles recommended by furry fans through the beginning of December. This list is often used by fans to nominate in the next year's Awards.

All fans are invited to recommend worthwhile anthropomorphic works in eleven categories (motion pictures, dramatic short films or broadcasts, novels, short fiction, other literary works, graphic stories, comic strips, magazines, published illustrations, websites, and games) first published during 2011, if they are not already on the list.

Send in your recommendations and read the List to see what other fans have recommended this year. Have you read all sixteen comic strips, for example? What have you been missing?

This month is the “last chance” to recommend anything anthropomorphic first appearing in 2011.¹ The List has been revised this year to include Furry websites. If you have any favorite websites that were not previously eligible, please recommend them now.

FurBuy site owner Jurann today announced a change in site leadership, having previously indicated his intention to resign from public-facing activities.

The new community manager, Mordrul, is to be responsible for leading and marketing FurBuy, as well as general administrative duties, while Jurann continues to handle feature requests.

SoFurry lost its custom chat last weekend after a key developer responded to a ban by filing a copyright-based takedown demand. [Conan/vivisector]

Site leader Toumal responded with assurances that a new chat module would be provided, and made a call for donations. A temporary chat has since been implemented.

Way back in May 2006, I wrote a little piece called “The State of the Furry Zine.”
This is a somewhat informal update to that survey.

No matter what kind of work you create, thought needs to go into where you’ll publish it. Writers have more to consider; each site handles text differently. Print publications still carry a different weight for writing, as do e-books; there’s a quantifiable difference between having your story read as a Fur Affinity post versus on a Kindle. But has the web won?

The Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association, which administers the annual Ursa Major Awards, has updated the 2011 Anthropomorphic Reading List to include all of the titles recommended by Furry fans through the end of October. This list is often used by fans to nominate in the next year's Awards.

There are only two months left to recommend what you think is good this year. The 2011 Anthropomorphic Reading List will close on January 15, 2012, to give fans a couple of weeks to read/see works that came out at the end of December.

Five members of Fur Affinity staff announced their resignation yesterday:

• Photographurer, former photography department head
• Luftwoofe, former photography department administrator
• Writerwren, former writing department head
• Grammatist, former writing department administrator
• Silver R. Wolfe, former support administrator

All but Wolfe were brought from Furocity and placed directly into administration positions. Grammatist cited privacy concerns as the reason for his resignation; three others directed criticism towards the original FA staff members, and slammed Dragoneer for poor leadership.

A torrent of Homestuck fans has taken flash hosting site Newgrounds offline. [tip: Sgeo]

Temporarily hosted off-site.   Mirror crashed. Will try something else later.

The popular comic adventure had as of today reached the 13-minute long finale of Act 5, which had been temporarily hosted on Newgrounds.

Upon hearing the news, creator Andrew Hussie's first comment was "well, that didn't work". He later explained the hosting situation and posted the flash files; they were soon torrented.

The comic is known among furs for therianthropic feline troll, Nepeta, furry fan Jade Harley, and for the inspiration of furry-heavy spin-off, Prequel.