Question Came back after years being away. Why did the URL change?

After it sitting in my Favorites Bar for years I finally stopped being lazy and manually checked the website only to find it went to some TG accessories/fashion website. Why did you change the web address from CrystalHall.net?

Also, is there a way of accessing the old website's forum. I remember some guy posting a simple-looking list of all the stories in their chronological order based on the wiki and what made sense based on his own reading of the stories. I never made past the first few entries because of IRL stuff but it was much more convenient than the wiki. For example, It had "Enter the Chaka" as the first entry but that isn't listed as the first entry in the wiki's reading order for some reason.

If I remember correctly the previous site crashed. fake edit: close enough :

Between October 2011 and February 2012, and again during early 2014, the official site encountered technical problems which prohibited file uploads. During these periods, stories were released in the Author's Corner section of the old Forums (currently offline) (typically in smaller chunks as forums aren't designed to cope with 20,000 word posts!). These have since been re-uploaded to the main site, with the only indication being a list of release dates in the List of Canon Stories.

A major hack of the Crystal Hall site took place in late September / early October 2015, which caused the forums to go down. As a result of this (and earlier outages), Kristin Darken registered and created a new site at whateleyacademy.net and the stories have been migrated over.

The old site was again hacked and used for 'phishing' exploits and as of February 7, 2016 shut down permanently. All canon stories and Library stories are now available through the whateleyacademy.net site.

Long story short, the original owner of the domain and maintainer of the site (among others) died, and the authors didn't have a real good access the the admin side. Over time more and more attacks where launched on the site to the point where it was basically taken over by phishes.

This new site is on a domain and server controlled by the Authors, giving them the ability to better publish the stories and protect them from attacks.

As for the old forums, the last attack corrupted them so bad that a decision was made to concentrate on just recovering the stories and building a new site from scratch.

There's a guy named Rubberjohn running around with a collection of backups/recoveries/saves of the old forums in his signature, so if you need something from the old site it is possible he might have the links to eventually direct you to said ancient artifact. It's how I recovered my old fanfiction writing.

Hi! ^ Rubberjohn.had fanfic archives. I'm the one who has Forum Archives. Okay, he pointed me to the Web Archives, so give him creds for that...

IIRC, Kristin has an actual rip of the forums, but that's crazy big and unuploadable... So don't bug her ab... Unless Github or Sourceforge? Argh. I wasn't thinking of possible solutions there... Anyone duping to those would be as Awesome as Team Awesome thinks they are, presumably!

But, that rip has behind the scenes infi and stuff, likely, so don't go asking her unless you suoer mega ultra hyper extreme need something?

Sorry to give wrong credit Malady. Thanks for clarifying.

Given that I put his name first, and IIRC, don't have my name on any of the rars, it's totally understandable!

I should change them to 7zip. It doesn't have the annoying trial notice Winrar does.

Oh! You're looking for Chonological Listing....go to The Wayback Machine / Internet Archive, and put "crystalhall.org" and just go to the stories list at a time that it worked!

Malady wrote: I should change them to 7zip. It doesn't have the annoying trial notice Winrar does.

Well, that's not a result of the file format, it's a "feature" of the specific software you are using.

Both .rar and .7z archive formats are fairly popular nowadays (not as popular as .zip, though) -- meaning that pretty much any good archiver program can open either of them. That includes (but is not limited to) WinRAR, WinZip, 7-zip, IzArc, PeaZip and BandiZip, to list only Windows programs. (I could mention something like two dozen more, but they either have some annoying limitation or haven't been updated in ages).

To create .rar archives, though, WinRAR is the only game in town -- the format is proprietary, and the other programs depend on a library supplied by the RAR guys which only does unpacking.

So, if you distribute in .rar and the person opening the archive uses any of the other options... they won't see the annoying trial notice. OTOH, if you distribute in .7z or even .zip and the downloader uses an unlicensed copy of WinRAR as their main file-compression software... well, they will see the trial notice anyway.

I do encourage people to use 7-zip; it's a really good piece of software, 100% free/libre/gratis, with lots of features.

The main critique I have against it is the... aesthetics. Briefly stated, it looks like something written in 1998 or thereabouts. The icons are ugly too. But that's just surface, the innards are very up-to-date. And if you feel up to fiddling with it, there's a software called 7-zip Theme Manager ( www.7ztm.de/ ) that will patch the 7-zip executable, replacing toolbar graphics and file icons with a variety of different themes.

For less-technical users, I recommend Izarc ( www.izarc.org/ ), which although not quite as free as 7-zip (it's free/gratis, not free/libre) nowadays is devoid of undesirable crapware, and has a good-looking, friendly UI.

Both Izarc and 7-zip have versions specially packed to run from a flash drive, without installation. The Izarc one is available from its own site, and the 7-zip one comes from the good folks at PortableApps.com.

Kristin has gone above and beyond the call of duty making an amazing new site for us after the old one was rendered unusable for multiple unrelated reasons (as explained above). She deserves much praise and acclamation.

^^ Yep, you're right Sir Lee. I was a bit too simple there.

If anyone wants to mirror the archives, go ahead. I don't think you'd need Rubberjohn's permission, but I could be wrong.

Not ordering of course, just giving permission, if I wasn't clear. Can't do it right now, as I've only got mobile, 'til next week.

Not sure how to format this so it looks like a proper quotation: [Unfortunately, based on a current WHOIS, it autorenewed... which it wasn't supposed to do... and its still under Bob's name, which (in theory) if Erin or Piper renewed it would likely have changed. So... I'm not sure what the situation is atm. But am still hoping that someday we can get the original domain back as well as the whateleyacademy ones.]

What about talking to whatever company you pay for the right to use the domains. I'm not talking about BigCloset, I'm talking about whatever company you have to register the domain to in the first place so it can be on the internet. Say something about the old admin being physically dead so they couldn't agree to a sale even if they wanted to. I don't know if this company would believe you but it's worth a shot, right?

To figure oyt how to quote, under the Action option for posts, select Quote, and try out the Preview option for non-quick replies.

realsmart987 wrote: Not sure how to format this so it looks like a proper quotation: [Unfortunately, based on a current WHOIS, it autorenewed... which it wasn't supposed to do... and its still under Bob's name, which (in theory) if Erin or Piper renewed it would likely have changed. So... I'm not sure what the situation is atm. But am still hoping that someday we can get the original domain back as well as the whateleyacademy ones.]

What about talking to whatever company you pay for the right to use the domains. I'm not talking about BigCloset, I'm talking about whatever company you have to register the domain to in the first place so it can be on the internet. Say something about the old admin being physically dead so they couldn't agree to a sale even if they wanted to. I don't know if this company would believe you but it's worth a shot, right?

The problem is that since it was something Bob owned, his heirs now own it. IIRC Bob's sister showed up a couple of times on Big Closet to find out about that side of him, and transferred some stuff to Erin, but I have no idea what it was.