greerwatson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greerwatson) wrote2023-04-18 01:23 am
greerwatson) wrote2023-04-18 01:23 am
Entry tags:
Vanishing websites
About a month ago, my website mysteriously disappeared. Along with all the rest of the Forever Knight Website Archive, including three main FK fic archives, most War archives and faction sites, sundry personal sites saved from GeoCities and Fortune City, and so on and so forth.
My first reaction was to e-mail Stephanie Kellerman, who had been hosting the Website Archive on her site, www.foreverknight.org. The e-mail bounced. I posted to the FORKNI-L mailing list (on which Steph had been active last fall). No response—well, except for concern and sympathy from other FK fans. I then googled and found an obituary.
Whether the Stephanie Kellerman who died is our Steph Kellerman from FK fandom is something I have no way of knowing. That's one of the difficulties with fannish friendships. You may not actually know the person's RL name; and, even if you do, you probably don't have a street address for them. However, the obituary included the usual little bio, which said the deceased knew computers and had four grandchildren—and, although my correspondence with Steph had been mainly about the Website Archive, things did occasionally get mentioned round the edges (so to speak); and it fits.
Anyway, I do plan to put my website up somewhere in the near future on some webhosting service yet to be decided. At the moment, I'm doing some revisions here and there; so it will probably be a few weeks.
When I do, I want to get a large enough site to be able to rehost the other things that have gone. As I did a lot of the collecting and editing of the old GeoCities sites, I have back-ups. I even, in a fit of concern, went page by page through the big fanfic archive copying absolutely everything (I hope!); so that's not lost either.
It'll take time to put everything back up; and, when I do, there'll be a new domain name since Steph's "www.foreverknight.org" has apparently been paid for until 2026, and I'm certainly not going to wait until then! It will all mean an appalling lot of editing in various wikis; but c'est la vie, I suppose, if one finds oneself called to be an archivist.
My first reaction was to e-mail Stephanie Kellerman, who had been hosting the Website Archive on her site, www.foreverknight.org. The e-mail bounced. I posted to the FORKNI-L mailing list (on which Steph had been active last fall). No response—well, except for concern and sympathy from other FK fans. I then googled and found an obituary.
Whether the Stephanie Kellerman who died is our Steph Kellerman from FK fandom is something I have no way of knowing. That's one of the difficulties with fannish friendships. You may not actually know the person's RL name; and, even if you do, you probably don't have a street address for them. However, the obituary included the usual little bio, which said the deceased knew computers and had four grandchildren—and, although my correspondence with Steph had been mainly about the Website Archive, things did occasionally get mentioned round the edges (so to speak); and it fits.
Anyway, I do plan to put my website up somewhere in the near future on some webhosting service yet to be decided. At the moment, I'm doing some revisions here and there; so it will probably be a few weeks.
When I do, I want to get a large enough site to be able to rehost the other things that have gone. As I did a lot of the collecting and editing of the old GeoCities sites, I have back-ups. I even, in a fit of concern, went page by page through the big fanfic archive copying absolutely everything (I hope!); so that's not lost either.
It'll take time to put everything back up; and, when I do, there'll be a new domain name since Steph's "www.foreverknight.org" has apparently been paid for until 2026, and I'm certainly not going to wait until then! It will all mean an appalling lot of editing in various wikis; but c'est la vie, I suppose, if one finds oneself called to be an archivist.
no subject
It might be safer if you do PM me your RL name so I can check. I'm pretty sure Mel shortened Brightknightie's RL surname to an initial; but there it is in full, back again, in the copy that I have. That's because, when she decided to hand over to Steph, she didn't e-mail her a zip of the site: Steph had made a copy way-back-when, and used that instead. I doubt if Steph had any idea that, some years later, Brightknightie had asked to have her name altered.
So I'd maybe better check on yours.
no subject