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The death of Bronyland


Clod

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Years ago, there was a thing called the Pony Personality Test that was somewhat popular a few years ago. The site that hosted it, bronyland.com, went into "maintenance mode" back in November 2015, which is just an image of the site. And then everyone just forgot about it. Like it never happened. All that remains is the occasional result image from the test lying around on pony sites. So, with nothing better to do, I decided to see what's going on with it.

Now, I did some research on this and it turns out that, as expected, it appears totally abandoned. The registration with GoDaddy has been renewed it seems, as some old information lists it as expiring in September 2017, while GoDaddy says it's going to expire in September of this year. Obviously someone's still holding on to this site. Possibly "Domains By Proxy" which is what the owner of the site used to register for the domain. Maybe they're still keeping it up, or maybe the actual owner of Bronyland is. I don't know.

Now, while all normal links, such as the one to the Personality Test, are dead, it seems images are still working. Any images that were on the site before it died still have perfectly working links.

http://www.bronyland.com/images/quiz/quiz_splash.jpg

And, not everything that isn't an image returns a 404. The link to register an account tells you that an extension required by WordPress is missing.

http://www.bronyland.com/wp-login.php?action=register

I just wonder why this website is still up at all if it's unused. Who's paying for it? Why was it abandoned so suddenly?

Well, there's only one other thing I was able to find just now, hidden as an "omitted result" by Google after searching site:bronyland.com

http://www.bronyland.com/oekaki/

Everything starting with /oekaki/ works perfectly, though it was only part of the site.

Here, people posted art for everyone to see. Posts were very far apart until the last one on June 18, 2017, with one reply on July 22, 2017. And according to this, the last time anyone logged in at all was on August 3, 2017. I still have to wonder why it's even still up. The owner, according to the page I linked previously, is called Talisman. They haven't logged in since February 21, 2012. The most recent moderator log in was on Christmas Eve 2016.

Sad thing is, this website is probably going to be long-forgotten and everything will be lost. Because obviously no one wants to archive all that. And one day, an old regular to that site will revisit hoping to find their memories kept intact, or to collect some of their old art, only to have a generic page telling you the domain is available for purchase. I don't expect it to be renewed past this year.

So there it is. The website threw itself into obscurity by going into a "maintenance mode" forever, leaving only a few old users of a small section of the site who also eventually also left. And that's how Bronyland, an early fandom site from back in Sept. 2011, died.

 

(Now if only I'd put this much effort into my schoolwork...)

 

EDIT: WORKING VERSION FOUND! http://klimaleksus.narod.ru/ppt/ppt.htm

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Thanks for doing this effort, neat to know. Unfortunately things like that happen, especially for fan sites that don't strictly have any money in it. 

  • Brohoof 4
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7 minutes ago, LunarWave said:

Thanks for doing this effort, neat to know. Unfortunately things like that happen, especially for fan sites that don't strictly have any money in it. 

Weird thing is someone's been paying for it all this time anyway.

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Aww, that's pretty sad. One of my first memories of becoming a Brony was taking their famous pony personality test. I believe I've still got my results from wayyyy back in 2014 still saved somewhere on my computer (but with how often I make big moves and reorganize and restructure things on my computer and my hard drive, I honestly don't know). Did hope to one day fully explore the site, but completely forgot about it to the point where I didn't consider it before moving back here after being pretty much done with EqD... I will miss that pony personality test... :(

  • Brohoof 3
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It appears that as of 3/14/2020 the website link lives on for the personality test. Sadly there aren't any other archives to be found. But the fact that this little bit remains is cool.

  • Brohoof 2
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