Regular visitors may have noticed that ASSTR has been down for the last week or so. This appears to be a DNS issue – the site itself is still there if you set up a host file entry to 64.71.155.222.
In case it does go down for good, I’ve taken a mirror of the current content, and set up https://asstr.xyz to host it. I wanted to post here to explain what I’ve done and answer any questions.
**What did I do?**
I set up a hosts file entry so I can access the original content, and scraped everything that’s reachable from the main page. That should be everything under /files (the FTP section) and a lot (but not all – see below) of the Web section.
**What if this is just a temporary outage?**
If the original comes back up, I’ll retire my copy and possibly set up a Cron job to keep an up to date copy available in case we lose it again.
**Why isn’t my favourite collection there?**
There are a number of collections that aren’t reachable simply by following links from the homepage – for example, Kristen’s Collection isn’t linked anywhere. Because my scrape only followed the links from the homepage, it didn’t find these and so they’re not there.
Where I’ve been made aware of these, I’ve manually scraped that collection specifically. If there’s content you enjoy that isn’t currently available on the xyz site, please let me know and I’ll scrape it.
**What are your plans for the site?**
For now, nothing. If the original is gone for good, I’ll start looking at maintaining some of the content in a couple of months. By that, I mean updating the links on the homepage to show any content that wasn’t previously linked, and fixing/removing stuff that doesnt work on the mirror, such as search. I’m not sure what arrangements the original site had for contributors, but I’ll probably start looking at the most recent content and reaching out to the authors where contact information is listed to see how we can move forward.
What I won’t be doing is adding cookies, tracking, or any of that kind of stuff. This collection is old school internet and I believe it should stay that way. If the original is gone for good, I’ll update the donations page with my PayPal or a Kofi link plus crypto addresses so people can help with hosting costs if they want – I’m not in a huge rush to do this, since traffic is probably low enough that affordability isn’t really a big concern for now.
**What about copyright?**
The copyright of the site design belongs to the original author. If they’re no longer interested in maintaining it, I hope they won’t mind me using it. If they do, I’ll look at rewriting it in some way while still retaining the basic feel and navigation.
The actual stories are taken from Usenet, and I believe are considered public domain. If any authors contact me, I’ll happily honour any removal requests.
**I still have concerns**
I’m happy to answer any questions people might have.
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/mbc4wr/asstr_new_mirror
Can you replace dynamically-generated pages with static pages that are regenerated periodically? Would that fix a lot?
Forgive my ignorance – are you planning on scraping archives like Kristen’s? It’s a personal favourite.
Thank you for this.
Firstly, thank you. Secondly, I request the _The Plot Device_ series by puppy or ~puppy or whatever their pen name is.
Can you add the “impregnorium” collection to your fo-scrape list (if it isn’t on there already)? Thanks for saving the repository!
Thank you for doing this, not only putting up a mirror, but also keeping the spirit of ASSTR going (no ads, no tracking, no popups, no marketing hype).
I’m also a fan of literotica, but they have slid down the marketing rabbit hole a bit.
May I ask how big the copy is, in terms of size and number of files?
Some but not all of [Strange_Geek](https://www.asstr.xyz/~A_Strange_Geek/completed.html)’s stuff is on your mirror.