Update 20 july 2005:
Tom Werner contacted Lisa today, there is the result: “I left for vacation to China on the 11th, and it seems I forgot to renew the gravatar.com domain before I left. Now I have the rude awakening here in Hangzhou that gravatars have been down since the 15th. Curse my timing! I am renewing the domain right now but it might take a little while to go through and there might be other problems I don’t forsee. Could you to make a little note on your weblog informing the peoples of this misfortune? Tell them I still care!!!!”
Update 18 july 2005: Eliot pointed out that the Gravator site is always up and running. The problem is that the DNS take into account by the registrar. As he said, you only have to change the string “gravatar.com” by the string “64.124.231.223” and everything will work. Take a look at the Gravator’s website.
However the question persists: what happened to Mr. Werner? Is there always someone that manages the system?
Many people know this piece of news: Gravatar.com is down due to domain expiration. However, I just checked the Whois list and it seem to be on hold since some days.
Domain Name: GRAVATAR.COM
Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
Referral URL: http://domainhelp.tucows.com
Name Server: NS3.POLARPHASE.COM
Name Server: NS4.POLARPHASE.COM
Status: REGISTRAR-HOLD
Updated Date: 16-jul-2005
Creation Date: 15-jul-2004
Expiration Date: 15-jul-2006
There are many possibilities that could explain what is happening with Gravatar. However, what is sure is that Tom Werner forgot, intentionally or not, to renew the domain name.
This is a sad story considering that thousands of web sites were using this beautiful little service. Many web site developers were relying on the service, and he fell apart. The problem with this type of service is that it needs to be centralized somewhere. Then when such a service stop to exist, everyone that where using it have nothing to rely on anymore.
So, what could we do? In the next days we will probably know what happened to Gravatar.com, the service we were using. If it happens that the service we once knew is dead, the only thing we have to do is to rebuild it from scratch. Ease? Ease, probably not, but not as hard as some could think. What I suggest? Trying to contact Mr. Werner to know what happens, but Phu tried without success. Another possibility is to rebuilding it under a new name. How? With my time. The only thing I need is the money to host the service for the next year.
So, if it appears in the next days that Gravatar.com is really dead and that I have some support from the community, I will take the time to rebuild it. If it happens, it could be up in the next 3 weeks.
Leave a comment here if you find what happened to Gravatar.com and contact me if you are willing to support me if we need to rebuild the whole system.
Technorati: Gravatar | Gravatar.com | domain | renewal | avatar | support | development | project
Moises Kirsch
July 17, 2005 — 11:16 pm
Just a few minutes ago I was working on my website design and I wanted to implement gravatars.
It’s a shame that the service wen’t down (and who knows for how long).
But since the owner seems to been gone from his weblog to I would start to assume that the project is almost dead.
Maybe we should start on thinking of a replacement…. if so, I’m in.
Sudar
July 18, 2005 — 12:39 am
Hi Fred,
Its time that we create our own Gravator service. What do you think about it..?
Once you decide about it let me know. We will hang up our boots and start coding and we will have one more service under our belt for our readers together with King Ping. 😉
Ralf
July 18, 2005 — 5:44 am
Wouldn’t it be a better idea, to create a decentralised system?
Only a database with a hash of an email-address and a link to a picture on a central server, which would dramatically decrease the required bandwidth.
Fred
July 18, 2005 — 6:39 am
@Ralf, if you link to a central server, you wouldn’t reduce traffic at all 😉
But how about an open gravatar project on sourceforge? One could save mail hashes in a database and link then to the _URL_ provided by the mail address owner.
Problems, though, occur concerning possible security flaws in browsers’ image handling code as well as gravatar rating (brutality, sexual stuff etc). Additionally, the database itself is still central. If it goes down, the whole service won’t work, just as it’s currently the case with gravatar.com.
I just blogged about FOAF and favicon alternatives, but they don’t seem to be the “holy grail”, either…
http://blog.magenson.de/archives/2005/07/18/gravatarcom-alternativen/
Fred
July 18, 2005 — 10:35 am
Hello All,
Wow, what a beautiful wakeup! I am pleased to see that people are interested in the idea of rebuilding that service, and help me to do so.
Ralf: Why not decentralized? Personally I do not know how we could decentralize it. I mean, the thing here is that anybody can bind an image with an email address. Users need to have one place where they could register their image to their email address. So, to do this, we need a central web site to manage these requests. I do not think that this is possible, for the current problem, to efficiently distribute the system. However, what I think is the best to do, is to develop the system and centralize it somewhere. After, each week or month, we could backup the system’s file with all the images and the database at different places. Then if something happens, someone will be able to get these files and restart the whole thing.
However, what we need to take care of is to not create the same service 5 times. If it happens then people will not know which they would implement in their website.
For the question of the database, it will be something like this, as simple as this. I sketched what could look like the whole system last night and it is what I thought about.
Fred: Sourceforge? Why not, this could be a good idea. However, it is also possible that I develop a first beta version and that I put it on source-forge after to let you upgrading it.
For the rating thing… we will need to have a review board that will accept or reject new images. This is simple to do; the only thing we have to do is to create a little web interface to ease the process.
Favatars seem interesting, but the problem with that system is that you need to have a website, with a favicon. This is not what we need. We need that anybody could have an avatar.
So, thank you for your support, I thought about it last night and this is really not a technological problem. The thing that I would need to start the project is founds to host the service for a year (we are talking of a couple of hundred of dollars).
Salutations,
Frederick
Nat
July 18, 2005 — 8:48 pm
Well, im behind you if you want to do it. start up a donation program if it doesnt comeback in a week. ill put in $20
Fred
July 18, 2005 — 9:16 pm
Hello Nat,
Glad to see your interest into the project. However, I will not start such a donation program before knowing if it will be back soon (in the next week). So, if it is not up in a week, I will start the donation program and if it comes back during that time, I will stop it and refund the donors at that time.
So, currently, I am currently checking if new users could use the system. I registered a new email. The problem is that the activation email they send is always with the http://www.gravatar.com domain name, so you need to trick it if you want to validate it. Currently I am waiting to see if someone will accept my avatar’s picture.
Thanks,
Salutations,
Fred
Seky
July 18, 2005 — 10:07 pm
One thing about gravatar.com is strange:
Has noone noticed, that the service (or website) was already down about a month or two ago??? It took a couple of days ’till the service/website was up again. I thought it was finally dead then, but it came up again.
Nobody was blogging about that! And strange enough, the whois-database already said that there was NO domain name “gravatar.com” …
Some strange things are going on there. Also i wonder, why Tom Werner’s last blog-entry is from two months ago …
Fred
July 18, 2005 — 10:21 pm
Hello Seky,
I do not know for the past: I included Gravatars with my new blog 1 month ago.
When have you see this in the registry? Currently it is always at REGISTRAR-HOLD.
The whole story is strange. Nobody know what happened to Mr. Werner (it could be anything). The thing is that I never hear of any of the “revision comity”, so I can’t wait to see if my image will be reviewed. So I will try to contact polarPhase (the host) to know if they hear anything from him.
Salutations,
Fred
Jeevan
July 18, 2005 — 11:08 pm
Looks like Tom will be/is on vacation till the 24th of July. Hopefully he’ll still be able to renew the domain when he returns.
You would think someone with a site that established would keep a domain renewed for a longer period than a year (or at least have it on auto-renew).
Jeevan
July 18, 2005 — 11:14 pm
“contact me if you are willing to support me if we need to rebuild the whole system”
I can provide the bandwidth and servers necessary to rebuild the site. I doubt it’ll come down to that point since it looks like Tom will likely be aware of what’s going on and renew the site around the 24th of this month.
Fred
July 18, 2005 — 11:37 pm
Hello Jeevan,
Thank for entering the conversation. Where did you get this information? Yup, I thought that, however there is nothing more human than forgetting.
Thank for your offer. If it comes down to that point, it will resolve all the technical problems we had. In that case, it would be possible to have something running in 3 or 4 weeks (considering that we are waiting some times to know the real status of Gravatar).
Salutations,
Fred
Jeevan
July 19, 2005 — 2:12 am
Fred–the vacation till July 24th info was from Tom’s voicemail which I called earlier today.
Jens Meiert
July 19, 2005 — 4:06 am
‘d support you, either financially or technically (or both). Just make it through my spam filters once you reply to me, but a good subject line should of course do the trick 😉
Seky
July 19, 2005 — 12:33 pm
Hi Fred!
I was just busy implementig Gravatars into my (not yet online) new website on June 19th when i suddenly noticed that i couldn’t connect gravatar.com any more. I first thought about some server errors and didn’t pay much attention to it and then on June 21st gravatar.com was back online.
I did a search on some nick-services (can’t remember which) and they all said that gravatar.com is unknown! Strange …
I’m curious if rebuilding the service would be accepted by the bloggers-community. Maybe they think of it as not reliable enough any more …
I also read on another blog, that someone also thinks of rebuilding the service, hopefully not too many try this, this would kill the idea …
Fred
July 19, 2005 — 12:45 pm
Hello All,
Jeevan : Thank, it is a reliable source of information. We will keep us in touch with that.
Mr. Meiert: Thank a lot for you interesting in that project. Finally it is sure that I will have the support to do it if it appears that Gravatar have problems.
Seky: Could you point me that blog and the conversation? It is sure that the answer to the current situation is not to build 28 different services; otherwise how users could choose the one to use? It is really not what the community need. However, if it appears that Gravatar is healthy and working, it is sure that the community will continue using it and instead of another service (and I will be the first). However, everything will be clearer when Mr. Werner will come back from vacation.
Salutations,
Fred
Seky
July 19, 2005 — 6:48 pm
Sorry Fred, can’t remember which blog that was. If i find it, i’ll post it here.
BTW: You misspelled Mr. Werner all the time here, his name’ got an “r” in the middle 😉
Fred
July 19, 2005 — 6:58 pm
Hello Seky,
Thank, yup, leave it there is you re-find it.
Thank for comment, I changed all of them 😉
Salutations,
Fred
Lisa McMillan
July 20, 2005 — 8:47 am
Problem solved. Werner was on vacation! LOL Hicks has the dirt
Fred
July 20, 2005 — 1:02 pm
Okay *my* domains usually *don’t* break down when I’m on vacation 😉 but, hey, different people, different habits… *hehe*
Fred
July 20, 2005 — 2:48 pm
Hello,
Lisa: Thank a lot for this comment. I updated the post. I am glad to see that everything is okay for Mr. Werner.
Fred: hehehehe, as I said, the strongest trait that make us human is certainly our strong habit to forget, GTD system or not. There is another example:
“I once spent almost two years writing a book on public speaking; and yet I find I have to keep going back over it from time to time in order to remember what I wrote in my own book. The rapidity with which we forget is astonishing.”
— Dale Carnegie
Salutations,
Fred
Alan Bell
July 21, 2005 — 4:22 am
since renewal only cost about five quid and they didn’t care who paid it, I turned it back on, seemed like the simplest solution to me.
Fred
July 21, 2005 — 1:20 pm
Hello Mr. Bell,
It was a really good idea 🙂 Thank from all of us!
Salutations,
Fred
Fred
July 23, 2005 — 9:00 am
Yeah, everything works. Alan saved the world 😉
exiang
October 16, 2006 — 3:54 am
maybe you would like to try out a similar service+dynamic avatar at http://www.davatar.net