Fan fiction site Archive of Our Own could be offline for up to 4 weeks

What happened

AO3 is a popular website where fans write and read stories about their favorite characters and worlds. It went offline during what was supposed to be a short, routine overnight update. The site now says it could take about two weeks to come back, and up to four weeks in the worst case. It hopes to bring some version of the site back sooner, in a limited form.

Key numbers and facts

• Expected downtime: about 2 weeks, but it could be up to 4 weeks.
• Within two hours of the announcement, the status page posts had millions of views.
• About 70% of the internet runs on PHP, a programming language. AO3 does not use PHP.
• AO3 is run by the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works (OTW).

Some background

AO3 is run by a nonprofit group. It depends on volunteers and donations to pay for and keep the site running. Websites are built with programming languages and frameworks. A framework is a ready-made toolkit that helps developers build a site faster. AO3 uses a framework called Ruby on Rails.

Why it matters

AO3 is very important to its fans, so a long outage affects many people. Some fans worried the outage was linked to a recent security problem in PHP. The article says it is unlikely to be related, because AO3 does not use PHP. The companies and group behind the site had not yet answered questions about the cause.

What to watch

• Whether AO3 comes back in a limited form within the next two weeks.
• Any official explanation of what caused the outage.
• Updates from the AO3 status page and the OTW.