GUROchan

We did a major software update which further increased thread loading, catalog loading and posting speeds. What was previously taking up to 15 seconds should take 1~2 seconds at most now.
Other than the speed upgrades, several visual bugs as have been fixed. Overboard was broken for a few weeks, it's fixed too. We now have a better spam protection also, against both spambots and manual spammers.

While on it, we have a new read-only onion domain too: jja4e6r6ewk5prcabynuqlr3jjelip4ishx5kcjusb65ugmvrh5awvid.onion

Special thanks to our developer for figuring out some things at our backend which made this update possible. I hope you enjoy these, and always thank you for keep using GUROchan!

The initial downtime was caused by a DDoS attack on a different site that I've been hosting on the same server as GUROchan. While we were working on enabling our protections, our provider, in the middle of the night on new years day booted us off, citing unnamed and unreferenced "continued copyright complaints" and ambiguous "unlawful activity". We had never received a single copyright complaint from them, and always dealt with other illegal images quickly and deleted them. We could at least retrieve our data after we asked for accessing our servers for one last time, so no data is loss. We've now moved to a different host, so GUROchan shall live for the foreseeable future. In another news, lolwut has volunteered to pay for our new server. He isn't a fan of guro, but he does care about GUROchan and thinks internet would be a boring place without it, thus he is paying bills for us. Only GUROchan is being hosted on this new server, so loading times on the site is going to be shorter than it was otherwise going to be.

You can follow or bookmark my Twitter account, it's where I give updates in events like this.

My second anniversary of being GUROchan's admin is around the corner. Here are some good updates for the occasion:

• Added an overboard which lists recent posts from all boards. You can also access it on boards by clicking on "all" at top left.
• Updated the software on /kaki/. There are some new options including new painting tools now. Try them out!
• Archived old front page at here and made boards.guro.cx redirect to this page, so the old administration's news about loli ban won't cause confusions anymore.

I hope you enjoy these, and thank you for using GUROchan!

Greetings GUROchan. Now that the dust has finally settled, the migrations and upgrades have been complete, it is finally safe to post. You can make threads and they will be safe and secure.

Here is some information on what happened, and what changed.

Here is what happened
- 2 nights ago, child porn raiders uploaded hundreds of threads and wiped /g/

- I investigated but found out that the backup system had not been properly working, thus, the most recent backup of /g/ was from January of this year.

- After consulting kuz, a sysadmin with experience working on GUROchan, the following changes were planned.

Changes
The images lost on /g/ in 2022 couldn't be recovered, so kuz decided to upgrade and expand GUROchan's software and catalog of images to help make up for the loss content, the following changes were applied.

- The backup system was fixed, the entire site is now regularly backed up, ensuring that data can no longer be lost.

- The vulnerability that allowed the raiders to wipe the board has been fixed, it is now impossible to wipe the board by spamming a bunch of threads.

- A GUROchan archive which began in 2014 and ended in 2020 was merged with the main site, creating one large, centralized imageboard (this one) which contains all content uploaded on gurochan since 2014 - EXCEPT for /g/, which has a gap in the year 2022.

A major reason for the migration was that Vichan, the software we are now running, is miles ahead of Kokonotsuba. It is much faster in every aspect - posting is now instantaneous, not even a redirect. Threads load faster, there are more features, the moderation tools are better, and it is mobile-friendly, amongst many other improvements you will notice over time.

- A secondary gurochan archive, which consists of hundreds of images uploaded PRIOR to 2014, and which has never before been publicly released will be made public, and thousands of images of lost content will be made public again - which we hope serves as an apology for the loss of /g/'s threads from 2022.

- To help negate the effects of this setback, I secured a large source of funding from the Network Security Service (Kolyma NSS) to go towards expanding GUROchan's outreach, primarily aimed at capturing back the stunningly large amount of people who, after 2 years, are still not aware that GUROchan came back in 2021.

We do hope that these changes, as well as the assurance that it can never happen again will help ease the minds of our users, but in the end, we understand that lost data is lost data, and we apologize for the images that /g/ lost from february 1st 2022 to december 8th 2022.

The ads were implemented by kuz, who is paying for everything concerning GUROchan from its softwares maintenance to our domain's registrar fees. He isn't a guro fan himself, but has sympathy for niche communities such as ourselves.
The original purpose of ads was to pay back to him a portion of the money he spends for our sake, but since, a lot of users were unhappy with them, and upon seeing that, he decided to remove the ads for better browsing experience.

This means he is still constantly spending money for GUROchan's sake, but now there is no way he can get any money back.
If you want to support him, here is the address of his Bitcoin wallet: bc1q0fh8e737tlmwkzkwx54nkmactsc5dtqn3fpxhn

GUROchan will stay up regardless how much money gets donated, but if you enjoy GUROchan, support this decision, and of course not in need of money yourselves, please do consider donating.

As you may have noticed, posting speeds have been majorly improved. /lit/ and /g/ are the boards to benefit the most from this update, in the past it used to take around 30-50 seconds to make one post... This is not the case anymore! It shouldn't take any longer than 5 seconds to make a post now with the updates.

PS: Some things may look just a little b0rked (e.g no space before post numbers on posts) for now, but this won't affect your experience and we will look into fixing those if it's not something too complex

Please read this throughly.

During the past months, GUROchan has grown a lot. This is a good thing, but it came to a point which KolymaNET's hosting isn't enough anymore, resulting in constant downtimes and slow connection. We have no choice but to move GUROchan to another host.
Meanwhile, Kuznetsov payed for everything. He doesn't get credited for all his hardwork nearly enough, but please know it's thanks to him GUROchan is once again alive today, and will stay so for good.

Due to limitations on the number of databases of the new host, I am archiving /rp/ which unfortunately didn't get much posts else than personal contact sharing - which can go on /dis/. GuroWiki is being moved to guro.wtf domain since it requires a database as well, KolymaNET can continue hosting it since it gets relatively very little traffic compared to boards.

IN SHORT,

1. GUROchan is moving to another host. Rules did not change, and lolicon is still allowed.
2. GUROchan will continue using KolymaNET's SpamDB.
3. We will have a better uptime now.
4. It's Kuznetsov, KolymaNET's owner, who you should thank for as he is paying big bills for the sake of GUROchan.
5. /rp/ is getting archived.
6. GuroWiki has moved to wiki.guro.wtf domain.

UPDATE: Turns out GUROchan is too big to move to another host. We figured out our best bet is to continue hosting GUROchan on KolymaNET servers. What I wrote above isn't valid, there won't be any changes made.
We promise to keep GUROchan up for good, but we do not promise for 7/24 uptime. Please be understanding when GUROchan experiences unexpected downtimes. We will do our best to find a solution to this issue in the upcoming times.

-Official GUROchan IRC/Discord
The official IRC channel of GUROchan is at #guro of irc.kolyma.org, which is linked with GUROchan's Discord server.
However, the purpose of this channel is not to discuss guro topics or have general chat. All guro related chats and /dis/cussing stuff with other users, as well as image sharing shall stay only allowed on their proper boards. This includes discussion of topics unrelated to guro as well.

The purpose of this channel is, to ask for technical help, immediate contact with moderators in case of emergency, ask clarifications about rules, and similar stuff.

-Post Notifications
Whenever a new post is made on the site, we instantly receive a notification about it with a webhook, you can see how it looks here. This allows you to view/reply to threads on boards that are interesting you as soon as you see the notification for it. You can see all new posts also on #gurochannotifs of irc.kolyma.org

Discord server's link for IRC bridge and webhook: https://discord.gg/w9kSJZ9ub7

This post was updated at 2021/11/04

The mascot of GUROchan, Guro-tan, has finally been chosen. She will be a reference for other upcoming contests. And now, without further ado, the winning nomination is ... :

by Anonymous!! Congratulations on such an impeccable design! She is now the one and only Guro-tan.

For all other contestants: thank you a lot for your amazing nominations. Your work will not be merely discarded, as they can still be seen here.

GUROchan needs a mascot! Through GUROchan's history, many characters were featured as unofficial mascots, such as Nevada-tan or Bikko. This is why we must have our own homegrown Guro-tan.

These are the only requirements for submissions:
1-Must be an original characters
2-Must be safe for work - blood, bruises and wounds are fine as long as it doesn't feature nudity
3-Must be a 2D illustration

All submissions will be preserved in a special gallery. The winner will have their character featured on the front page, will represent GUROchan and the artist will of course be credited for it.

Post your submissions on this /art/ thread. The contest will last for 3 weeks from this day on till the end of August 2021.

GUROchan's previous domain (guro.wtf) was being threatened with seizure by Namecheap due to some policy conflicts, so we decided switching to another domain by a different, better registrar. We are temporally using the fallback domain as the main option, but we will get a new unique domain in shortly. I can't promise that will certainly be the last domain change in long term, but all old domains are and will be redirecting to the latest domain for consistency.

Thank you for your understanding.

There are new fallback domains for all G3 sites.

GUROchan's fallback domain: https://guro.wtf/
Loliach's fallback domain: https://loli3.net/
Gorechan's fallback domain: http://gorechan5oeulldicgvdiu62mqpmqyfjpwz4qekkgn2d57576q2wgdyd.onion/

This post was updated at 2021/12/12

Due to some issues I have had with the legality of the contents in gurochan, I have spent the past week finding a suitable new owner.

Gurochan isnt shutting down, nothing is going, the rules are staying the same, and so are the mods. However, this new owner will be able to be more flexible and quick than I am. They will still be under the greater-administration of the KolymaNET, and still have access to some of our services, but will host it on their own servers (using our CDN for protection).

So, what does this mean?

1. Gurochan will have a new administrator
2. Gurochan will remain under the protection of KolymaNET
3. G3 as a whole will remain safe
4. Unfinished projects will be transferred to the new admin and worked on at a greater pace
5. Non-Intrusive GURO/Hentai advertisements may appear on some boards in the future, as this new owner did not make the promise of remaining ad free like I did. These will likely be temporary so that the new owner can cover some newfound costs. Hopefully the removal of the captcha, posting intervals, and the increased restoration of old corrupted threads will be decent compensation for this minor inconvenience.

The new Administrator is Kutay Demir. He is a leading official at KolymaNET and is experienced with gurochan. He will go by "Kaguya" on the boards and will hold a thread for questions on /dis/ in a day or two.

Thank you!

Boards are open again.

Gurochan, in all its forms, has been battered and beaten since day 1. Even this iteration has had its issues, including 6 hours of downtime yesterday due to a internet issue, a mod fight which caused disruption in the userbase, and a data transfer error which left a dozen or more threads corrupted.

Some statistics show that gurochan may have averaged about 1200-1300 posts aday during its peak, and as of this month, the daily average is about 70. Perhaps only time and word of mouth can heal this, and bring us back to old levels.

Whatever the case, its obvious that an effort needs to be made, both on the side of the staff and the userbase to spread the word about gurochan and help bring back its old users.

So thats what we will do, we will work to bring back more users to the site — and I hope you will help us in this endeavor.

Post conversion is finished. Downtime is finished. Gurochan can return back to status quo now.

CHECK IT OUT

To be completely safe, if gurochan is ever down, please check https://live.kolyma.org/gurochan.ga.txt

As you may have noticed, a couple things have changed.

As we prepare to roll out the new software next month, we have, in preperation, made some new additions and tidied up some pages. We have also made public G3, part of a gurochan expansion update. On March 14th, due the next software, the /p2p/ and /req/ boards will be brought back. We will migrate the posting software, and launch the 2 new G3 sites.

These are big changes, and we may be down for about an hour preceeding the big change. Enjoy!

P.S. - We have a Twitter account now. Please follow it for status updates and other news.

my internet lines froze over. sorry for the downtime.

Board Poll

Since I have started gurochan again, I have recieved, on multiple different occasions in my email, and on the discussion board, requests for a loli board, or for it to be contained to 1 thread. I, am personally neutral on this, and am fine with adding such things, but I would like to ask the community beforehand. Please Vote on this poll.. If the vote for a loli board wins, I will make one, if not, it will remain free on all boards.

*Poll ends in 1 week.

Software Development

The new software, a custom made one tailored to fit gurochan is in the works and doing fine. I covered this in a previous newspost, but I feel its worth reiterating. The software is expected to be finished by mid march, and will contain all the features asked for. It should also run significantly faster.

We have came to the descision of using a kolymanet-based software. We will need to work with it for a bit before implimenting, that way we can port posts from this current software to the new one. i.e. - no post resets necessary.

Please carry on posting as regular, the software replacement will come relatively soon.

Gurochan currently uses the TinyIB software, which was set up in a rush immediatley after Gurochan was brought back. The last instance of gurochan used Vichan. Vichan is much more feature rich and fast than gurochan, and contains most everything that everyone in /dis/ has requested.

As we enter our 2nd week of gurochan, we have filled up most boards with dozens of threads, with thousands of posts already. As far as I know, there is no way to migrate posts from TinyIB to vichan. Which leaves us with a dilemma

1. Switch back to vichan and gain all of the features back, but lose all the posts we made since the 29th of january.
2. Stay on TINYIB, lose the features permanently (no catalog, search, etc). But keep all our posts.

I'll let you decide. Please discuss this here.

HERE

here

Navigation links have been restored to the top of the page. Frames have been made optional and some issues with posts not loading have been fixed, though you may have to refresh the page after you make a post before it will show up.

An archive of posts made from 2014-Onward will be made publicly avaliable sometime next month. Due to the size of the archive (about 79GB.), it is going to take some engineering to transfer them to the new servers, and make them able to be browsed through.

As gurochan has been absorbed into the greater sphere of imageboards in the Kolyma Network, a sizable team of moderators has been employed to help deal with potential problems in this area.

I have added several old boards back, including lit, and introduced a new upload board for uploading very large files, zipped files, etc. There is also a discord channel linked in the frames, that I highly recommend you visit.

gurochan.cx - revived! but under a new domain name.

We added tons of improvements all around the site. (Bye bye 90s-style frameset.) There is now a long overdue rules page too.

And themes! Light and dark. Change at the bottom of any board. But which one should be the default? You decide!

Please give comments and feedback in the feedback thread.

Welcome back!

Recreated the whole gurochan on a vanilla vichan on a new server. So we're back in business for now.

It's the very minimum to get things working so some things might be missing and will hopefully be added soon.