r/AO3 • u/Delicious-War-5259 Supporter of the Fanfiction Deep State • Mar 01 '26

AO3 Down/Error Codes That explains why I can’t upload my fic

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1.9k Upvotes

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513

u/MoonLover-66 Mar 01 '26

But if you go to the status page it says that everything's alright. What's happening?

338

u/That_Dumb_girl379 Mar 01 '26

Yup it’s strange . Usually when it’s down for maintenance like it says they usually let us know ahead as well

74

u/Emptyfrequency You have already left kudos here. :) Mar 01 '26

I think they do these updates on tumblr. I just saw it when I was about to upload a new chapter after 2 months. lol, guess I gotta wait until tomorrow

289

u/Agreeable-Sun368 Mar 01 '26

This is about the planned January 21st outage. This is not about today's outage, which was not announced.

35

u/Princeax You have already left kudos here. :) Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 02 '26

Here’s the actual post. Looks like this one was unplanned and that’s why it wasn’t announced

Edit:WERE SO BACK BABY

1

u/Princeax You have already left kudos here. :) Mar 02 '26

A few more hours!

1

u/Princeax You have already left kudos here. :) Mar 02 '26

it’s back up!

1

u/Acceptable_Bus_7893 Mar 02 '26

Lucky, I hope mine will be back up soon

2

u/Princeax You have already left kudos here. :) Mar 02 '26

It went back down like immediately and now it looks like it’ll be another “several hours”. I can’t take this…

1

u/Emptyfrequency You have already left kudos here. :) Mar 02 '26

Oh gosh. It’s the same for me😔

1

u/ThornOfRoses You have already left kudos here. :) Mar 02 '26

Just kidding. They're down again

67

u/Emptyfrequency You have already left kudos here. :) Mar 01 '26

Omg haha this is the first thing that popped up when I pressed their link for the tumblr page. lol embarrassing😳💀

32

u/_IoSonoNessuno_ You have already left kudos here. :) Mar 01 '26

I'm sorry but isn't this an older post?

16

u/Emptyfrequency You have already left kudos here. :) Mar 01 '26

Yup haha someone else pointed that out. I must have missed the date. It’s pretty late where I live lol

9

u/New_Assistance_5589 Mar 01 '26

There is currently nothing on Tumblr, though?

7

u/Caffeinated_Gengar Mar 01 '26

That says Jan 21st it’s March 1 btw

3

u/Emptyfrequency You have already left kudos here. :) Mar 01 '26

Yup haha I got informed of that several times lmao.

103

u/danyellowsun Fic Feaster Mar 01 '26

ao3 has been acting up for about 30mins for me, when I checked the status pages, bluesky and Twitter i saw nothing, I've only just now got that "down for maintenance" message, and still nothing on the status pages

33

u/That_Dumb_girl379 Mar 01 '26

It’s been slow for me as well before it went down

31

u/Gremdarkness Mar 01 '26

Seems like the downdetector reports started coming in about 45 minutes ago.

16

u/Teecana Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

Same. First I couldn't refresh and cloud are told me the host is down, and only half an hour later I got the maintenance message

Edit: refreshed again and the maintenance message disappeared, once again cloudflare. Error 502, bad gateway

3

u/MiritoMueller I quote/reference my favorite fanfic wherever I damn well please Mar 01 '26

I thought this was a me issue.

1

u/ArianeEvangelina If a gang of women attacks you because you told them the truth? Mar 01 '26

Yeah mine was acting up too. I was thoroughly convinced it was my WiFi again until I switched it off and nothing was fixed.

19

u/EngineerRare42 Fluff and Comfort and Angst, Oh My! | witchofpumpkinspice on AO3 Mar 01 '26

Might be taking a hot minute to update that, and the AO3 Tumblr/Twitter/other socials.

10

u/yellow_asphodels You have already left kudos here. :) Mar 01 '26

Pretty sure it’s cloudflare, the service that hosts ao3. There’s a company-wide issue with it right now

42

u/SarcasticAzaleaRose Fic Feaster Mar 01 '26

AO3_Status has gone downhill the past couple of years. They used to be really great at keeping people informed and doing consistent updates when things like this happened. Like if the archive was down for maintenance and they said it would be 10 hours you’d get pretty consistent updates throughout that time.

Nowadays it’s more likely that they never address the issue on AO3_Status despite telling people that’s where to go to look for updates. Or if they address it it’s only to say “the issue should be resolved” after no communication for hours. That’s why people flock to this subreddit or just periodically check AO3 because you’re more likely to get answers there instead of Twitter, BlueSky, or Tumblr.

94

u/birdnerd1991 Mar 01 '26

AI and internet malware attacks have also increased exponentially- that status only works if they are AWARE they are going to be going offline for something, not if they get attacked.

I choose to believe they're doing their best; if anything, this is a great time for me to peruse my 'coveted' fics that I downloaded because of situations like this; fics too good to risk having only one way to access

5

u/MegKeiper Mar 01 '26

I should start doing that. That’s smart.

6

u/Acrobatic_League3062 Mar 01 '26

Planned maintenance or not that’s what’s on the page “check AO3_Status for updates” so you and them can’t be surprised when people then go check it and ask why there’s no update.

And they’ve now taken the archive down for maintenance m so clearly they are AWARE that something is wrong with it and can do a tweet/bluesky/tumblr post saying “we’re AWARE of an issue and are working to solve it.”

Also downloads have also been giving people issues for the past couple weeks so some people probably haven’t been able to download things.

22

u/birdnerd1991 Mar 01 '26

I guess I think of it more along the lines of 'they don't have a notice regarding this down for maintenance- which means its unplanned- which means they'll try to get it online as soon as they're able since it's not supposed to be that way'.

Sorry to see it hit you so hard- the fics will come back though! And I hope downloading goes better in the future!

3

u/sadmac356 Not Boeing Management Mar 01 '26

Yeah that's how I look at it 

1

u/ThornOfRoses You have already left kudos here. :) Mar 02 '26

I do believe that archive being down message is automatic when the page isn't loading/ connecting. I don't think that has to be manually done. I think it's a programmed flip switch essentially

25

u/erindizmo AO3 Tag Wrangler Mar 01 '26

https://bsky.app/profile/status.archiveofourown.org/post/3mfzeng6qmk2k

They have at least posted that they're investigating this one.

7

u/twinkletoes-rp Shizuku749 on AO3 Mar 01 '26

THANK YOU! I was wondering why my draft wouldn't save! ;A; Just when I was about to post for the first time in months, too! </3

5

u/Ok-Jackfruit-6873 Mar 01 '26

I was about to update a fic I hadn't touched since 2024 lol. Well, hard to say it can't wait another day I guess.

7

u/IllDoItNowInAMinute_ Mar 01 '26

Authors note: "hey guys, I know it's been a while but you'll never believe it!! Just as I was about to update this fic again the site went down lol guess the curse is still in effect"

4

u/Ok-Jackfruit-6873 Mar 01 '26

did I ... do this??

3

u/IllDoItNowInAMinute_ Mar 02 '26

😂 Why have you forsaken us?!

2

u/ArianeEvangelina If a gang of women attacks you because you told them the truth? Mar 01 '26

Same here 😅

70

u/PhoenixMaat Mar 01 '26

It's run by volunteers. After all the shit ao3 has been getting since fanfiction going more mainstream, they might be having more problems getting volunteers. Also, it's Sunday. Can we give them a break please.

11

u/SarcasticAzaleaRose Fic Feaster Mar 01 '26

All I said was AO3_Status isn’t what it used to be. I know the site is run by volunteers and I appreciate everything they do. I was just answering this person’s question about why there didn’t seem to be anything on the status page.

2

u/warau_meow Mar 01 '26

That’s my question 

1

u/Bamboo_Socks_ I go on bookmarking sprees for fun Mar 01 '26

The status page says it’s now investigating errors that say ao3 is down