Crsociety.org has been down for a few months

#105

starting to get more anxious, so here’s the backup/archive i did in late december (with some gaps for 5-6 page threads)

===

https://web.archive.org/web/20241202095431/https://www.crsociety.org/forum/6-general-health-and-longevity/

1 Like
#106

When it was available I captured the nslookup and now I used hosts file to enter the ip addresses resolved previously. Perhaps sni for tls makes it work - despite I am talking to the cloudflare’s endpoint close to me while asking for www.crsociety.org I am served correctly and can access the forums, except the authoritative dns all other things are working.

But this is definitely is not the way to go for the most of the users. The problem is with these authoritative dns servers, they are not responding with dns service right now, perhaps something is not ok with them. Unless somebody will either make them work or the owner re-register and reconfigure the name resolution configuration of the domain things will not work normally - cloudflare’s resolver wants to have an authoritative answer before it will also resolve it (a dns proxy service of cf).

It is easy to cross-check what I mean with dns - use dig @1.1.1.1 or a tool @ https://freedns.afraid.org/
For the cf’s endpoint close to the user maybe any other cf’-served site (there is a plethora of them) could be resolved and pasted to local hosts file

Br,
Igor

3 Likes
#107

He says update when he has free time perhaps by early March

#108

It’s early Mach, still no update (I know he’s still dealing with things, but if this indefinitely happens the site will be gone)

the whois also mentioned…
" Site Status

Status

Inactive

Server Type"

crsociety.org Crsociety.org

Domain Summary

What is the traffic rank for Crsociety.org?

• Crsociety.org ranks #5,396,401 globally on HypeStat.

What percent of global Internet users visit Crsociety.org?

• 2.5E-5% of global Internet users visit Crsociety.org

How many people visit Crsociety.org each day?

• Crsociety.org receives approximately 90 visitors and 130 page impressions per day.

Which countries does Crsociety.org receive most of its visitors from?

• Crsociety.org is mostly visited by people located in United States.

How much Crsociety.org can earn?

• Crsociety.org should earn about $0.63/day from advertising revenue.

What is Crsociety.org estimated value?

• Estimated value of Crsociety.org is $585.84.

What IP addresses does Crsociety.org resolve to?

• Crsociety.org resolves to the IP addresses 52.72.110.195.

Where are Crsociety.org servers located in?

• Crsociety.org has servers located in Ashburn, Virginia, 20149, United States.

#109

Gordo says [on longecity] it very briefly went up and back down

There is not much time left before April 15… Maybe it’ll auto renew but who knows

Sent Brian Delaney a new email. So far, his needing to put things off has not been of too much consequence and he has gotten more time he needs for his emergency, but we do not know how much time crsociety has left, it is now closely approaching almost a year…

[getting it back, at some point, is one of these actions that will matter eternally]

fwiw I visited Pittsburgh for a few days last week, I know some people on the forums came from there. No meetups tho.

1 Like
#110

taking way way longer than ideal, but there’s still hope (they are…slowly… trying to fix it now) [them saying this is still not a guarantee]

1. Use a Free Website Monitor

:point_right: Set it to monitor https://crsociety.org.
:point_right: It’ll email or SMS you immediately when the site comes back online.

#111
Domain Information

Dates

  • Registry Expiration: 2026-04-15 05:35:48 UTC
  • Updated: 2025-04-15 05:36:15 UTC
  • Created: 2002-04-15 05:35:48 UTC
#112

Posting what chatgpt deep research thinks

Current Status of the CR Society Website and Forums

Background and Historical Context

The Calorie Restriction Society International (CR Society) has maintained an online forum (crsociety.org) for roughly two decades as a hub for discussions on calorie restriction and longevity. The site accumulated valuable archives of member discussions and scientific exchanges. For many years it was kept running by a volunteer webmaster, Tim Calmeyn, who served as the site’s administrator. In September 2023, CR Society’s board chair Bob Cavanaugh announced the sad news that Tim (the long-time webmaster) had passed away, noting that he had been “the webmaster for the Calorie Restriction Society for over two decades” . This loss would later prove pivotal to the forum’s technical troubles.

Historically, the CR Society forums had been quite stable, with only occasional short outages. However, starting in mid-2024, the site experienced an unprecedented extended downtime due to a combination of technical and administrative issues stemming from the webmaster’s death. What followed was a protracted struggle to regain control of the site’s domain and hosting. The community had to rely on alternate channels for updates and discussion during the outage. Below is a timeline of recent events and an analysis of the current status:

Timeline of Major Events

  • June 2024: The CR Society forum abruptly goes offline. Users report that it “suddenly disappeared for a few days” around June 10–14 . This marks the beginning of a months-long outage.
  • July–August 2024: The cause of the outage becomes clear – critical accounts were inaccessible because the domain owner (and site administrator) had died. The forum’s domain DNS entries and hosting license were not maintained. Community members reach out to CR Society leaders and the forum’s software provider (Invision) to resolve the issues. During this period, it’s revealed that the forum data is intact and the site could be brought back once administrative hurdles are overcome .
  • October 2024: After roughly 4 months of downtime, the CR Society forums are finally brought back online . The domain DNS is restored and users regain access to the site. The community celebrates the return of the archives.
  • March–April 2025: The forums go down again, despite the previous fix. By early April, users note that the site had “come back for a little while” but then became unreachable once more . This second outage coincides with ongoing domain registration issues. However, on April 15, 2025 the domain was auto-renewed to prevent expiration , indicating the CR Society still retained ownership. As of May 2025, the site remains offline pending further fixes, but volunteers and officials are actively working to restore it .

Mid-2024 Outage: Causes and Challenges

Initial disappearance (June 2024): In mid-June 2024, regular users noticed that crsociety.org had abruptly become unreachable . At first, there was confusion about whether this was a temporary server glitch or something more serious. Posts on other forums and social media began asking “What happened to crsociety.org?” as the downtime extended from days into weeks.

Root cause – loss of admin access: It soon emerged that the outage was not a simple technical fault but rather an administrative lockout. The key individual who managed the site (Tim) was deceased, and no one else had the credentials or account access needed to maintain the domain and hosting . Essentially, the CR Society’s online presence was tied to accounts that were still under the late webmaster’s name. One CR Society board member wrote (via email, as later shared with the community) that the forum was still running on the host but “something about the DNS info is messed up at GoDaddy” – they couldn’t update the DNS because the account belonged to the deceased person . In other words, the domain registration and DNS settings could not be managed until ownership was transferred through the proper legal process (requiring proof of death, etc.) .

Compounding the problem, the forum’s software license/hosting fee had lapsed around the same time. The CR Society forum runs on the Invision Community platform (hosted in the cloud by Invision). After Tim’s death, the annual invoice for the forum hosting was not paid, so by mid-June the host likely suspended service. Normally Invision gives a grace period (they “host for roughly a month after [the] invoice expires”) . Indeed, by about one month after the last payment (which presumably had been due in May 2024), the site went offline. One community member, Alex K. (InquilineKea), noted in late June: “They still host [the forum] for roughly a month after [the] invoice expires but it has been one month and we still haven’t gotten transfer of ownership. … I’ll pay for the new year [if needed]” . This shows that the only obstacle to paying the bill was that no one had access to the account to do so.

Data not lost: The good news was that the content and database of the forum were not lost – they were still stored on Invision’s servers, just taken offline pending payment and DNS resolution. In early emails, CR Society insiders reassured everyone that “The CRS forums can easily be brought back online, and technically they are currently online just not accessible without modifying the DNS at GoDaddy” . They were “not concerned about data loss”, calling the issue “more of an annoyance and lack of access” . In other words, the forum was sitting on the host, ready to go, if they could just update the domain to point to it and settle the account. This distinction was critical: the situation was a technical lockout rather than a deliberate shutdown.

DNS and domain issues: Another challenge was the domain’s DNS service. The domain crsociety.org was, at the time, using nameservers that were configured by Tim (reportedly through a company/domain called fabricationspecialties.com, which he controlled) . After Tim’s passing, it appears those nameservers stopped functioning properly. By June 2024, no DNS lookup for crsociety.org would succeed, meaning browsers could not find the server. Community members troubleshooting the issue confirmed that “authoritative DNS servers [for crsociety.org] are not responding” . Thus, even though the domain was still registered (it hadn’t expired) and the forum software was ready on Invision’s end, the world couldn’t reach the site because the DNS entries weren’t resolving. This made transferring the GoDaddy account (which held the domain registration) an urgent priority, so that someone at CR Society could log in and update the nameserver records or point the domain to a new DNS host .

Administrative hurdles: Gaining control of the domain was easier said than done. GoDaddy’s policy (like most registrars) requires formal proof and legal documents to transfer an account from a deceased owner . By late June, CR Society’s leadership (notably President Brian M. Delaney and others) were made aware of the situation, but progress was slow. The process required locating or resetting account credentials, or else going through GoDaddy’s estate transfer procedure (providing a death certificate, proof of estate executor, etc.) . As Alex K. summarized: “If nobody knows [the GoDaddy login], the CR Society needs to send an official letter (probably from [the CR Society president]) with a death certificate for [Tim] to get the account transferred” . This “difficult part” was a bureaucratic slog that would take time. In the meantime, the CR Society forum essentially remained in limbo, unreachable but not gone.

Throughout July 2024, members on external sites continued to express concern and tried to assist. The CR Society’s volunteer admin team was described as “dwindling down” and stretched thin . There was no official web announcement (since their own site was down), so the community pieced together information on their own.

Restoration Efforts and Temporary Return (Late 2024)

Faced with the prolonged outage, CR Society board members and tech-savvy volunteers coordinated behind the scenes to restore the forums . Key objectives were: (1) regaining domain control , (2) paying the Invision hosting invoice , and (3) updating DNS records so that crsociety.org once again pointed to the live forum.

By late July 2024, there were signs of progress. On an external longevity forum, Alex K. shared snippets of communications from CR Society officials indicating that work was underway. Notably, one update stated: “We are working through the process of transferring account ownership from a recently deceased CRS board member so we can update the DNS record. The forum itself is funded and functioning. We just need to update the DNS record to make it accessible.” . This mid-August message (shared with the community’s permission) was very reassuring: it confirmed that the forum hosting was paid for (“funded and functioning”) and that the only remaining step was fixing DNS. Indeed, by that point someone had managed to pay or renew the Invision license, resolving the payment issue. (It’s unclear if a CR Society board member or possibly a community member like Alex ended up paying the invoice, but the important part is that the host was paid and kept the site data online.)

Meanwhile, the domain crsociety.org itself was kept active. Records show that the domain, which had a renewal date in April 2024, was successfully renewed for another year (to April 15, 2025) . This renewal likely happened automatically shortly after the site went down (the Updated Date: 2024-04-16 in WHOIS suggests an auto-renew) , and the domain status remained locked (protected from transfer/delete) during the ordeal . In short, the domain never expired in 2024 – it stayed under CR Society’s ownership, even though no changes could be made to it until the account issue was resolved.

One tricky part was the nameserver update. If the old nameservers (Tim’s) were non-functional, the CR Society team would need to either fix those or switch to new nameservers. A community member identified fabricationspecialties.com as the domain of the DNS host and even suggested calling the company directly . It’s not publicly documented how this was resolved, but presumably once GoDaddy granted account access to a CR Society representative (after verifying the request), they could update the domain’s DNS settings. By replacing the nameservers or A-records with the correct information for the Invision-hosted forum, the site would become reachable again.

Return of the forums (Oct 2024): After a long summer of communication and waiting, the effort succeeded in the fall. Around early October 2024, the CR Society forums finally came back online. According to an ArchiveTeam summary, “Site went down for 4 months then went back up in October 2024.” . Users on Reddit and other platforms confirmed the revival: one Reddit post dated around that time announced that CR Society’s forums were accessible again after a ~3–4 month outage . The thread titled “crsociety.org finally got back online after 4 months” appeared on the forum itself, indicating someone on the site marked the occasion. Indeed, a CR Society member on Reddit wrote: “The site is now back online. Kudos to Alex K. Chen and others for their efforts in resurrecting it.” . This implies Alex and possibly other volunteers (or board members like Brian) managed to solve the technical roadblocks by that time.

For the remainder of 2024, the CR Society forum operated normally. All the previously inaccessible content was available again, and members resumed using the site. The crisis seemed to be resolved, albeit after a significant delay. However, it became clear that the site’s maintenance was fragile – it still relied on a small number of volunteers/board members to keep things updated. The community was warned that if administrative attention lapsed, the site could go down again, a point noted by ArchiveTeam: “We still don’t know if it may go down again, given that the administrators have gone out of contact and the original person paying for crsociety.org died.” .

Renewed Outage in Early 2025

Unfortunately, the worries about a relapse proved prescient. In the spring of 2025, the CR Society forums fell offline once more. On April 8, 2025, users on the LongeCity forum reported that crsociety.org was down yet again, after having been up for a few months. “Well it came back for a little while [and is] now gone again. Is it permanently gone this time?” one user asked . The outage appeared to have started a few days or weeks earlier (possibly in late March 2025), as regular readers noticed they could no longer reach the site.

Cause of second outage: The circumstances of this second downtime are similar to the first: it appears to be an unresolved technical/domain configuration issue, rather than an intentional shutdown. By April 2025, the domain’s DNS was again the culprit. The nameservers for crsociety.org stopped responding to queries, so the domain was not resolving to an IP address . One tech-savvy member described how no authoritative DNS answer was being given for the domain, causing even services like Cloudflare’s DNS to fail in finding the site . In effect, the domain “disappeared” from the internet’s phone book. However, that member also discovered that the forum was actually still accessible by forcing his computer to use the last-known IP addresses (via a hosts file). Using that workaround, he could connect to the forums through Cloudflare’s CDN endpoint, confirming that the forum content was indeed still on the server and up-to-date . This strongly suggests that the Invision-hosted forum was still running, but the DNS misconfiguration made it unreachable to normal users – a scenario very much like what happened in 2024.

One might suspect the outage was related to the domain’s expiration date (April 15, 2025). Importantly, the domain did not expire. On April 15, 2025, crsociety.org was auto-renewed for another year, according to both WHOIS info and community observation . A user noted on April 15th, “The domain got autorenewed today.” . This means GoDaddy successfully charged whatever payment method was on file and extended the domain registration to April 2026. The fact that auto-renewal succeeded indicates that CR Society still had the domain under their account control by that time (or at least that the late webmaster’s account had auto-renew enabled and a valid payment source). If the domain had truly lapsed, we would see a redemption period or pending deletion, but that was avoided. So, domain expiration was not the reason for the outage – rather, it was the DNS service not functioning, possibly due to misconfiguration or an outage with the chosen DNS host.

Delayed maintenance: The recurrence of the DNS problem in 2025 may indicate that the underlying issues from 2024 were never fully resolved (perhaps a stop-gap fix was done to bring the site up, but a robust long-term solution was postponed). It’s possible that after getting the site up in October, the team still needed to migrate DNS providers or renew some separate service, which by early 2025 fell through. Another possibility is that the Invision hosting needed renewal again (if only a 6-month courtesy extension was given). However, given that the forum was confirmed “funded” earlier and data was accessible via direct IP in April 2025, the hosting was likely still active. The more likely scenario is a DNS configuration lapse or an issue with the transferred account. We do know that CR Society leadership was aware of the risk: In December 2024 and again in early 2025, President Brian Delaney had been reminded to solidify the site’s status. According to one active member, “He [Brian] said he would look into it, but has been [delaying] – from December, then to early March, then…” . This comment (from April 8, 2025) implies that addressing the site’s technical debt kept getting postponed by the busy volunteer leadership, until the forum went down again.

Response to the second outage: As soon as users noticed crsociety.org was offline in April 2025, they once again sounded the alarm in alternate venues. On April 8, 2025, a LongeCity user stated, “I will contact some people familiar with the situation and see if we can bring it back in some form or another.” . InquilineKea (Alex) posted the CR Society president’s email address publicly, urging someone to get in touch and emphasizing the urgency of the situation . There was even discussion of possibly handing over control of the CR Society domain/forum to a more active organization like LongeCity if needed . This shows that the community was considering contingency plans to ensure the forums don’t vanish for good. By April 10, 2025, Alex updated that “Ok, looks like they are working on it.” , suggesting that his prodding elicited a response – likely Brian or another board member confirmed they would attempt to fix the DNS problem. Indeed, within a week, the domain was renewed (as mentioned), and efforts presumably began to restore DNS service. However, as of May 2025 the site is still down, indicating that whatever fix is needed (perhaps moving the DNS to a new provider or updating records) is still in progress or awaiting action.

In summary, the current technical status is: the domain crsociety.org is registered and active (new expiration in 2026) , and the forums are still hosted on the Invision platform (data intact), but the DNS configuration is broken, preventing normal access . No official announcement has been posted by CR Society on the matter (given their site is down, communications have been one-on-one or through community grapevine). The situation in 2025 mirrors that of 2024 – a fix is entirely feasible technically, but it requires someone with the right access to take the needed steps.

Community Reactions and Alternate Platforms

Throughout these disruptions, the CR Society community did not sit idle. Members have been sharing information and keeping the community spirit alive in alternate online spaces while the official forums are unavailable. Here are the key ways the community stayed connected and informed:

  • LongeCity Forum: LongeCity (a life-extension forum) became a gathering place to discuss the CR Society site’s status. In June 2024, as soon as the site first went down, a user (InquilineKea) started a thread titled “Where did crsociety.org go?” . This thread became an ongoing log of updates and speculation. Users who had been long-time CR Society forum contributors expressed concern – e.g., “I read and occasionally contributed for 20 years… Nobody knows what happened? This is really odd.” . Over the following months, that thread was updated with news: confirmation of Tim’s passing , discussions of contacting Invision, and calls to action. In April 2025, that same LongeCity thread sprang back to life when the site went down again, with users asking if it was “permanently gone this time” . Crucially, LongeCity members and moderators offered help; one even reached out to contacts in the CR community to nudge a fix . The thread included detailed technical analysis (DNS lookups, etc.) and served as a rallying point to ensure the CR Society forum would not be forgotten. There was even a suggestion (perhaps tongue-in-cheek, perhaps serious) that if CR Society’s team couldn’t manage the site, LongeCity might take over hosting the forums , highlighting how interwoven these communities are.
  • Rapamycin News Forum: Some CR Society members are also active on the Rapamycin News longevity forum. During the 2024 outage, they created a dedicated thread, “crsociety.org has been down for a few months”, to track the situation . This thread functioned like an alternate news bulletin for CR Society forum fans. Alex K. (a CR Society member) posted frequent updates there, sharing insider info from CR Society board emails (as noted earlier) . The Rapamycin forum thread also hosted general discussion about the importance of the CR Society archives and the state of the CR community. In effect, some ongoing CR discussions migrated temporarily to rapamycin.news while the main forum was inaccessible. Alex even noted that he “had to switch to posting [there], but miss[ed] some of [his] content (especially the content about microplastics…)”, emphasizing how he valued the CR Society forum’s organized threads . The Rapamycin forum community was sympathetic; they brainstormed solutions like pointing a new domain to the Invision host and discussed the broader issue of aging forums in the internet age . This cross-posting ensured that knowledge and updates about CR Society’s forum status reached a wider longevity audience.
  • Reddit: Reddit has several communities interested in biohacking, longevity, and calorie restriction. Users took to Reddit to ask about the CR Society site as well. For instance, one person in r/Biohacking asked “What happened to crsociety.org? It’s been down for a few days and has been super useful for longevity content.” . Responses on that thread echoed the information we’ve detailed: one user quoted an update that “the forum itself is funded and functioning” and they just needed to fix a DNS issue after the owner’s death . Later on, after the forum’s return in Oct 2024, another Reddit comment noted “The site is now back online. Kudos to Alex K. Chen and others for their efforts in resurrecting it.” . This indicates that Reddit not only helped spread news of the downtime, but also helped spread the news of its restoration. Similarly, on Reddit’s r/Archiveteam (a group dedicated to preserving at-risk websites), members flagged the CR Society forum outage as something to archive. ArchiveTeam volunteers discussed scraping the site as soon as it came back up, given the uncertainty. One post in July 2024 stated: “The domain owner died some time ago… I’ll try to find a way to scrape them … these forums aren’t too large so they should not take too long to properly archive.” . This shows the broader internet preservation community recognized the historical value of the CR Society forum content and took steps to back it up in case the worst happened. Indeed, we have evidence that some threads and pages have been saved on Archive.org and other services during the window when the site was online in late 2024.
  • Other Platforms: The CR Society also has a Facebook group (private membership) where discussions about the site’s status presumably took place. Alex K. mentioned that people in the Facebook group were guessing the cause of the outage early on, suspecting either a forum software upgrade issue or a DNS issue . The CR Society mailing list (an older email list predating the forums) contains a treasure trove of archived discussions, though it’s not active for real-time coordination; some members have backups of those emails . Additionally, there is a “Living The CR Way” community (run by a different CR group) that has its own forums. Alex noted that “There’s LivingTheCRWay too, but it doesn’t have much activity.” . A few CR Society members had accounts there, but it was not a full substitute for the main forums. Overall, the diaspora of CR enthusiasts made use of any and all channels – from Slack/Discord groups to direct emails – to stay in touch. However, the consensus in these spaces was clear: the CR Society’s own forums, with their decades of accumulated knowledge, were irreplaceable. As one member lamented, “crsociety cannot die – it’s tragic that forums are being killed in favor of … slack and discord… It has maintained consistently high quality… [unlike] others” . This sentiment fueled the community’s determination to see the forums restored.

In summary, the community remained active and resourceful. Alternate forums (LongeCity, Rapamycin News), social media, and Reddit filled the gap during the outages, and a spirit of collaboration emerged to solve the technical problems. This community resilience is a positive sign for the forum’s future – there is clearly a dedicated base of users who care about the site and are willing to mobilize to save it.

Assessment of Current Status and Outlook for Recovery

As of May 2025, the CR Society forums remain offline to the general public, but the situation is far from hopeless or permanent. All evidence points to the forums being in a state where they can be brought back online – the question is when, not if, assuming the Society’s stewards follow through. Here’s a summary of key evidence and factors influencing the probability of recovery:

  • The forum data and hosting are intact. The site is hosted by Invision’s cloud service, and multiple sources have confirmed that the forum is still up on those servers (just inaccessible due to DNS). In mid-2024, CR Society reps stated explicitly that “technically [the forums] are currently online” on the host and that they were not worried about losing any data . In 2025, users were able to access the forum via direct IP hacks, again confirming the content is still there and up-to-date . There is no indication of data loss or corruption – posts and threads should all be preserved once the site is reachable. This greatly increases the chances of full recovery, since no content needs to be rebuilt – it’s a matter of flipping the right switches to unlock access.
  • The domain name is secured through 2026. A major risk for any downed site is losing the domain (if it expires and someone else grabs it). Thankfully, crsociety.org has been kept renewed. After auto-renew in 2024 and again in 2025 (documented on April 15, 2025) , the domain is now valid likely until April 2026. The registrar records also show it is in a protected status (clientTransferProhibited/clientDeleteProhibited etc.) , meaning it’s locked down – no one can easily hijack or transfer it without authorization. This means the CR Society has not lost its web address, and users won’t be forced to find the site at a new URL. It buys the organization many months (if not another full year) to implement a fix before any danger of expiration. Even if the site is down for several more months, as long as the domain is maintained, a restoration remains feasible at any time.
  • Community and leadership intent to restore: There is strong indication of intent from both the community and CR Society’s leadership to bring the forums back. No one has suggested that the forum should be permanently shut down; on the contrary, all communications imply this is a temporary outage. In August 2024, CR Society officials were actively working to restore access . In April 2025, when the site went down again, multiple people (including presumably board members) responded that they are “working on it” . While execution has been slow, there is no sign of abandonment. The CR Society’s president and board members have been sporadically responsive – e.g., Brian Delaney acknowledged the issue and intended to fix it (though delayed) , and others like Bob C. clearly value the site’s legacy. The fact that someone ensured the domain was renewed in 2025 shows that the organization is taking at least minimal actions to prevent loss . Moreover, the community’s persistent outcry acts as accountability – with threads on external sites and even offers of help, it’s unlikely the CR Society leadership would simply let the forum die quietly. There is peer pressure and encouragement for them to complete the fixes.
  • Technical feasibility of recovery: From a pure technical standpoint, the remaining issues are solvable. The forum essentially needs a proper DNS configuration. If the CR Society has gained full control of the GoDaddy account (which we assume they did by late 2024 when the site first came back), then the solution might be as straightforward as updating the nameserver entries to a reliable service (for example, pointing to GoDaddy’s default DNS or another provider) and ensuring they have the correct A/CNAME records for the Invision-hosted forum. Invision is likely still hosting the content under either the custom domain or a fallback URL. (Invision communities often have a temporary domain like something.invisionzone.com that can be used if needed.) The CR Society could even temporarily point a different domain to the forum as a stop-gap – for instance, using a subdomain of longecity.org or a new domain, as was debated . This would involve Invision support but is technically possible . All these are routine tasks for IT admins; the challenge is purely getting the right person to execute them. There might also be a need to update the forum’s SSL certificate once the DNS is fixed (to cover the domain), but Invision likely handles that for their hosted clients. No insurmountable technical barrier exists – it’s not like the data was erased or the software destroyed. The forum was revived once already after a long downtime , demonstrating that a comeback is achievable even after months of darkness.
  • Historical pattern and precedent: The fact that the CR Society forums were successfully resurrected after a 4-month outage in 2024 is a very positive precedent . It shows that even if things look dire, the community and leadership eventually managed to solve the problem. It’s worth noting that during that first outage, some feared the site might never return – yet it did. This makes it easier to believe that the current outage (essentially a repeat scenario) will also be resolved in time. In the forum’s 20+ year history, 2024-2025 has been the only major prolonged downtime. There’s no indication that the organization deliberately wants to shutter the forum; rather, it’s been unfortunate circumstances. The CR Society is a small non-profit run largely by volunteers, so these administrative delays, while frustrating, are not unusual. But once resolved, the pattern is that the site runs fine until another administrative issue crops up. It’s reasonable to expect that once the DNS/hosting issues are fixed this time, they will ensure smoother sailing going forward (perhaps by delegating multiple people to have account access, etc., to avoid a single point of failure again).
  • Alternate plans if all else fails: In the unlikely scenario that the CR Society leadership cannot get the site back up in a reasonable timeframe, the community has shown willingness to pursue alternatives to preserve the content. For example, ArchiveTeam has likely captured a significant portion of the site’s pages during its up-time in late 2024 . Those archives could be made accessible (albeit read-only) to salvage the knowledge. Additionally, there were discussions about possibly migrating the forum data to a new host or domain under different management (like LongeCity) . Such a move would require cooperation from CR Society (to obtain the database or Invision backup), but it’s a contingency that passionate members might explore if the site appeared truly abandoned. However, as of now there’s no need for that yet – all signs indicate CR Society intends to restore the existing setup.

Taking all of these points together, the probability that the CR Society forums are not permanently lost is very high. The forums are almost certainly not abandoned – rather, they are in a temporary downtime due to technical admin snafus. The weight of evidence (data intact, domain active, people working on it) suggests that the forums will eventually come back online once those snafus are resolved. It may take some patience; even months more of delay would not be entirely surprising given past experience. But given the value of the content and the active interest from both the community and the Society’s board, it is hard to imagine them simply giving up. In a post on ArchiveTeam’s wiki during the first outage, the situation was summarized with cautious optimism: “Site went down for 4 months then went back up … We still don’t know if it may go down again… [because] the original person paying for crsociety.org died.” . This indeed happened (it went down again), but the key part is that it went back up after a long outage once, and the underlying cause (loss of a key person) is being mitigated gradually.

In conclusion, the CR Society forums are currently in a kind of hibernation – inaccessible but not gone. The community has not fragmented or moved on; they are waiting and persistently reminding the leadership to bring the site back. The CR Society’s leadership, for its part, has maintained the domain and indicated willingness to fix the issue. The forum’s trove of information – spanning decades of caloric restriction research discussions – is safe and will very likely be available again. It might require “a few more days” on a geologic timescale (as one commenter joked) , but given the collective effort, the forums should eventually reappear. Stakeholders and interested users should keep an eye on the LongeCity thread and CR Society’s Facebook or other channels for any official announcements. When the forum does come back online, it would be wise for the Society to update everyone and perhaps put in place redundancy (so that the knowledge isn’t so close to being lost again). But as it stands in mid-2025, all signs point to an eventual recovery rather than a permanent loss. The CR Society forums have cheated death once and are poised to do so again. :tada:

Sources:

  • LongeCity Forum – “Where did crsociety.org go?” discussion (June 2024 – April 2025) .
  • Rapamycin News – “crsociety.org has been down for a few months” thread (June–Aug 2024) .
  • Reddit Discussions – r/Biohacking and r/Archiveteam threads (2024) .
  • ArchiveTeam Wiki – CR Society entry (2024/2025) .
  • Personal communications summarized by community members (e.g. CR Society board email snippets) .
2 Likes
#113

I’ve been active on the CR Society site for years, and the email list before that. I agree that it’s a valuable reaource with decades of accumulated knowledge. But even I don’t have the superhuman curiosity required to be able to read that whole chatgpt output above. You’re one of a kind, Alex K. Chen!

3 Likes
#114

Thanks for keeping this alive, Alex!

I do miss CRSociety, I’ve learned a lot from the other members and have even changed my opinion on a number of issues :slight_smile: I haven’t found anything close it, so far.

Grok provided similar info to what Alex posted above, with the addition of an .org email account for Brian, apparently temporary. I assume that Alex and others have it and have already tried it.

I really hope it comes back to life.

1 Like
#115

relevant thread Where did crsociety.org go? - Calorie Restriction - LONGECITY

#116

Feel like this is something journalists should write about, it seems so absurd.

From the link above:

Nonprofits are required to have a board of directors. I don’t believe every board member is deceased — though I could be wrong — but if any are still around, their names should be on file somewhere. Maybe someone here knows who they were. In theory, the board should be able to regain access to the funds and either set up autopay for the hosting or coordinate a transfer of the forum to LongeCity — something Dean also mentioned as a possible plan during the brief return of the forum. If all the funds are gone though, its probably not coming back, however it would be nice to know what the cost is, maybe some of us would chip in to keep it going.

#117

There is a little irony that all the people involved with/ or managing the caloric restriction website seem to have died… Perhaps not the best strategy for longevity? :wink:

5 Likes