What Happened to Svbtle?

It’ll be back later today. Sorry for the downtime!

Yikes. I'm not unsympathetic, but if there's any one recurrent theme I've seen in computing over the 40 years I've been here, it's make backups.

I always had a sort of genial skepticism of Svbtle: I liked the idea, but there was something a bit...for want of a more gentle term, a bit blowhardy about Dustin Curtis's own writing style, and like others, I was bemused by that "forever promise." It's impressive, but how can you guarantee that? In fact, it doesn't guarantee it, precisely, based on the footnote of the linked content:

> “Forever” means until the HTML-based “web” is no longer generally accessible or until Svbtle or its parent company becomes financially insolvent (which we intend to avoid given that users pay for the service).

(Emphasis added.) Many years ago I signed up for the "lifetime hosting" at TextDrive, which turned out to really mean "until the parent company went all-in on managed enterprise hosting"; Joyent's management appeared to be somewhat surprised and irritated that we expected "lifetime" to mean "if not our own personal lifetimes, then at least as long as your company is in business". Svbtle clearly tried to do better, and I don't doubt they meant it, but it's still a big ask.

Having said that, I also suspect it's basically a one-person business, so goodness knows what's up. Is there a customer service email address? Have you tried emailing "hi@dustincurtis.com", which appears to be Dustin Curtis's email address?

Needing to browse a "we guarantee we will stay online forever" page through an archive service is pretty hilarious. The fact that the service has been down for multiple days with no communication about it and no way to reach them shows what that guarantee was worth.

I don't know anything about Svbtle, but ultimately that isn't a promise anyone can realistically make regardless of the best intentions. You need money to run servers. What happens when a company runs out of it or even ceases to exist? What if there's accidental unrecoverable data loss due to a bug or outage? What if the operator gets hit by a bus?

If you have data you care about, hold it yourself (and back it up). Trusting a random free online service with the sole copy of everything is foolish.

It went down svbtly

Wasn't is made by Dustin Curtis? Looks like at least one of his personal sites is down too: https://dcurt.is/

I don't see how they can keep that promise. Who foots the bill after the company stops existing? The founder? What if he gets hit by a bus?

It may be a good time to check if your site was archived on archive.org

Maybe something from the parent corp? https://neutralcorporation.com/

That "promise" is pretty laughable. They stick a gazillion qualifiers on it (so long as they're not insolvent, and everything just keeps working without needing any changes, and they'll only try their best) - and then they say that none of it is a guarantee anyway.

But, there's a lesson here. Nothing is a replacement for backups and you'll care more about your own stuff than anyone else will.

Maybe you were their sole user

Hmm, looks like Dustin went completely off sometime around December last year. Bit worrying, hope he is okay.

Funny reading ppl criticizing the "promise". I decided to Google Svbtle as I recalled liking their default theme "awhile ago"... And there are results from over 10 years ago! I'd call that a pretty run in terms of promises and lifetimes.

Does the wayback machine not take snapshots of its content?

Looks like their "promise" is worthless.