[Updated] Archive of Our Own (AO3) down or not working? You're not alone

New updates are being added at the bottom of the article….

Original story (January 05, 2021):

For those of you trying to get your head around why Archive of Our Own (AO3) is not working and throwing an error 502 or 400 bad request, worry not, as you are not the only one facing the issue right now.

We are seeing a large number of reports from AO3 users who say the service is down and not working for them. Following are some of the reports for you to take a quick glance at:

is ao3 down i need my daily fanfic fix
source

YALL STILL GOT AO3 DOWN CMON I WANNA READ SBI FOUND FAMILY
source

What’s good is the company has officially acknowledged the outage, saying they’re investigating the problem in question. Here is their official statement and followed by the updates on the matter:

We’re experiencing some slowness and errors at the moment and are looking into the cause. Detective

Update 1:

Still poking around and waiting for more sysadmins to be awake at this time. Thank you for hanging in there! (Please rest assured that no particular work update broke the site, although we agree that *would* be hilarious.)

Update 2:

Sincere apologies, we’re still not sure what’s happening and will need to wait a little longer for reinforcements. If it’s close to your bedtime, the Archive will be back in the morning! Sleeping accommodationFull moon with faceSparkles Otherwise, carry on in the replies and be kind to each other. Sunflower

That said, we’re keeping continuous track of all the developments and will keep you posted.

It appears the issue has been taken care off. Here’s an update on the matter.

We’ve restarted things and the Archive seems to be loading again! Party popper But please be gentle; we’re still looking into the cause and aren’t yet confident the site will remain up.

Going by the latest reports on microblogging site Twitter, it appears that Archive of Our Own (AO3) servers are encountering an issue as of writing this, but it’s a routine process. Here’s what @AO3_Status has to say:

We’re about to do some routine updates to the software on our servers, but we don’t anticipate any slowness or downtime. We’ll let you know when we’re done!

The service is down as of writing this, but it’s relieving that the team is already aware and looking into the issue. Here’s what they have to say:

We’re aware of server issues and are looking into it! Please stand by.

The glitch has been addressed.

Looks like we’re back! However, issues may continue until we’ve figured out what just made the database unhappy. Will let you know! Happy bedtime reading / good morning / do your homework / have a splendid day!

As multiple recent reports, it seems that Archive of Our Own (AO3) is down again. The said outage is also highlighted on Downdetector.com and Servicesdown.in.

Bruh in the middle of reading my nightly winding down fanfics and ao3 goes down this is not fair
Source

03:41 pm (IST): Many users have taken to Twitter to report that AO3 is currently down or not working for them.

Fortunately, the support team has acknowledged this issue and said that they are currently investigating it. However, they did not provide any ETA for the fix.

It looks like the Archive isn’t loading or is giving 503 error messages for some users. We’re looking into it! (Source)

06:49 pm (IST): Archive of Our Own (AO3) support on Twitter has confirmed that the recent outage with their service has now been resolved. Also, we haven’t come across any fresh user reports regarding the same.

We’re back! Some routine maintenance on one of our front end servers confused the other servers, leading to high loads and distress. We’ve calmed them down now, and all is well. Thank you for your patience! (Source)

10:10 am (IST): According to fresh user reports, AO3 is currently down or not working for many. Moreover, users are saying that the service is throwing ‘Error 503’.

07:16 pm (IST): User reports on Downdetector have vanished which indicates that the recent outage with AO3 has now been resolved.

10:49 am (IST): The recent acknowledgement from AO3 support on Twitter confirms that they were aware of this outage and it was caused due to firewall/frontend communication issues. However, the outage has since been resolved.

10:47 am (IST): According to reports on Twitter and Downdetector, Archive of Our Own (AO3) is currently down or not working for many.

03:15 pm (IST): The recent outage with Archive of Our Own has now been resolved as we haven’t come across any fresh reports on Downdetector.

03:52 pm (IST): According to fresh reports (1, 2, 3), AO3 is currently down or not working for a section of users.

01:15 pm (IST): It appears that the recent outage with AO3 has now been resolved as we haven’t come across any fresh reports on Twitter.

09:19 am (IST): Some users have taken to Twitter (1, 2, 3, 4) to report that AO3 servers are currently down or not working for them.

05:47 pm (IST): The recent outage with AO3 appears to have been resolved.

05:28 pm (IST): Users report a new outage on the platform (1, 2).

09:29 pm (IST): Confirmation from the AO3 status account on Twitter indicates that the team is aware of the situation and are actively working on a fix. However, there’s no ETA for when the platform will go live again.

Very sorry we can’t give you your fanwork fix right now, or a time estimate for when AO3 will be back. Welcome to all our new followers, and sorry we had to meet like this. 😬 Please stick around for the happier updates! 🌸 (Source)

08:17 am (IST): AO3 Status Twitter page revealed that the outage is due to a DDoS attack and that they are working on solving it, but there is no ETA yet.

It looks like the Archive is under a DDoS attack causing the servers to fall over. Our volunteer sysadmins are working on countermeasures. Please be patient with us, we’ll be back!
Source

03:41 pm (IST): After Archive of Our Own (AO3) website went down users began to look for alternatives. More on that here.

08:24 am (IST): As part of the actions against the DDoS attack, the AO3 team disabled a couple of sections or features of the website:

We’ve temporarily disabled the ability to request a new account invitation as a preventative measure due to a spam attack. Apologies for the inconvenience! We’ll let you know when it’s back.
Source

We have also temporarily disabled the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports page due to this spam attack — again, our apologies for the inconvenience, and for the alarming error message it currently displays!
Source

03:40 pm (IST): Fortunately for its users, the website is now available again, although some features are still disabled.

08:29 am (IST): A recent AO3 server outage has already been resolved, although some users are still experiencing issues when trying to access (1, 2, 3, 4).

05:11 pm (IST): After a long outage, AO3 servers are already working normally.

01:27 pm (IST): Some AO3 users are again reporting (1, 2, 3, 4) server outage where the site is currently down or not working for them.

06:00 pm (IST): The recent outage has now been resolved.

PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.