Update (June 1, 2001):
With recent negotiations suggesting no end in sight for the legal challenges to return Excelland.COM and The Portal to online status, selected popular sites of The Portal have been mirrored in their very own subsites here at Pacoima Ranch. Nearly a half-dozen popular sites (including a Walk Of Fame for all Citizens) are now included in this new area. Former Captains, Cadets, Citizens and Adminstrators can send us their new URL for inclusion.
All Excelland.COM URL's now yield a server error (including http://ex.relline.ru) or never resolve. Insiders have been approached about joining a "clean up crew" to finish all outstanding Excelland.COM projects and to finalize collection of amounts owed to Excelland.COM by any of its advertisers or accounts.
Original story (May 12, 2001):
After the sudden disintegration of the backers agreements that funded it, award winning rackspace provider Excelland.COM has gone completely offline. Excelland.COM provided space for hundreds of freehost communities, including The Portal (an LLC between Pacoima Ranch Offices and KS Webworks of nearly 2,000 sites growing at the rate of nearly 200 sites a month and receiving 70,000 to 200,000 unique pageviews a month). About a third of a million people were affected when their sites began being online in a sporadic manner, with offline status being a common problem.
Approximately three weeks ago, all sites went completely offline, with a page requesting that serious investors ($100,000 minimum) contact Excelland.COM directly being shown instead. Apparently none did, as even these pages went offline after a few days. DNS queries no longer yield any information, with the exception of http://ex.relline.ru (the Russian URL for Excelland.COM). All other URL's no longer resolve, and DNS queries are no longer able to find any information regarding contact, ownership, DNS dotted quads, and similar.
It is highly doubtful that Excelland.COM (and The Portal) will be resurrected. Old school surfers will most likely remember the similar MaxCafe debacle of 1997 and 1998. In spite of several attempts to restart itself as a freehost, MaxCafe never rose above the bad press it received during its many month long offline periods and succumbed to financial ruin. Undoubtedly Excelland.COM will find itself in this same position should it receive funding and attempt to go online again. The entire staff of Pacoima Ranch Offices, PortalWorlds.COM (LLC), The News Letter, KS Webworks, Vision Awards and the Business Park Webring will greatly miss having our own freehost (The Portal) and the many friends we made in Moscow who worked for Excelland. Current plans do not call for a new attempt at establishing a freehost until such time as advertising and sponsorship rates increase significantly.
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