The extended downtime of ZeroPaid is certainly noticeable. Now that it’s been a week, is it time to consider the possibility that it may not come back?
Earlier this week, we noticed that ZeroPaid, one of the largest filesharing news websites on the Internet, went down. If one were to visit the website, all they’ll get is a database error message. This error message reads “Error establishing a database connection”.
Although we reached out to administration and the official twitter feed for the site, we have yet to hear back from anyone. Administrative Twitter accounts are still active, but no mention is being made about the downtime.
To put this into perspective, this downtime is lasting far longer than when it crashed because of the famous Lulzsec effect that took hold in 2011.
Digging deeper into this downtime, we decided to check the source code. All that’s there is simply raw HTML. There’s no reference to any CSS, Javascript, PHP, or anything else for that matter. This opens up the possibility that there may not even be a website left on the server. It’s not a definitive sign that this is the end of the site, but there is that possibility.
Generally speaking, when a website goes down, if it is managed well, there would at least be some notice of some sort under normal circumstances by now. This raises the possibility that the website may not come back. Granted we are in early days to start thinking about that, but the length of the unexplained downtime does open up the possibility. The website was, after all, ad driven, so extended downtime would definitely be noticeable from the administrative perspective.
We will continue to monitor the situation and update you if we see or hear anything new.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
