The Register®

Biting the hand that feeds IT

Slashdot website down

Suffering from the self-Slashdot effect?

Updated: Linux lovers' favourite website Slashdot.org has been unavailable all morning.

Sister sites SourceForge and Freshmeat are also down. Attempts to visit the site are met with a "taking too long to respond" message.

Slashdot was formerly famous for the "Slashdot effect" or slashdotting - when links from the site to smaller websites caused them to crash because of the unexpected huge number of visitors.

A spokesman for Pingdom which monitors website uptime said: "They've been unavailable since 09:38 Central European Time (it's 13:23 now, so that's close to 4 hours)." He added that neither servers in the US or Europe were able to access the site, suggesting their network is down.

Update: Slashdot came back at 14.48 CET, a downtime of just over five hours.®

Free report. "Comparing Data Center Batteries, Flywheels, and Ultracapacitors: What is the best energy storage for you?"

Don’t Miss

Warning: roadworksNetbooks and Mini-Laptops

Buyer's Guide They're little and we love 'em. But which ones are best?

SSL covers security embarrassments with EV figleaf

Whitepaper Helping you know scammers from Adam

Emails show journalist rigged Wikipedia's naked shorts

Overstock's Byrne vindicated amidst economic meltdown

Warning StopYours truly, angry mob

Book extract Bringing Nothing To The Party: Cleaning up the net, one satirical vigilante page at a time