Key information: As an emergency measure to deal with recent performance issues, we will shortly be disabling the browsing filters on the Archive of Our Own (the grey box of choices which appears on work index pages). This is a temporary measure to ensure that as many people as possible can access the site. You can still use our tags and advanced search feature to find the works you want. Read on for more information!

As pretty much all users of the Archive of Our Own have no doubt noticed, we've been experiencing some problems with Archive loads: slowdowns and the appearance of the dreaded 502 page have become a regular occurrence. We're working on addressing these issues, but it's taking longer than we'd like, so we wanted to update you on what's going on.

Welcome to the first of our new format Archive news posts! Until now, the regular news posts on what's going on with the site have been appearing under the heading of 'Accessibility, Design and Technology Meeting News'. This is because when we first went into open Beta, AD&T were the only committee working directly on the Archive. However, as the site has grown and changed, so have our committees! So, we're changing to a new AO3 news format which will give more space to showcasing all the different kinds of AO3 work and happenings!

2011 was an amazing year for the Archive of Our Own, and we wanted to take a moment to look back and to thank everyone involved, including all of our users and volunteers! AO3 started its open beta about two years ago, towards the end of 2009. That year, we were really still putting the pieces together, building out the core functionality. In 2010, we started to pick up more momentum with people posting their works and archiving their older fic and art. We added gift exchange challenge hosting, kudos, downloads and skins.