Today, a technical server malfunction occurred. Unfortunately, it wasn't the planned update yet. The upcoming one will definitely be much shorter ;) I apologize for the inconvenience.
I wonder how difficult it would be to have a "read only" version of kbin that replaces the full version when things go wrong or maintenance is being done. I'm sure there are other technical solutions, just one thought.
Interestingly, because of federation, this sort of happens anyway. If you'd hopped onto another kbin instance, or even Lemmy much of the content from magazines here was still accessable.
Afraid not, each instance is independent in that sense so you need to go through the whole account creation again (although you can use the same username again, assuming it's free).
That said, as with this instance, you can browse without needing to be logged in.