Community:ZeldaInformer

ZeldaInformer (ZI) is an award-winning  website on the VGRC Networks specifically devoted to The Legend of Zelda series and the related online community. It was created in the summer of 2007 through the efforts of a number of dedicated fans, primarily working out of Zelda Universe. The site opened officially on July 16, 2007. ZI later joined forces with Absolute Zelda to create a brand new site, tentatively named Absolute ZeldaInformer. The staff of both AZ and ZI currently contribute to the existing website.

History
In early 2007, a number of problems arose within the Zelda Universe online community that many members felt were not properly being addressed by the local administration. A large group of users, still enamored with at least some part of ZU (which had, up until that point, a reputation as "unleaveable"), became disillusioned with the complete lack of quality control that seemed to be slowly but surely destroying their reputable website. Some effort was made on ZU itself to recognize and address the issue, but it quickly became clear that, not only were many members unwilling to make changes, any attempt to even discuss the subject quickly degenerated into negative argument.

Revolution Day 2007
Concerned parties elected ahead to begin work behind the scenes, preparing a new site to which ZU members of a more classical idealology (both those older members who desired a return to the sort of Zelda forum they remembered and the newer members who had come to share their views) could escape.

Dennis Wyman (As the sympathizing ZU user 'Captain Cornflake') elected to develop a new community as a part of his network of gaming-related websites run by VGRC. Borrowing inspiration from the similar VGRC project, HaloInformer, ZeldaInformer was born. July 16th, the day ZeldaInformer finally launched, would be remembered as Revolution Day.

By the end of 2007, ZeldaInformer had exceeded all expectations and grown exponentially, already amassing a readerbase of hundreds of unique visitors daily and a Google pagerank of 3. While by no means an eye-popping number on its own, the fact that ZI was able to achieve this in less than 6 months is quite a feat, legitimizing the site as the fastest growing site in the Zelda community. The site is still growing, but intends to reach an unparalleled level of informative excellence in the Legend of Zelda web-ring. Its users believe that they have the desire, ethic, knowledge, ability, and most importantly, community to quickly reach this goal.

"Originally there weren't even any real plans to make another Zelda website. Everything started as a handful of Zelda Universe members that were fed up with the management of the site from then-owner Yusuf, and the completely inept volunteer staff members at the time. Long story short, we were just going to troll the ZU forums until we got banned and retreat to VGRC when all was said and done. Well, turns out that more people were also dissatisfied with how things were going at ZU, which included then ZU staff member Phil Stetson, aka "Leminnes." From there plans sort-of morphed into launching a Zelda sub-section of VGRC, which as we worked on it eventually evolved into ZeldaInformer."

- Dennis Wyman

Revolution Day 2008
On July 16, 2008, to everyone's surprise, Zeldainformer and Absolute Zelda announced that they are merging into one bigger and better Zelda site. The most visible change was the merging of the two communities by fusing the forums. Absolute Zelda had been closed for a good while, due to a complete site overhaul, having only its forums available to the public at the time. The staff of AZ is still working on their grand new site design, which will be incorporated to the new site once it's finished. As it is now, ZeldaInformer will act as the main site with the combined forums of both communities until the new deigns are ready to launch.

Other changes of 2008's Revolution Day included the shift from the Cute News system to using the blog based Movable Type. Being a far more secure and flexible system, Movable Type will also be used for other features on the site, including management and presentation of the site content as well as the articles. The domain name was also finally changed from zelda.vgrc.net to www.zeldainformer.com.

"ZeldaInformer and Absolute Zelda are joining forces. Both sites had pretty similar goals in terms of where we wanted to take our projects, so a merge was really the most logical answer. While we're still feeling things out, we feel this unification will really only further our goals of eventual world domination."

- Dennis Wyman

Community
Originally, ZeldaInformer was tied deeply into VGRC, a gaming site run and maintained by friends of Captain Cornflake. Running off the same server and utilizing the IPBWI package, ZeldaInformer used to run off of the VGRC userbase, which to this day allows members to move seamlessly between the two sites, as well as HaloInformer and Audioblog.

During the merge with Absolute Zelda, the forums were split off from VGRC and combined with AZ's forums. The original VGRC users could still log into the new forums after reactivating their accounts. The new system now requires users from both forums to log in with their email address instead of their usernames.

Features
As most of the content on ZeldaInformer has been created by members of The Bombers writing team, so are many of its most prominent features. The most long running feature is undoubtedly the Bombers' Articles, previously a weekly feature, new articles are now released only occasionally.

In June 2008 ZI started its own internet radio show on World Zelda Music Radio titled Zelda Remix Hour, a narrated hour-long show which featured remixes, covers and live performances of Zelda music. Each episode had it's own theme, the first being Zelda Jazz. The show aired on two days, Wednesdays and Saturdays at 5pm GMT (11am CDT), and 1am GMT (7pm CDT). The final show aired in September 2008. Currently there are no plans to bring back the show, but the staff is looking into possibilities of making the old episodes available on the site.

As many members of the staff are either active or retired Zelda theorists, much of the site content consists of theory resources and related material. The site also hosted the Zelda Katsu project, which in early 2010 was replaced by Zelda Historians. A Zelda hacking project has also recently made its home at ZeldaInformer.

Other attractions include the '72 Hours Remain Web Comic', the 'casual articles', and ZeldaInformer's constant ability to keep ontop of every piece of Zelda news.

Hackings and Downtime
In December 2008 the VGRC network was hit by a group of Islamic hackers in a continuing series of similar attacks known to the VGRC community as "the jihad". The hacking was possibly linked to the HACKER BITCHS incident. This couldn't have come at a worse time, because the sites were in the process of switching servers and had to deal with a load of technical issues. After a fundraiser, a couple of server switches and nearly two months of downtime, ZI finally reemerged from the depths of the internet.