Community:LegendOfZelda.com

Overview
LegendofZelda.com is one of the oldest and most prominent sites in the Online Zelda Community, first founded in 1999. The site is led officially by Link of Hyrule, Chance, and Xizor, but Chance and Xizor, along with Forum Administrator Kandid, run most of the day-to-day affairs of the site, with Link of Hyrule popping his head in every once in a while, though not recently. LoZ.com's media was managed and updated by Incubus, with additions being made to fanart and screenshots regularly. LoZ.com culture is based mainly around its forums, which are one of the larger forums in the Zelda community. Humor, freedom of expression, tolerance, and love of fun are enforced mercilessly. LegendofZelda.com's reputation of having strict and sometimes stolid moderators and administrators was well earned, and seems not to be let down in the present day. LoZ.com is also host to a vast library of Zelda media, including full soundtracks for almost every game, as well as thousands of images, both official and fan-created.

Creation
LegendOfZelda.com was founded in 1999 by Alex Jones of Britain (known as Link of Hyrule on the site). Nintendo of America threatened the site with a lawsuit. Nintendo wanted to use the domain name, and filed a copyright infringement suit. The lawsuit was deemed frivolous and was dropped shortly after it was issued.

XeroGaming.com
Before taking an extended hiatus in 2002, Link of Hyrule left a few members with administrative control of the site. One of these members, Nemesis, took away forum powers from the other staff members and formed his own staff. Anger towards the new administration caused people to abandon the site and it eventually went down. Link of Hyrule returned in 2003 and announced that the site would relaunch soon. A temporary Lycos messaging board was used by regular members while they awaited the resurrection of LegendofZelda.com. As people celebrated New Years 2004, it became apparent that Link of Hyrule wasn't going to relaunch the site any time soon. Prominent members and then administrators Megaman X, Remus, and Droshi led a migration to a new site, XeroGaming.com. This site centered on all gaming, not just the Legend of Zelda series.

Rebirth of LegendofZelda.com
LegendofZelda.com was relaunched nearly two years after originally promised, and was officially reborn in November of 2004. Prominent members from the old forums and Xerogaming.com were accepted into the Oldies group and given access to an Oldies-only restricted forum. Link of Hyrule appointed KingKrazyLink as an administrator.

Members of the boards saw the site destroyed and rebuilt several times by hackers in the summer of 2005. Quick action to restore order was impossible because Link of Hyrule and KingKrazyLink were often offline, incapable of doing anything. After a hack, Link of Hyrule gave Cartoons of ZeldaDungeon.net administrative powers to rebuild the site. Because nobody had heard of him before and he was now an administrator, most members assumed he was the hacker who destroyed the site. He rebuilt the site within hours, but many still insisted he was a hacker. Angered by the accusations, Cartoons abandoned the site in the face of yet another hack. Only a moderator at this point, Chance was promoted to administrator to restore the forums. For three days in July of 2005, he struggled through code to not just rebuild the forums, but to make them better.

Resurrection of XeroGaming.net
About a month later, Chance was informed by three close friends that Link of Hyrule and KingKrazyLink were planning to remove him as administrator, and on August 17th, 2005, Chance erased the forums of LoZ.com, replacing them with a letter of explanation. He also changed his username and profile to appear that he was KingKrazyLink and said that everyone should go to XeroGaming.net, a reincarnation of the old XeroGaming.com (the new domain name being XeroGaming.net). Along with Darth X (formerly Megaman X), Chance recreated Xerogaming.net. Twenty members followed, and XeroGaming.net once again had a healthy community, now devoted to bad-mouthing LegendofZelda.com.

Shortly thereafter, Link of Hyrule (Alex) returned from a vacation that would end up conflicting with the time he was supposedly conferring with KingKrazyLink to fire Chance. Upon learning this, Chance formally apologized to Link of Hyrule for destroying his site, and tension between both sites eased a bit. KingKrazyLink had managed to restore the forums of LegendofZelda.com, but due to a slew of forum Modifications to the open phpBB code, the forum code became so garbled that after just a couple of months, Link of Hyrule asked Chance to return as an administrator and fix the forums. Chance agreed and returned, joining KingKrazyLink and Link of Hyrule as Administrators of the forums. In January of 2006, KinkKrazyLink left to devote more time to his own site, ZeldaGaming.net, after a period of slipping activity. Chance officially became a co-owner of LegendofZelda.com in April of 2006 after LegendofZelda.com switched servers. XeroGaming.net merged with LegendofZelda.com on August 4th, 2006. Just a few days later, in lieu of the vast amount of new members, many veterans of LoZ.com, a change was made to the Oldies and Sage groups at LoZ.com. The Oldies were renamed the Sheikah, and the Sages retained their name, but their purposes flip-flopped, and their definitions clearly outlined.

vBulletin
In October 2006, LegendofZelda.com underwent a massive layout change. LegendofZelda.com switched from being powered by phpBB to vBulletin. The main site and forums became integrated. After the switch, LegendofZelda.com forum activity skyrocketed, with membership surpassing 10,000 members in half of a year.

Xizor became a forum administrator. In April of 2007, LegendofZelda.com and ZeldaDungeon.net tried to merge, but failed due to lack of support on both sides. Chance labored over a new layout, which was launched in June of 2007 with the live assistance of several staff members, including Xizor, Kandid, Incubus, and Runeblade. It was met with an overall positive reaction, with only 28% of polled members stating that they preferred the old layout more.

LegendofZelda.com switched servers again in April of 2008 after a string of server problems. In June 2008, however, the administrators were made aware that the LegendofZelda.com server was expending too many resources for the type of server it was. At the time, LegendofZelda.com was also hosting ExplodingDekuNut.net and ZeldaBlog.com. On July 5, 2008 all three sites were taken down temporarily. On July 26th 2008, LegendofZelda.com and ExplodingDekuNut.net were re-opened. However, Zelda Blog continues to remain offline to this day, indefinitely waiting to be relaunched.

Spring Cleaning 2009
Starting in Spring of 2009, Chance and Xizor began focusing on revitalizing the forums in a "Spring Cleaning" sort of process.

To breathe some life back into the Groups, based on popular races from the Zelda games, on March 22nd, 2009, Xizor announced that members of the three Social Membergroups would be allowed to run for "President of the Groups", a new position that will help get the Forum Staff more in touch with the regular members. Elections for Group Candidates were held in March, and the election of the President will be held in July of 2009.

In another effort to revitalize to the forums, on April 8th, 2009, it was unveiled by Xizor that Kandid was being promoted to be a Forum Administrator, having previously been a forum moderator for some time, among other roles. This promotion was viewed as a long time coming, and thus was not a major shock to the LoZ.com community.

On April 20th, 2009, Legendofzelda.com went public with a need for monetary donations in order to sustain the site, which doesn't bring in enough money through the lone Google ad on their front page. The total sum needed is about $550 US, needed by the end of May, 2009. After the year's financial situation is taken care of, Chance and Xizor have plans to find ways to increase the site's revenue.

On April 28th, 2009, Legendofzelda.com became a contributor to ZeldaWiki.org. This addition to the Wiki was discussed by the LoZ.com Staff the year prior, but was shot down in favor of the defunct Zelda Almanac Project.

Recognition and Awards
Though LoZ.com has not yet received awards from any other fansite in the community, it was briefly mentioned in The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy: I Link Therefore I Am as a credible source of advice on the Zelda series.

Forums
The Forums of LoZ.com have often been the main focus of the site, rather than the front page, as is traditional in the Zelda Community. The forums have earned a reputation recently as one of the more active Zelda forums in existence today. The forums have a long and rich history, often tied to the overall events at LoZ.com. The culture of the forums also runs deep. The forums have settled in recent times, as most staff has served for long periods of time. Moderator Triforce Guardian has been a moderator since the first forums were created, and Administrators Last Chance, Xizor, and Kandid were all moderators before becoming admins. Last Chance and Xizor have been admins consistently for almost 3 years.

Features
The LoZ.com forums have many features that, together, combine to make them exemplary:


 * vbucks and vbPlaza Integration: Banking, Gifts, Donations, and uses for forum money, as well as an Arcade and a CasinoOpen Membergroups for all memebers who have 100+ posts and have been a member for at least one monthMany recurring contests and competitions, including a "Signature of the Week" contest, and a "Quote of the Week" contestFor a time, featured a Graphics Rating System that scaled all participants on a 1-6 scale based on ability. The system has since been discontinued, but is rumored to be in the process of resurfacing over the summer of 2009, after suggestions of resurrection in summer of '08 never coming to fruition Semi-Annual Awards, where members vote other members for "awards" based on the traits they display at the forums An election for "President of the Groups" began in April of 2009, and may be a recurring activity at the LoZ.com forums Popular text-based role playing games

Culture
Inevitably a subjective area, the culture of the LoZ.com forums is quite dynamic. In its original form, the culture is somewhat lost to time, as only a few members from the original forums remain active today (most notably Link of Hyrule and Triforce Guardian). In the age of Lycos, an unofficial but strict caste system was in effect. The ruling class and forum elite were the administrators and moderators. Below them were the other special groups and established members, most often being members of the original boards. The lowest class were the newcomers, those who had not been at LoZ.com's Forums before their fall and rebirth. When Xero Gaming was created, this caste system transferred but changed, where there was only the admins/mods, and then everyone else. When LoZ.com returned in November 2004, the caste system was not as distinctly visible, though it still existed. When Last Chance broke all prior precedents, and became a moderator in three months and an admin in five, he set about dismantling the caste system. Though in some ways he was successful, in others he was not. The original system was, though never officially created, effectively destroyed. In its place, an even less defined caste system arose, with the following "pecking order": Forum Administrators, Forum Moderators, Sheikah, Site Staff, Sages, Members, and Newcomers.

Treatment of New Members
In the past, LoZ.com viewed new members with less-than-welcoming glances. From Lycos until about mid 2006, new members had to prove themselves before they were accepted, and often were treated harsher than veteran members. In recent times, new members are treated as society treats children; they are shown leniency, and when they have "grown up", they are held to the same standards as everyone else.

Role Playing
Text-based RPGs have always been a popular aspect of LoZ.com's forums. On Lycos, there was simply a board to post topics that were "RPGs", moderated by certain members. In 2006, there was for a time a group known as the "RPG Leaders" who were assigned to moderate, manage, and create different RPGs on the forums. The group eventually went defunct, as all its members grew inactive at the forums.

In recent times, the RPGs have begun to resurface in popularity. Previous "site sponsored" RPGs did exist, most notably "Siege of the Nations", which was also played at Xero Gaming for a time. Siege of the Nations (or just "SotN") was followed by two sequels, SotN II and SotN III. The current site sponsored RPG, "Amplus Teradi", is in its second incarnation, after the first fell prey to inactivity and general apathy. Alongside the newly revived RPG stands the user-created "Ethnan Chronicles: Rise of the Empire" RPG.

Groups
The "groups" as they are referred to, are simply three auxiliary usergroups that have no bearing on the LoZ.com forum hierarchy of authority, similar to Zelda Universe's Clans of the Goddesses, the Legends Alliance "Dorms", and other such usergroups/clans. These groups are sanctioned by LoZ.com, each led by a Group Leader appointed by Xizor, who is officially in charge of managing the groups. Members of groups are given a private board only for members of their group. Members are only allowed into one group, and must meet only two requirements for membership: 100+ posts, and one month of membership. The groups as they are now is new. In the past, there have been various amounts of groups, ranging from 2 to 7. On Xero Gaming, there were "clans" but this feature was not ever very popular for much more than biased trash talking by group members towards the opposing group's members.

Staff
Owners: Link of Hyrule, Last Chance

Webmasters: Link of Hyrule, Last Chance, Xizor

Forum Administrators: Link of Hyrule, Last Chance, Xizor, Kandid

Forum Moderators: Triforce Guardian, Menelaus, Abyss Master, Death's Head, AlbinoWolf, Guilty Tribute

News Updaters: WithTheDawn, Triforce Guardian, Hanyou