Zelda Wiki:Sandbox

1999 - 2001 - The beginning
http://everalert.absolutezelda.net/history/01%20geocities%20layout%201.png Zelda Domain opened it's doors on November 11th, 1999. As the brainchild of founder Nathanial Rumphol-Janc, it was an aspiring fan site that was joining the fray shortly into the Zelda fansite boom that ensued after Ocarina of Time's release. With zero coding experience, and only being thirteen years of age, Nathanial tried his hand with the free site builder. While it was limited, it served it's purpose at the time as there were very few high quality Zelda sites available.

While this meager attempt at a fan site lead to several great things occurring, you can't hide the demons of the past. This beginning interation of Zelda Domain is most known for the great Gamecube Giveaway scam that nearly ended the entire site on the spot. Nathanial, in an act of desperation to save a dieing site, started a fake Gamecube Giveaway contest. It worked, in the sense the viewership increased ten fold. Yet at the same time, it utterly failed. Not only did he go so far as to select a "real winner", he even lied to said winner in saying he was sending the package and went as far as to get the mailing address. What most don't know, is the winner was in a poor family who were excited they won a Gamecube and his only Christmas present that year was a Gamecube game. When Nathanial finally confessed the lie, he was heartbroken. It took a full year of mending before the friendship was able to continue, and Zelda Domain was able to move past the darkest moment in it's long history.

Clearly, there were many lessons to learn. Maxine MagicFox urged him to never give up and guided him not only in the right way to be a webmaster, but in the ways of writing actual HTML code.