Community:Zelda Dungeon

Zelda Dungeon is a Legend of Zelda fan website created by Mases Hagopian on August 19th, 2001. The site's main purpose is to provide the most in-depth game guides possible, utilizing screenshots, maps, and artwork. The site is part of the Telefragged / Atomic Gamer network. As a part of this network, Zelda Dungeon has a media section on the 3ddownloads file server. Zelda Dungeon has recently launched a new message board, The Dark World. Zelda Dungeon was the recipient of the Golden Mirror Shield Award in 2008.

=History= Zelda Dungeon has been around for over 7 years, and during this long period of time, there have been plenty of ups and downs. Below is a detailed account of the creation and history of Zelda Dungeon.

Conception
Mases Hagopian originally gained interest in the Zelda series after playing A Link to the Past for the Super Nintendo. Years later, Mases obtained a copy of Ocarina of Time and his interest in the series had grown. Leading up to the release of Majora's Mask in the year 2000, Mases first became involved in the online Zelda community, frequently visiting the Zelda fan website known as Zelda Power. During the summer of 2001, Mases thought of the idea of creating his own Legend of Zelda website where he could provide written strategy guides for all of the Zelda games. This idea came to fruition near the end of the summer of 2001.

Layout 1.0 - The Early Days
The site launched on August 19th, 2001 and was originally hosted at Yahoo Geocities free hosting service. The site initially launched as part of a network of sites about several other gaming and TV show series', including Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Dark Cloud, and Dragonball Z. The Zelda portion of the site was solely run by Mases during its first few months.

This early era didn't last long, and by October of 2001, all of the network sites had gone inactive and only Zelda Dungeon remained. This primitive version of Zelda Dungeon had very minor amounts of game content, and it was in October of 2001 that Mases began work on the Ocarina of Time Walkthrough. After about a month of work, Mases was beginning to lose interest in working on the site, based on the fact that there were no incoming in visitors. Activity came to a complete halt until January 2nd, 2003, when Zelda Dungeon was first listed on the Google search engine. For the first time, consistent visitors began to flow into Zelda Dungeon. While such a tiny number in retrospect, the site was receiving 5-10 visitors per day, and this caused work to presume on Zelda Dungeon. The site got its first affiliate in City of Clocktown, an aspiring website at the time, and Mases became very close friends with the Webmaster of City of Clocktown. Zelda Dungeon continued to rack up more affiliates, and the growing amount of content at the website was beginning to set in. With the help of the Webmaster of City of Clocktown, Mases setup an account at shorturl, and the sites much easier to remember url was now zeldadungeon.vze.com.

Controversy hit Zelda Dungeon during this early period, when Mases was directly linking to media files that were hosted by the website, Zelda Power. Mases, being the ignorant Webmaster at the time, could not comprehend that this was illegal. However, in response to these new audio files that were hosted at the website, more visitors began to come to the forum. After a few weeks, Mases was contacted by Aaron Holt, Webmaster of Zelda Power, and was asked to remove the direct links to Zelda Power's media.

Layout 2.0 - HTML Conversion
On March 27th, 2002, Zelda Dungeon launched Layout version 2.0, and it was the first layout that was built with html code. The layout was built by the Webmaster of City of Clocktown. Prior to this layout, Zelda Dungeon was built with a yahoo geocities site builder. With the introduction of HTML coding, plenty of new pros and cons came with transition. One of the pros was that the website was now consistent throughout all the pages of the website. However, going along with this change, each games index page was no longer visually unique as it was in the websites first layout.

Two versions of this layout were actually released. Upon release, version 2.0 had a listing of all the Zelda games along the navigation, and every specific page of content for each of the games was also listed. This worked well at the layouts launch, as there were so few content pages, and it skipped extra steps of having to go to a games index page to get to the game content. However, as the website began to grow and new pages were constantly added, the left navigation was getting quite lengthy. Additionally, because of the primitive coding that the site was using, after every new page or affiliate was added, every single page of the website had to be altered, and this was one of the cons of the initial switchover to html.

Several months into the layouts existence, version 2.5 was launched. The noticeable difference was the game menu on the left navigation. It was now compacted so that it only listed the actual games and did not list the individual content pages. The website went through another coding change, and was now using shtml. What shtml did, was allowed the navigation bars to be adjusted without having to go through and edit every single page when a single link was changed. This made editing the website a lot more efficient and more time was now focused on the content of the website, rather than the coding.

It was also during this layout where Zelda Dungeon was beginning to put its stamp on the online Zelda community. The site was growing rapidly, and yahoo geocities was no longer large enough for Zelda Dungeon. At the end of each month, Zelda Dungeon was being taken offline due to overuse of the sites bandwidth. After searching online for other free hosts that were more reliable, Mases stumbled upon a website known as Zelda Odyssey, which was part of the Chatville network. After contacting them, Zelda Dungeon was accepted for hosting, and moved to this new network. Hosting was no longer an issue at this point in time, which allowed the website to further grow.

During this time frame, Zelda Dungeon hired its first ever staff member, Steph. Steph originated at a Zelda website known as Link's Domain, a website which closed when its host, E-Zelda had closed down. After seeing her work and seeing the closure of the Link's Domain, Mases contacted Steph and offered her a job at the website, where she officially became a staff member on October 27th, 2002. Steph ended up creating much of the Adventure of Link content at the time, and had set a new standard of content for Zelda Dungeon. Steph was at the website for several months before leaving her position behind. Almost all of her content has since been replaced, but Steph still leaves behind a legacy of being the first staff member at Zelda Dungeon.

Zelda Dungeon had picked up numerous affiliates during the lifespan of Layout #2, including large Zelda websites at the time such as Zelda Guide, Link's Legacies, and Zelda Central. Victor of Zelda Central became one of the members of the community to which Mases looked up to and admired. Victor helped Mases with coding whenever it was needed, and is a big reason for the sites growth during this time frame.

Layout 3.0 - Hosting Issues
Victor of Zelda Central had grown to be close friends with Mases, and seeing the sites potential, he offered to create Zelda Dungeon a brand new layout. On November 23rd, 2002, layout 3.0 was launched and it was a huge upgrade over layout 2.0, and gave the website a much better first appeal for new visitors. Several noticeable changes could immediately be seen with the new layout, including the first official banner that the website had at the top of the layout. In previous layouts, there was just simply a line of text stating the websites name, but now a traditional banner was in place including the sites name and artwork from the Zelda franchise. The site took upon a slightly different name with the shift to layout 3.0. The site was always referred to as The Zelda Dungeon, but with the new layout, 'the' was dropped from the website title and it was not simply referred to has Zelda Dungeon. Other changes with the layout include the more distinctive split up of the various sections on each of the navigation bars.

Our host, Zelda Odyssey, was beginning to experience downtime more frequently, and this caused Zelda Dungeon to also experience downtime. The Webmaster of Zelda Odyssey was neglecting his website, and little was done when the website would occasionally go offline for extended periods of time. With the sites growth being stunted because of hosting issues, Mases began looking elsewhere in the Zelda community for other websites that offered free hosting. Mases contacted Lars-Christian, Webmaster of Zelda Universe and applied for hosting. On December 14th, 2002, Zelda Dungeon's application was accepted and the transition to a new home had begun. Zelda Universe unfortunately did not support shtml at the time, and this caused the transition process to be a bit more difficult. Zelda Dungeon abandoned shtml, and shifted towards php, of which remains the primary coding system of the website today. Little was changed in the actual coding, outside of just minor adjustments to the coding of each individual page.

One of the luxuries of being hosted by Zelda Universe, was the large influx of fans that began pouring into the website. Zelda Universe was one of the largest Zelda websites online during this time, and thus, a lot of traffic came to Zelda Dungeon. The site was receiving more visitors during this time, than it had in any point throughout its brief history.

This growth in visitors to the website, made Mases realize that it was now time for the site to take the next step forward and acquire a domain name. Unfortunately, Mases was still inexperienced with much of the duties of a Webmaster and had little knowledge as to how to purchase and setup a domain name. Mases ended up applying for a domain name at acidmist.com, a website that offered free domain names. Zelda Dungeon was accepted, and the new primary url for the website was now, zeldadungeon.com. The domain name allowed members to more easily recognize the websites name and be able to access it in a simpler fashion.

In March of 2003, Zelda Dungeon once again contacted acidmist, and this time applied for the free hosting package the website offered. Acidmist offered free hosting in exchange for the placement of a small banner advertisement at the top of each page of the website. Zelda Dungeon was accepted and in March of 2003 left Zelda Universe and found its new home at Acidmist. Leaving Zelda Universe slowed the growth process of Zelda Dungeon, but the long term effects were clearly seen. Zelda Dungeon was now on its own, and no longer under the shadow of being a hosted website of another Zelda site.

Layout 4.0 - New Co-Webmaster
Zelda Dungeon released Layout version 4.0 on May 3rd, 2003. This layout was the first and only website that was not actually created by Mases, a staff member, or an online friend. Instead, Mases found this layout online from a website known as Free Layouts. The site offered a bunch of free layout templates that could be freely used by anybody who runs a website. The layouts color scheme was drastically different than the previous two white layouts, and overall, it had a much darker feel to it. After the initial release of the layout, Mases found that there was another, much smaller website, using the exact same layout template found at Free Layouts. This fact, along with the lack of uniqueness that the layout had, caused the layout to not be much of a hit with the frequent visitors of the website and Mases himself.

After Steph became the first staff member of Zelda Dungeon a year earlier, the website hired numerous staff members to write content, post news on the sites index page, write articles and editorials, but none of these staff members ever ended up sticking around for more than a couple weeks. On May 3rd, the same day as the launch of layout 4.0, Mases hired a new staff member who went by the alias of Cartoons. Upon his hiring, Cartoons was treated as a normal staff member at the time, and was assigned to work on content projects for the Ocarina of Time as well as some material for the Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages. After being told which parts of the website that he would work on, Cartoons worked very hard and efficiently and just mere hours after being assigned this material, his first content pieces were ready to go online.

Mases saw this dedication that Cartoons had for the website, and this led to a close bond being formed between Mases and Cartoons. Over the next several months of the websites existence, updates became very frequent, content was being added on a near daily basis, and the sites visitors were experiencing record highs. On August 18th of 2003, the eve of the websites second birthday, Zelda Dungeon hit the mark of 1000 visitors in a single day. This achievement was reached by the hard work over the Summer of 2003 by Mases and Cartoons. Later this year, rewarding him of his hard work, Cartoons was promoted to a Webmaster role at Zelda Dungeon.

It was also during this time period, that the first ideas of a Zelda Dungeon Forum were being toss around. Mases was reluctant to create his own forum, as he felt it would be distracting from growth of the actual website, and because of the relative youth of Zelda Dungeon, would not become much of a success. However, Mases began seeing the importance of giving a fan base a place to discuss, and formed the first of what became a series of partnered forums. Rather than attempting to create his own forum, Mases agreed to link to existing forums of various affiliate websites of Zelda Dungeon. This idea held strong for quite awhile, until Zelda Dungeon attempted its first forum at a later point in time.

Layout 5.0 - Green Return
Layout 5.0 was released on November 25th, 2003. The layout was created by Avenged, who at the time, was the Webmaster of a Zelda website known as Zelda Chronicles. The website marked the return of the green color scheme that was seen in Layout 1.0. The sidebars took a look which was similar to that of Layout 2.0, and scrapped the boxed sections along the navigation bars that were seen in layout 3 and 4. The layout was filled with dozens of variations of the color green, and this could be seen with a quick glance of the index page. There were very few images within the layout, and this allowed the green background to really stand out.

During the time period of this layout, Zelda Dungeon was able to affiliate with Zelda Power, one of the biggest inspirations for Mases throughout the creation and growth of Zelda Dungeon.

The site continued grow in content and size, parleying the growth from Layout 4 to reach even new heights. However, towards the end of this layouts lifespan, a stunt to the growth of Zelda Dungeon occurred once again because of hosting problems. Acidmist had been a great website for free hosting and a free domain name, but a big downfall was the poor technical support that was offered, and the reluctance of them to comply with the needs of their clients. In this case, Zelda Dungeon had outgrown the hosting package that acidmist offered, and towards the end of each month, the site was reaching its bandwidth limits and the site was coming offline.

This layout did see the hiring of a brand new staff member, Metalmallow. Metalmallow was hired by Cartoons to help Zelda Dungeon in the graphics field. Metalmallow created dozens of messenger icon, wallpaper images, avatars, and more. Metamallow never wrote content, but was used often behind the scenes at the website on various projects that Mases and Cartoons were working on.

Layout 6.0 - ZeldaDungeon.net
During the rough stretch towards the end of the lifespan of Layout 5.0, Zelda Dungeon also hired a new staff member to help produce a brand new layout. This new staff member began creating layout 6.0, but never quite finished before he vanished from the website. It is not known exactly what happened to this member or to where this member went off to, but the layout was not quite complete. Mases and Cartoons had all the various images that went with the layout, but it was only partially coded when the creator left. This made Cartoons and Mases slowly piece together the layout, which at the time was quite difficult given the primitive knowledge that both Mases and Cartoons had with coding. After nearly three weeks of the site going without an update, Layout 6.0 was launched on March 30th, 2004. It was the first of all the Zelda Dungeon layouts to be created and hand coded by members of the Zelda Dungeon staff.

The hosting problems with Acidmist continued, and the search for yet another new host had begun. The hosting service of acidmist had cut off all contact from Zelda Dungeon, and this made any fix with the hosting impossible. Unfortunately this also meant that the zeldadungeon.com domain name was also in serious jeopardy. After a search for various other websites that offered free hosting services, Zelda Dungeon discovered a website known as Telefragged. The website was a well established gaming website that hosted several large fan websites from all over the gaming spectrum. They offered free hosting in exchange for a simple banner advertisement that had to be placed on the website. Mases jumped at this over and after weeks of uncertainty with acidmist, the website moved to Telefragged and was now located at zd.telefragged.com.

With the domain name switch, visitors immediately plummeted. Fortunately enough for Zelda Dungeon, the switch ended up being a great benefit, as for the first time in quite awhile, the website was hosted on a consistent server, and visitors soon reached their peak position during the layout 5.0 era.

The 6th layout of Zelda Dungeon was the first layout that had a quick navigation system for the Zelda games. This was a trend started by popular Zelda websites such as Zelda Elements and Zelda Universe, and during this period, nearly every single large sized Zelda website had a quick navigation menu. The quick menu and the additional images on the side bars led this layout to be by far the most image complex layout to date. The lavender colored layout was also something quite different than any previous Zelda Dungeon layout, and was quite a unique look in color for its time. However, after the always strong initial reaction of the layouts launch, most fans did not have good views of the layout.

During this time period, Zelda Dungeon switched to Cutenews. A news system that allowed users to make edits on the sites index page without having to edit and upload pages through the normal FTP programs. Having a new content management system like this allowed Zelda Dungeon to have staff members that can work independently to post news articles without having to go through one of the Webmasters or upload through FTP. Thus, during this time period, several new staff members would come and go, many acting as news reporters. Unfortunately, none of these staff members ever stuck around for more than just a couple of months.

Zelda Dungeon also saw its first active participation in a forum during this time period. One of the websites closest friends at the time was a website known as Zelda Legacies. They had their own community forum, but it was run by Cartoons, a webmaster of Zelda Dungeon. While not officially a part of Zelda Dungeon at its conception, the forums were actively promoted at Zelda Dungeon with links and consistent mentions of the forums. Throughout this time period, the website Zelda Legacies was beginning to dwindle away, and the forums were becoming more and more interlaced with Zelda Dungeon. This forum was known as the Forsaken Forums and would would become known as the 1st generation of Zelda Dungeon forums. The forum was run on the vBulletin forum software, which was licensed to the webmaster of Zelda Legacies. Unfortunately, Zelda Legacies and its forums experienced some rough times and went offline, leaving Zelda Dungeon without its own community forum. Throughout its lifetime, the first generation of forums for Zelda Dungeon accumulated over 300 registered members and 7,000 total posts.

Layout 7.0 - Community Forums
Layout 7.0 was launched on August 23rd, 2004, just four days after the websites third anniversary. This was the first of three layouts that would keep the tradition of launching a layout in celebration of the websites birthday. The layout itself returned Zelda Dungeon to white background that wasn't seen since the websites 3rd layout. The layout was created by Zelda Dungeon's very own Metalmallow, and it was his first attempt at a layout. The color scheme was quite a shift from the previous three layouts, which featured much more colorful looks. The layout did however, receive a mostly positive reaction from fans of the website.

Zelda Dungeon's content areas began making a gradual shift from standard content to full blown walkthroughs during the period just prior to the launch of this layout, as well as through much of this layouts lifespan. The first of these walkthroughs was completed in the summer of 2004 and it was the A Link to the Past site walkthrough. It was the first full game guide at Zelda Dungeon to have a complete walkthrough of the game, complete with both text and sceenshots. This new standard of game guides carried over to the original Legend of Zelda, which was completed in October of 2004. In retrospect, many of these early guides appear to be quite primitive, but at the time of their release, it was top of the line material.

Shortly after the fall of the first generation of forums, Cartoons wanted to relaunch the forums once again, and he did so on October 10th of 2004. The was the first forum software to be hosted by Zelda Dungeon and it became known as the 2nd generation of Zelda Dungeon forums. The forum program used for this second forum was the phpbb software. Phpbb is a very popular free forum software that was used by several Zelda fan websites at the time. The forum software offered a whole listing of possibilities through various forum modifications. However, due to the lack of experience with the software from the Zelda Dungeon staff, the forums never did get fully customizable at this primitive state. Activity at the forum did in fact spark immediately upon the launch of the forums, and a steady incline in activity followed for the next several months.

Near the end of 2004, Mases was becoming more and more inactive with the day to day Webmaster activities of the website. He did however stay active with brand new content every so often, but he had taken a back seat while Cartoons was running the website. The sites growth continued with Cartoons at the helm and during this time, the site continued growing its reputation amongst the community, having affiliated with several large Zelda websites at the time, such as Ganon's Tower and LegendOfZelda.com.

Layout 8.0 - New Heights
After experiencing quite a bit of growth with layout 7.0, Zelda Dungeon launched layout 8.0 on February 25th, 2005. The layout was MetalMallow's second attempt at a layout, and it took upon a gold color scheme, much different than the previous white color themed layout. The layout dropped the quick links navigation at the top of the site that could be seen in the previous two layouts. Other than that, the overall display of the layout had undergone very minor changes.

This era of the website saw some major changes in the day to day activities and updates at the website. In the previous four layouts, Mases and Cartoons were the primary news posters at the website, with the occasional post by MetalMallow. However, during the months after the release of layout 8.0, Zelda Dungeon hired several new staff members in Air Grady and Chance. Air Grady was brought on board to report on recent Nintendo and Zelda news, at which updates were flowing in every few days. Chance was hired at the website to helper boaster the graphics department of the site, adding various new icons and buttons, as well as Zelda related wallpapers. Additionally, with the webmaster and game content updates from Mases and Cartoons, news updates were flowing into the website on a near daily basis.

In January of 2005, the The Minish Cap was released for the Game Boy Advance in the United States. Just a few months after the release of the game, Mases began working on a Minish Cap Walkthrough, and continued to do so throughout the fall and summer. With the updates on the Minish Cap Walkthrough and content sections, as well as the frequent updates by the staff members of the website, visitors began soaring to new heights. The website repeatedly was breaking new records in total visitors for a single day, passing the 2500 mark, and even the 3000 visitors mark. On April 2nd of 2005, Zelda Dungeon received 3159 unique visitors, which was a single day record at the time and this record would stand for the next 29 months.

Continued growth can be seen with the website during this period of time, a Zelda Dungeon was able to affiliate with some more of the larger Zelda websites in the community, including our hold host and Zelda megasite at the time, Zelda Universe. Additionally, Zelda Dungeon affiliated with the website Zelda Domain, a now closed website, but at the time followed a similar path as Zelda Dungeon; A slow but steady climb up the rankings of Zelda websites.

The Zelda Dungeon Forums also continued to slowly grow during this point in time, eclipsing the 200 member mark and the 5000 posts count. More importantly, it was during this point in time that the Zelda Dungeon Forums saw the registration of several members who would go on to become forum staff members. Over three and half years later, many of these members still remain a part of the Zelda Dungeon forum staff including Arbiter Y2K3 and Super Moderator Linkman8.

Layout 9.0 - Big Surprise
The 9th layout for Zelda Dungeon was released just before the sites 4th birthday on August 18th, 2005. The organization of this layout was done by Cartoons, and the coder of the layout was Henry of Zelda Dimension, a now closed website. MetalMallow and Chance also contributed with some imagery and help with the coding. The layout was created behind the scenes by Cartoons, so much so that Mases did not even know about the layout. On the day of the sites birthday, Cartoons released the layout and made a post entitled 'Surprise' to celebrate the sites birthday. The next morning on the sites birthday, Mases came to the website to see the big surprise and made a formal happy birthday post, thanking Cartoons, Henry, and the fans of the website.

On November 14th of 2005, Avenged, who was known as A7X420 at the time, joined Zelda Dungeon as a new Webmaster. Avenged was a webmaster of his own Legend of Zelda Website, Zelda Chronicles, but because of some difficulties he was forced to shut his own website down. Avenged was no stranger to Zelda Dungeon as he was good friends with Mases and even created layout 5.0 for Zelda Dungeon in the past. With Avenged coming over to the website, he brought over a ton of material that was formally exclusive to Zelda Chronicles. This included various Fan Theories, an Encyclopedia, Hylian creations, and The Beta Files. These new sections helped expand interactiveness between Zelda Dungeon and the community as it offered a few ways that fans can get their material on the website. Additionally, the Beta Files included some rare material that Zelda Dungeon had never had before.

In early January of 2006, our host had setup a Zelda Dungeon media server as part of the already established 3ddownloads. At this time, Zelda Dungeon began offering a whole listing of downloadable music from the Legend of Zelda series, including mp3 file rips from the actual games. Additionally soundtracks for many of the Zelda games were released as part of the new media server at 3ddownloads.

On January 29th of 2006, the long process of writing The Minish Cap Walkthrough was now complete and available for use, roughly one year after the games release in the United States. The combination of expanding content, a media server, and a few new large affiliates such as The Grand Adventures, a now closed Zelda website, allowed Zelda Dungeon to have a big rebound in visitors after a drop towards the end of 2006.

Layout 10.0 - Short Lived
Layout 10.0 of Zelda Dungeon was launched on February 12th, 2006. It was created by Webmaster of Zelda Dungeon, Avenged, who at this time was using the alias Chrono. This was Avenged's 2nd attempt at a Zelda Dungeon layout after previous helping creating layout 5.0. One notable change with this layout from any previous layout, is the lack of symmetry. While there are still two navigation bars on both sides of the layout, this marked the first layout where the bars had a different appearance.

The layout in general had an old school Zelda feel to it, using many aspects from the original Legend of Zelda and Adventure of Link. The banner used in the background of the header was a map created by Melora, the Webmaster of History of Hyrule. It was a painting like modification to the original Legend of Zelda overworld. Overlapping the map, was a rare official artwork image of Link from the Adventure of Link. The rest of the layout had sprite images and background themes that very much resembles Adventure of Link. It is no secret based on the artwork and style of the layout that the Adventure of Link is Avenged's favorite Zelda game. The layout did come out really well, but unfortunately for one reason or another, it did not last too long.

There was even a small, unknown Easter egg at the corner of the banner. The statement, "The Evil Jar Awaits The Chosen One" can be seen clearly, and this is a reference to the Legend of Zelda Animated Series. The evil jar was an item used by Ganon during the cartoon and it was symbolic as an item that was kept for the dead. Thus, inferring that death awaits Link.

After the delay of Twilight Princess a few months back and the slowness of Zelda material, the community was slowing down a bit, with there being less activity at websites, less updates at Zelda Dungeon, and thus, visitors were steadily declining, far from the peek numbers Zelda Dungeon had reached with Layout 8.0. However, during this time, Zelda Dungeon continued to grow in reputation and picked up an affiliation partnership with one of the largest media based Zelda websites, Zelda Legends.

A lot of the Zelda Chronicles content that Avenged had at his website was slowly but surely brought over to Zelda Dungeon. During this transition, much of the content was reworked to bring up to new standards, and one of the highlights was Avenged's 'Beta Files'. This included a well documented and thorough analysis of the beta history of Ocarina of Time. Prior to Avenged coming on board, Zelda Dungeon had a Coppermine Image Gallery, but it was not popular, had very few images, and was not being up kept. With Avenged as a Webmaster, the image gallery was no longer neglected and media from Zelda Chronicles and other online sources was constantly being added. Another new feature at Zelda Dungeon was a character game. Each week Avenged would post up a screenshot from a Legend of Zelda game, but would blur out a character. Fans would then be able to send in their guesses as to who the hidden character was, and the results were posted the next week, along with a new character. It was one of many intuitive ideas that Avenged had to get fans more involved with the community.

Layout 11.0 - Bright Lights
Just weeks after the release of layout 10.0, talks of yet another new Zelda Dungeon Layout was in the works. Layout 11.0 was released on April 19th, 2006, and it was Avenged's third layout creation for Zelda Dungeon. The release of the layout came with almost universal displeasure with the color scheme. The new layout took on a gold color scheme, but most fans considered it to be too yellow and viewed it as being way too bright. Along with the new layout came a new greenish-gold forum template, which unlike the layout, received positive reactions from the fans of Zelda Dungeon.

While Avenged and Mases were big proponents of the layout, the general fan base was not, and a steady decline in visitors was a result of this layout. After noticing the fans displeasure just three months after the launch of the layout, plans of replacing it with a better layout was in the works. While the site was on a steady decline, Zelda Dungeon did pick up a few new affiliates during this time including Zelda Elements, one of the many Zelda websites that Mases looked up to during the creation and early years of the website. Zelda Dungeon also affiliated with one of the fastest growing Zelda websites at the time, Zelda Legacy. Killswitch, the Webmaster of Zelda Legacy at the time, was good friends with both Mases and Avenged.

The staff at Zelda Dungeon was shuffling around quite a bit at this time. Cartoons, after being quite inactive for several months prior to this time, began making a small come back with frequent updates in the summer of 2006. Avenged on the other hand, had his interest sway away from the Legend of Zelda series and Zelda Dungeon in particular. Avenged began working on his own website, Planet Vegeta, a dragon ball website, and became less active as a Webmaster of Zelda Dungeon. Avenged later resigned from his position as a Webmaster of Zelda Dungeon and went on to resurrect his old Zelda website, Zelda Chronicles. Avenged provided the site with a steady flow of new material, frequent content updates, news articles, and two layouts during his time as Webmaster. With Avenged gone from the website, this marked the first time in several years where the site had fallen to just two active staff members.

Layout 12.0 - Failed Mergers
Avenged and MetalMallow had been a big part of the creation of the previous 5 layouts at Zelda Dungeon, and now with both of them gone from the Zelda Dungeon staff, Mases looked elsewhere for help with the creation of a new layout. Originally Killswitch of Zelda Legacy offered to create a layout for Zelda Dungeon. However, after numerous delays and a few communication problems, a layout created by Killswitch was in the works. However, after a few compatibility issues, the layout was scratched. After approaching Cartoons with the layout dilemma, Cartoons was able to get one of his good friends at the time, Jessica, to create a layout for the website. The new layout launched on the websites 5th birthday on August 19th, 2006.

The layout returned to a greenish color, but it took on a much duller color scheme than anything that Zelda Dungeon previously had. The layout was received with a mixed reaction from fans. Most users at the time did not overly like the layout, but much preferred it over the bright Layout 11.0.

Not too much happened during much of the first few months of Layout 12.0. Several new staff members were brought on board, and frequent news updates and articles were written, but none of them received a positive reaction from the fans. The ideas were scrapped, and the staff members began to dwindle away. Usual content upgrades were being made at the website, and even the beginnings of a Link's Awakening Walkthrough was under way. The walkthrough however was never finished at this time, as other issues became more prevalent with the website.

Cartoons, the long time Webmaster of Zelda Dungeon, was beginning to take a much less active role with the website. He would very rarely make any news updates, and most of all his work was now being done behind the scenes. In January of 2007, Cartoons removed himself from the staff page at Zelda Dungeon and months later, Mases posted an update about his formal resignation as Webmaster of Zelda Dungeon. This left Mases, for the first time in nearly five years, as the only active staff member of Zelda Dungeon.

On October 31st of 2006, Mases had made an update at the website, stating that it was the end of Zelda Dungeon as everybody had come to know it. Mases had been disgusted with the direction of the website over the previous few months as he watched site visitors dwindle to the worst that they had been in nearly 3 years. Even on the eve of the release of Twilight Princess, Mases at the time believed that Zelda Dungeon could not continue to exist in its current form, and Mases was beginning to look elsewhere in the community for Zelda websites to merge with.

The first website that Mases had approached was at the time, a small, little known website, known as Zelda Compendium. Zelda Compendium was a brand new website, only online for a couple of months, but was beginning to develop recognition for having very in-depth game content for some of the older Zelda games. Game content quality that had not been seen anywhere on the internet. Mases contacted the Webmaster of Zelda Compendium with an initial offer to merge websites. Given the youth of Zelda Compendium at the time, the offer Mases made, would be to have Zelda Compendium merge into Zelda Dungeon. All of Zelda Compendium's content would now be available at the website, but more importantly, the Webmaster of Zelda Compendium would become a Webmaster of Zelda Dungeon on an equal par with Mases. The Webmaster of Zelda Compendium was ecstatic about the idea and accepted the offer by Mases, just days before Mases made his update on October 31st. However, days had gone by where Mases attempted to contact the Webmaster of Zelda Compendium, but to no avail. Weeks passed, and Mases had not seen him online and received no e-mail response from him. The website Zelda Compendium, after being updated on a frequent basis for its several month history, had not been updated, and would never be updated again. The site soon disappeared from the internet and the Webmaster was never to be heard of again. To this day, it is unclear exactly what happened to Zelda Compendium and what happened to the webmaster of Zelda Compendium, but needless to say, no merger between the sites ever took place.

Several weeks later, the long awaited Twilight Princess was released. A seemingly dejected Mases, after the failure with Zelda Compendium, was unsure of what to do with the website. After realizing Zelda Compendium was gone, Mases looked for other Zelda websites on the internet for a potential merger. Mases contacted Killswitch of Zelda Legacy, and laid out an offer for a merger between the two sites. Mases was interested in merging Zelda Dungeon into the then fast growing website, Zelda Legacy. Mases at the time, was willing to give up the Zelda Dungeon site name, and just wanted the forums to be known as the Zelda Dungeon. In addition, the mark of this potential merger, would be released with a brand new layout, merged content, and a merged history of Zelda Dungeon and Zelda Legacy. Additionally, Mases wanted the ability to bring over a few of the Zelda Dungeon Forum moderators to the forum team at Zelda Legacy. Killswitch was initially interested in the idea at the time, but shortly after, interest seemed to gradually fade away. After several more weeks of slow movement at Zelda Dungeon, little communication, merger talks with Zelda Legacy were dead.

With two consecutive failed attempts at mergers, even with the release of Twilight Princess, Zelda Dungeon had truly hit rock bottom. Site visitors did receive a short jump with the release of Twilight Princess, but moral at the website was at an all time low. December of 2006 marked the first month in site history that there was no update. It wasn't until January of 2007 where Mases formally announced that the plans he had with the website had not fallen through, and thus, regular updates would resume.

In January of 2007, Mases released a new section at the website known as 'Mas and Vic Present'. In this section of the website, Mases, and his close friend Victor, would review old NES games with a mixture of a serious and humerus tone. The videos were uploaded to Youtube, but Zelda Dungeon was the primary home of the videos. A section at the forums was created for the game reviews, and the project did end up gathering a decent viewership. The long term effects of this, included a gradual shift towards the inclusion of video based content at the website.

In February of 2007, Mases released what he dubbed as the 'State of the Dungeon address'. It was the first video based update where Mased spoke about the failed mergers with Zelda Compendium, Zelda Legacy, and a broad overview of what had happened in the previous few months. Mases also gave a brief idea of plans that he had for the future with the website, including a much bigger emphasis on the inclusion of more video content.

This video update sparked interest from Alex and Chance, the webmasters of LegendOfZelda.com. Alex was the original creator of the website, but at the time was not the primary Webmaster. Chance, who was the same Chance who was a previous staff member at Zelda Dungeon, had joined the website, work his way up the ranks, and became a Webmaster of LegendOfZelda.com. Alex and Chance were also interested in finding another Zelda website on the internet to potentially merge with, and after seeing the video update by Mases, it made perfect sense. Just days after the update, both Webmasters of LoZ.com approached Mases and discussions of a potential merger were underway. Mases was ecstatic about the idea when he originally confronted, because he know of the popularity of LoZ.com, and the potential that could become of the merged website. The original foundation of the merger was that for a period of time, the website would be known as, Legend of Zelda.com - Zelda Dungeon, a split name that would incorporate both websites. The forums would be renamed to be known as the Zelda Dungeon, rather than their name at the time, the LoZ.com Forums. Mases would have been given Webmaster controls over the website, and would merge all of Zelda Dungeon's game content into LoZ.com. Members of the Zelda Dungeon forums would be merged into LoZ.com, and they would be allowed to keep their original join date and post count. Additionally, Onilink89, one of the moderators at the time at the Zelda Dungeon Forums, would keep his moderation status when merging into LoZ.com.

On paper, the merger made a lot of sense, and the pre-planning of it was going well. LoZ.com was a site primarily focused on media, news reporting, and a massive community forum. Zelda Dungeon was focused on content and game strategy guides. Each sites weakness was the other websites skill. At the original planning of the merger, the new merged site would be commenced with a brand new layout, signifying this big moment in history. There was a bit of impatience from the Webmasters of both sides, and there a certain push to get this done as swiftly as possible. Just days later, Mases agreed to the terms, and a launch date was set. The original idea of releasing a brand new layout upon had fallen through the cracks, but rather, would just be something that would release at a later point in time.

Mases then created a video update on his site, signifying the merger and Zelda Dungeon Forum members began flowing into the LoZ.com forums. Chance, Alex, and Mases all made new posts at LoZ.com, to signify the merger. The night that this happened, thoughts were going through the mind of Mases, and he was unsure whether or not he rushed into this decision or not. After spending a few hours thinking about it and reflecting on the history of Zelda Dungeon, it hit Mases that this was a mistake on his part. Mases rushed and deleted his video update at Zelda Dungeon, deleted the three news posts at LoZ.com, and even deleted his State of the Dungeon video update. It was as if the last few hours of the website had never happened, and Mases had pulled back on his offer of a merger. Mases believed that he rushed into the merger, and that rather than it appearing as a true merger of sites, it seemed more so that Mases was just joining LoZ.com as a new Webmaster. After hearing the news, the relationship between Mases and Chance took a sour turn, and talks of the merger had died out.

Prior to the talks with LoZ.com, Mases had been looking to get away from the dull green layout that set a bad tone for the website. After the merger did not fall through, talks of changing the layout emerged.

Layout 13.0 - Video Content
Layout 13.0 was the second layout that was created by Jessica and it took on a much brighter color than the previous dull layout. The layout was focused on simplicity, with two standard navigation bars, very limited amounts of imagery, and a large content area.

After a failed merger attempt with LegendOfZelda.com in the previous layouts lifespan, talks of a potential merger began to pop up once again. Both sides acknowledged the problems that occurred the first time around and tried to give it another go. Disputes arose about what the possible new layout for this merged site would look like, tensions arose, and the second merger idea never came to fruition and was almost immediately shut down.

The new layout marked the continuation of the emphases on video based material at the website. All updates during this layout were done in a video form. With this being the case, updates were much larger, but also further apart from one another, often happening every weekend or every other weekend. Updates were embedded onto the sites home page, and a subsequent textual update was placed right below the video. In addition to video updates, Mas and Vic NES reviews continued during this period of time, and towards the end of the layout, a subsequent page was created devoted to the Mas and Vic reviews.

In addition to videos to the NES game reviews and video updates, several more videos were added to the site. One of the features was a 'Top 10 Zelda Website' video countdown, where Mases and other webmasters voted on websites to be listed. After tallying up the vote totals, Mases began airing these countdown videos. The countdown was originally destined to be released in five segments, with each segment covering two websites in the countdown. However, only four of these segments were ever released, which meant only sites three through ten were ever revealed.

Another feature that has since grown at the website, was the inclusion of video based walkthroughs. Mases began working on a video guide for the original Legend of Zelda title. The videos were released at Zelda Dungeon as well as on Youtube. The current Youtube account for Zelda Dungeon was created on Fabruary 22nd, and quickly began to gather a following of subscribers.

On March 25th, 2007, Caleb Simpson was formally announced as a new staff member at Zelda Dungeon. Caleb actually applied to the website months before he was hired, but because of the uncertainty with the site during these months, he wasn't officially hired until March. Caleb began working at the website as a content specialist, working with Mases on some of the older game content, with more of an emphasis on better display and completeness of the material. Mases and Caleb revamped much of the original Legend of Zelda section of the site during the time period of this layout.

Layout 14.0 - Phantom Growth
Avenged, after leaving the website 10 months ago, returned to Zelda Dungeon at the launch of Layout 14.0. The layout that was launched was originally intended to be released for Avenged's own Zelda website, Zelda Chronicles. After various issues came up with Zelda Chronicles, and some influence from Mases, Avenged decided to come back to Zelda Dungeon and the layout was launched on May 14th, 2007. Avenged was still going by the name Chrono during this time period, but later in the layout, he officially changed his alias to Avenged, as it is presently known. The update at the time of the launch inferred that this was a site merger between Zelda Chronicles and Zelda Dungeon, but it did not exactly happen. Avenged coming to Zelda Dungeon was very similar to the first time he came to the website. He brought over another load of information that was previously only on Zelda Chronicles. Avenged's role at the website after this new site merger had to do with managing the fan content such as fan fictions, fan artwork, hylian creations, and various other projects. Additionally, at the initial launch of the layout, Zelda Dungeon had this idea of expanding the range of news updates, including broader Gaming and Nintendo news, allowing the site to make daily updates. This helped contribute to the slow and steady rebounds of visitors during the time of the layout.

The layout had a few notable differences than any previous Zelda Dungeon based layout. The obvious difference has to do with the pure color scheme. The tannish color offered a fresh look to Zelda Dungeon, which had been using green, blue, and gold based layouts for the past several years. This marked the first layout in Zelda Dungeon history that went away from the standard two navigation bar system. While there was still two navigation bars on the website, they were both arranged on the right side of the layout. Perhaps the most notable difference was the easy navigation of the games during this period of time. This layout marked the return to a quick links navigation system for all of the Zelda games. However, it was more than just links to the game index pages. When the viewer scrolled their mouse over the game menu at the top of the layout, a small drop down menu would pop up, allowing the viewer to quickly navigate to a specific game page, without having to go through the game index page. These drop downs did not have a complete listing of every page, as Mases and Avenged believed that these menus would appear quite bulky, but rather, only a few important links were listed on the drop downs.

With the merger of Zelda Chronicles and Zelda Dungeon, several new large Zelda websites joined Zelda Dungeon's affiliate listing including Zelda Planet, which at the time was one of the largest Zelda websites. Additionally, Zelda Dungeon affiliated with North Castle, a site dedicated to fan works, and which would become an important affiliate of Zelda Dungeon's in the coming years.

Content during this layout began to really thrive, starting with the continuation and completion of the Legend of Zelda Video Guide. The success of the Legend of Zelda Video Walkthrough, led the Zelda Dungeon YouTube account to reaching 145 subscribers by August 6th, 2007. Additionally, Caleb began working on the Majora's Mask site walkthrough. Before Caleb joined the Zelda Dungeon staff, he had already completed a Majora's Mask text guide, in a style similar to what would be accustomed to what is found at gamefaqs. Caleb began the transition of migrating the text guide into a full blow site walkthrough, complete with screenshots and artwork, all in a well displayed form, with game boxes keeping things informative and organized. This new style of walkthrough was the foundation for future walkthroughs, and was a drastic upgrade to the previous style that Mases created with the A Link to the Past and the Minish Cap walkthroughs, years ago.

Since Cartoons left the website earlier within the year, the Zelda Dungeon Forums were becoming more neglected by Mases, and thus, even security upgrades for the forums phpbb software were ignored. Mases was disgusted with the direction that forum was going in, as during this time, the forum was becoming more focused on forum word games, textual role playing games, and a controversial mature discussion. None of which had much to do with Zelda Dungeon or the Legend of Zelda series.

On July 27th, due to poor handling of security by Mases, the Zelda Dungeon forums were hacked into. Later that day, Mases made an announcement about the hacking and removed the forums from the website. In subsequent announcements, Mases claimed that the hacking was irreversible and that the data from the php forums was gone forever. However, this was not entirely true, as both Mases and former staff member Cartoons, had database backups that could have been restored. Mases chose not to pursue this route and made the forum appear as if it was gone for good. Mases had long term goals of restarting the forums with new forum software and a fresh slate. On the 28th of July, Mases made an announcement that the forums at Zelda Legacy were to become the new temporary home of Zelda Dungeon until further notice.

On August 19th, 2007, Zelda Dungeon celebrated its 6th birthday and had one of its largest content updates in a single day. On this one day, two new content pages for Majora's Mask were completed, a new Link to the Past content page, two full chapters of the Majora's Mask walkthrough, as well as several new videos, including a new Mas and Vic NES review. An even bigger update was planned, however Avenged was not able to contribute content to the website at the time. Avenged had aspirations of resurrecting his own website, Zelda Chronicles, and shortly after the sites birthday, Avenged left as a webmaster of Zelda Dungeon. Avenged has since gone on to create a popular Dragonball movie fan site known as Dragonball Legends.

Just days after the sites birthday, Caleb was rewarded for his hard work and dedication and was officially promoted to a Webmaster position on August 28th, 2007. Just days later on September 2nd, 2007, Caleb completed the Majora's Mask site walkthrough as well as all other Majora's Mask game pages. A week later on the 8th of September, Caleb released the Majora's Mask official guide. The official guide was a complete text guide for Majora's Mask, including a full walkthrough, boss guide, enemy guide, character guide, and much more. The guide included detailed textual maps that made the guide stand out compared to most other textual guides for Majora's Mask. The guide marked the creation of a Zelda Dungeon gamefaqs account, where the Majora's Mask site walkthrough was released. The official guide is the largest guide on Gamefaqs for Majora's Mask and it has since received a star ranking by the website. The official guide is also currently featured at our affiliate, Zelda Power.

Just over a week later, on September 17th, Caleb began work on the Ocarina of Time site walkthrough. During this time, Mases was also in the process of creating an Adventure of Link video walkthrough for the Zelda Dungeon YouTube account. However, with the imminent release of Phantom Hourglass for the Nintendo DS, both projects were brought to a halt. Earlier within the month on September 6th of 2007, Zelda Dungeon broke its single day visitor mark of 3159 unique visitors, a mark that stood for nearly 27 months. The 6th of September recorded 3325 unique visitors, and to this date, there has yet to be a single day at Zelda Dungeon that has fallen under this mark of unique visitors.

On September 26th of 2007, the first pieces of Phantom Hourglass content were being released for the site, five days before the games launch on October 1st. On October 9th, just over a week after the release of Phantom Hourglass, chapter 1 of the site walkthrough had been made available. The walkthrough was written by Mases, but edited and put together by Caleb, who at the time, did not even own a copy of the game. Over the next several weeks, new Phantom Hourglass content pages and walkthrough chapters were flowing in multiple times per week.

On October 16th of 2007, Zelda Dungeon launched a brand new Zelda Dungeon Forum, this time abandoning the old phpbb software, and switching to mybb. The forums were created by Mases, with the support of former webmaster, Cartoons. The forums began to immediately pick up a fan base, many joining to discuss the recently released Phantom Hourglass, while others joining from the old incarnation of the forums. The forum was drastically different than the previous incarnations of the forums, as at the time of launch, it exclusively featured site and Zelda material, and did not have any features that were popular at the old forums, including a general discussion, role playing area, forum text game area, or a mature discussion. Mases received harsh criticism by some members of the old community at the time of this, but Mases kept to his goal early on in the forums life, and many of the long time Zelda Dungeon members left the community.

Layout 15.0 - Sprite Layout
Layout 15 was launched on November 22nd, 2007, the day after Thanksgiving. This day is well known in America as 'Black Friday', but at Zelda Dungeon, Mases launched the layout with the title of 'Blue Friday', referencing the blue color scheme that the layout had. The layout was the first layout that was created by webmaster of Zelda Dungeon, Caleb. It was themed after the Temple of Droplets from The Minish Cap. The initial goal was to design a layout that made it feel like one was actually within a dungeon. The top banner of the website had a puzzle within it. A block of ice with a small key can be seen on the right side of the banner, and an area of fire can be seen on the left side of the banner. Much like many puzzles within the Temple of Droplets, the puzzles solution has Link pushing blocks of ice to get the small key to the fire. The webmasters originally had an idea of making the banner interactive and playable, but this never did come to fruition.

The layout added a few buttons along the right navigation signifying the current site projects that the staff was working on. One of which, was Phantom Hourglass. Still less than two months after the release of Phantom Hourglass, the Zelda Dungeon team progressed on the section and walkthrough. Two new chapters were released on the day of the layout, with subsequent chapters being released over the next several weeks. On January 2nd, just 3 months after the release of Phantom Hourglass, the walkthrough had been completed. In the coming weeks, just about all the subsequent side pages were also completed. With Phantom Hourglass now in the clear, Caleb was able to continue his work on the Ocarina of Time.

On January 23rd of 2008, the Zelda Dungeon Forums received a big upgrade as the site switched over to the vbulletin forum software. This switchover saw a large initial push in registered members and total posts. A similar forum template remained at Zelda Dungeon and only minor adjustments were made. Over the coming months, significant changes were made to the hierarchy of the forums with the introduction of new forum rankings. New shoutbox software was installed on the forums, and with that, a new usergroup known as Arbiters were established. Arbiters are those who are just behind Moderators on the forum hierarchy and have powers over the new Zelda Dungeon shoutbox.

On March 1st of 2008, Zelda Dungeon was the recipient of the Golden Mirror Shield award, given out by the Exploding Deku Nut. Each year during the month of February, Darth Citrus of EDN hosted the Golden Item Awards, where sites were nominated and awards were given out to sites that were unique, aspiring, had a lively forum, had a great layout, and an award for the lifetime achievement. Zelda Dungeon was award the lifetime achievement award, and it followed with an acceptance post by Mases at Zelda Dungeon in the days following.

Just prior to the release of the new layout, Zelda Dungeon added a new staff member in Dabombster. Dabombster was formally a webmaster at the website, Zelda Legacy. However, after he stepped down from his position, he was seen often at the Zelda Dungeon Forums. Mases approached Dabombster, asking if he had interest in helping out Zelda Dungeon as part of the site staff. Shortly after, Dabombster was added on board to help revamp The Wind Waker section at the website.

(to be continued)