Community:LegendOfZelda.com

Overview
Legendofzelda.com is one of the oldest and most prominent sites in the Online Zelda Community. Led officially by Link of Hyrule and »-LasT-ChaNcE-«, »-LasT-ChaNcE-« and Xízør™ run most of the day-to-day affairs of the site in Link of Hyrule's life in WoW while on a drinking binge-induced extended hiatus. LoZ.com culture is based around its forums, second only to the forums at Zelda Universe. Humor, freedom of expression, tolerance, and love of fun are the major motifs of LoZ.com culture. However, LoZ's reputation of having strict and sometimes stolid moderators and administrators was well earned, and is not let down in the present day.

Early History
LegendOfZelda.com was founded in 1999 by Alex Jones, better known as Link of Hyrule. Little is known about this period in LoZ.com's history, as there only two members remaining from the pre-2002 shut-down: Link of Hyrule, and the Super Moderator and Site Updater, Triforce Guardian.

Nemesis
The user Nemesis (also known as simply "Nemi"), was the first person to be left in charge of LoZ.com during an extended absence by Link of Hyrule. It was during this time that Nemi assumed full autonomous control of the site, and acted much like a tyrant. The corruption was so deep that the site was abandoned and virtually empty, left to rot until Link of Hyrule reappeared in early 2003, and announced a relaunch that did not occur until November of 2004, over a year later, and almost two years after the initial crash.

Xero Gaming
After the crash of 2002 and the relaunch promise of 2003, there were temporary forums set up on Lycos webhosting. These forums lasted for a little under a year before it became apparent that Link of Hyrule had failed to live up to his promise of recreating LoZ.com. In December 2003/January 2004, the administrators Megaman X, Remus, and Droshi all left, taking several prominent members with them and created Xero Gaming, a site dedicated to all gaming, not just the Legend of Zelda series. However, this site became obsolete in November 2004 when the promise of LoZ's return was finally fulfilled, led by Link of Hyrule, and King Krazy Link (better known as simply "KKL").

Hacking Era
After the relaunch of 2004, LoZ saw a tremendous spike in user activity, including joining, posting, logging in, et cetera. However, this activity dwindled down over the course of 2005 and leveled out at a respectable amount. However, there were no spikes in activity until the first hack of the Summer of '05. The site was hacked and many parts of it destroyed, chiefly the forums. The administrator Cartoons rebuilt the site within hours, but was promptly blamed by LoZ's ever pervasive n00b population as the actually perpetrator in the hacking. Due to this supreme ungratefulness, Cartoons abandoned the site in the face of yet another hack and left the reconstruction to the new administrator, »-LasT-ChaNcE-«. Over the course of three days in the month of July, 2005, »-LasT-ChaNcE-« rebuilt the forums, struggling through code and administrative procedures, not just to rebuild the forums, but to make great new forums that would dazzle the members of LoZ.com and hopefully spark more activity.

The relaunch after the second hack was a success, but it would not be long before disaster struck LoZ.com again.

August 2005
On August 17th, 2005, »-LasT-ChaNcE-« removed the forums of LoZ.com and replaced them with a letter of not only resignation, but an explanation of his actions.

According to the letter, he had done these things in lieu of a plot by KKL and Link of Hyrule to remove him as an administrator, barely a month after his great service to LoZ of rebuilding the site. Along with the administrator Darth X (formerly Megaman X), »-LasT-ChaNcE-« recreated the website Xero Gaming at Xerogaming.net (currently renamed "lozmedia.com", where all of the media for LoZ.com is stored). Over 20 of LoZ's best and brightest followed the two and Xero Gaming was an initial success, most of its activity focused on badmouthing LoZ. This schism was not reconciled until almost a year later, on August 4th, 2006 when Xero Gaming (XG) and LoZ merged to become one site once again

It would soon come to pass that Link of Hyrule had been on vacation during said plotting, and »-LasT-ChaNcE-« (better known as simply "Chance") apologized to Link of Hyrule and LoZ.com as a whole. Although KKL restored the forums, they were overmodded (modifications, not moderators) and the code at one point became so garbled that Link of Hyrule asked Chance to be back on the team as an administrator in order to restore them. This marked the beginning of the slow march towards the removal of KKL as an administrator.

Pre-vBulletin
After the restoration of the forums by Chance, in early 2006 KKL was removed as an administrator due to inactivity resulting from his dedication to his own site, Zelda Gaming (no longer in existence). It was after KKL's removal that the long-time member Gohma was appointed as a Forum Administrator. In April of 2006, Chance officially assumed a post of co-ownership of LoZ.com alongside Founder Link of Hyrule. This came along with a server switch that increased LoZ's ability to function and provide for a more active userbase. The rest of 2006 was uneventful for LoZ, until October of that year.

vBulletin Switch
In October 2006, LoZ.com underwent a massive layout change. The forums were changed over from phpBB Software, which LoZ had been using for years, to vBulletin forum Software, and the main site content was all reorganized. The two are integrated, creating one fluid "site" as opposed to two "separate" sites, along with a new addition, the Media Gallery. After the switch to vBulletin, LoZ activity skyrocketed and hasn't slowed down much since. Shortly thereafter, Xízør™ was promoted from a Super Moderator position to a Forum Administrator position, and in May of 2007, he was promoted again to be one of the Webmasters of LoZ. In April of 2007, a short-lived merge was attempted between LoZ and Zelda Dungeon, but it ended in failure due to the inability to compromise on both sides.

New Layout
Beginning just before Xízør™'s promotion to Webmaster until June of 2007, Chance labored over a new LoZ layout, and in June, with the help of many staff members, launched the layout. The layout (LoZ's current) was met with an overall positive reaction, with only 28% of polled members stating that they preferred the old layout more. Despite the success of the new layout, LoZ will not undergo another layout change for a good, long while due to amount of exhausting effort required to successfully create and implement such a thing. The creation of the layout took over a month, with the actual set-up requiring many hours of effort.

Recent History
In the last few months, LoZ has only continued to grow. On June 5th, 2007, LoZ gained its 10,000th registered user. On December 4th, 2007, the 100,000th post was made. LoZ continues to grow, approaching 110,000 posts and 20,000 registered members.

Auxiliary Statistics
By January 1st, 2008:


 * Most Members Online: 384 (11-16-2006 05:02 PM)
 * Registered Users: 14,000
 * Total Forum Post Count: 103,000
 * Top Poster: Doom-Desire - 2838 (Recorded - Not all posts are included in this figure)