Community:ZeldaInformer

Zelda Informer (ZI) was an award-winning website on the Zangaroa Networks specifically devoted to 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. In 2010 Official Nintendo Magazine named ZeldaInformer one of the three places on the internet to go to for Zelda theorizing.

In early 2016, Zelda Informer was acquired by Zelda Dungeon. It now redirects to Zelda Dungeon as of 2018. Its social media account has remained active as the social media arm for Zelda Dungeon until September 2023.

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 fond of at least some part of ZU (which had, up until that point, a reputation as "unleaveable"), became disappointed with issues about the quality control that seemed to affect the site's reputation. Some effort was made on ZU itself to recognize and address the issue, but discussions and proposals for improvement ranged from impractical to (civility-wise) counterproductive.

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 ideology (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 users' expectations and grown notably, already amassing a reader base of hundreds of visitors daily and a Google pagerank of 3. A modest number on its own, it was a step forward for the first 6 months, legitimizing the site as fast-growing site in the Zelda community. The site continues to grow, but intends to continue improving its content. Its users believe that they have necessary tools to 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, ZeldaInformer and Absolute Zelda announced that they were merging into one larger Zelda site. A visible change was the merging of the two communities by fusing the forums. Absolute Zelda had been closed long ago, 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 new site design, which will be incorporated to the new site once it's finished. Currently, ZeldaInformer will act as the main site with the combined forums of both communities until the new designs are ready to launch.

Other changes of 2008's Revolution Day included the shift from the Cute News system to using the blog-built Movable Type. Being a 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

Hackings and Downtime
In mid-Feb 2008, a hacker known only as "Seabat" managed to inject some code into the SQL tables on VGRC that would make the main site redirect to seabat.110mb.com leaving behind his MSN handle. However, the site was soon restored from the SQL backups made only months prior.

In December of the same year, the VGRC network was hit by a group of Islamic hackers in a continuing series of similar attacks known colloquially to the VGRC community as "the jihad". The hacking was possibly linked to the Seabat 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.

Wiki duties
In July 2007, ZeldaInformer was promoted to mastermind of Zelda Wiki. However, in July 2011, they stepped down from the position so they could develop their own wiki, which would focus on everything related to Nintendo, with a special focus on Zelda. After some months of umbral activity, this wiki was shut down in favor of a partnership with Zeldapedia, which took place on November in the same year. In July 2013, ZeldaInformer terminated the affiliation without alerting Zeldapedia. Soon after, Zeldapedia removed the affiliation link on their main page, finalizing the termination of the affiliation.

Acquisition by Zelda Dungeon
In early 2016, Zelda Informer was acquired by Zelda Dungeon. The site would remain with its own forums and news site, with Zelda Dungeon acting as the walkthrough and information site. Two years later in 2018, Zelda Informer was later shut down, and its URL now redirects to Zelda Dungeon. Much of the content present on Zelda Informer had transferred to Zelda Dungeon by this time. Its social media account was repurposed as the primary social media arm for Zelda Dungeon, sharing news and fan-created content.

Discontinuation of Social Media
With the creation of the Zelda Dungeon social media account, Zelda Informer's account remained active as a legacy account until September 2023, where the decision was made to merge the Zelda Informer account into the primary Zelda Dungeon account.

Community
Originally, ZeldaInformer was closely tied 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 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 features. The most long-running feature is 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 its 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 trend to keep on top of every Zelda-related news.

Controversy
On January 20th, 2010, ZeldaInformer had posted a news article regarding rumors spread across Japanese imageboard 2chan. These rumors revolved around supposed aspects of SS undefined in matters of gameplay, story and setting. Upon further updates of these and other rumors, the website was assuring factual accuracy, only to discover that said leaks were false in their entirety. Since then, ZeldaInformer was given infamy regarding the credibility of their information.