Community:Zelda Universe

Introduction
Zelda Universe is a web site devoted to The Legend of Zelda. It has been online since February 2001, when it started out as a small fan site, but has since grown to become the largest and most popular online source for information on The Legend of Zelda.

History
Zelda Universe was started in February of 2001 by Lars-Christian Simonsen, aka AnakiN-. It started out as a small, personal website with sporadic information on Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Within a year, it was expanded to include more indepth coverage of the two games, as well as the older games. Popularity increased almost exponentially with the addition of new content, and reached its peak around the release of The Wind Waker in 2003, when more than 15,000 people visited the site per day on average over a period of a couple of months. Since that it stabilized itself as the most popular Legend of Zelda fan site online.

Summer of 2005 was marked as an important time for the website, when Lars, founder and owner of the site, decided to pull out of the site due to personal reasons. Lee Dodd made an offer which was accepted, and became the new owner of the site.

A year later he decided to cash in, and sold the site on to Yousof ("spdude"). Yousof held the site throughout the year and up to August 2007, when he sold the site to Jason Rappaport, a webmaster and active community member of Zelda Universe. Even though the framework around the site has changed several times since 2005, the core values and day-to-day operations have stayed the same, and Zelda fans and site veterans are still in charge of the maintenance of the site.

Features
Zelda Universe has a long list of features which have helped it become one of the largest sources for Zelda information online. In addition to walkthroughs for every single game, its specialty is specific guides to such things as Items & Equipment, and Heart Pieces. These guides are in-depth and feature rich, most often supported by images to make the guides more enjoyable for the reader.

In addition to this, they have exclusives such as a vast selection of Articles on The Legend of Zelda, a series of editorials called "Behind the Rupees", and a large selection of various Media related to The Legend of Zelda. It also boasts the largest independent Legend of Zelda based discussion forum online. All in all, more than 30,000 people have signed up for Zelda Universe, be it to participate in the Forums, or access the sections which are restricted to registered members only.

Zelda Universe also makes a dedicated effort to keep the visitors up to date on everything that goes on in the world of Zelda, accompanied by frequent updates with new and/or improved content.