Community:LegendOfZelda.com

Overview
LegendofZelda.com is one of the oldest and most prominent sites in the Online Zelda Community, first founded in 1999. The site is led officially by Link of Hyrule, Chance, and Xizor, but Chance and Xizor, along with Forum Administrator Kandid, run most of the day-to-day affairs of the site, with Link of Hyrule popping his head in every once in a while, though not recently. LoZ.com's media was managed and updated by Incubus, with additions being made to fanart and screenshots regularly. LoZ.com culture is based mainly around its forums, which are one of the larger forums in the Zelda community. Humor, freedom of expression, tolerance, and love of fun are enforced mercilessly. LegendofZelda.com's reputation of having strict and sometimes stolid moderators and administrators was well earned, and seems not to be let down in the present day.

Creation
LegendOfZelda.com was founded in 1999 by Alex Jones of Britain (known as Link of Hyrule on the site). Nintendo of America threatened the site with a lawsuit. Nintendo wanted to use the domain name, and filed a copyright infringement suit. The lawsuit was deemed frivolous and was dropped shortly after it was issued.

XeroGaming.com
Before taking an extended hiatus in 2002, Link of Hyrule left a few members with administrative control of the site. One of these members, Nemesis, took away forum powers from the other staff members and formed his own staff. Anger towards the new administration caused people to abandon the site and it eventually went down. Link of Hyrule returned in 2003 and announced that the site would relaunch soon. A temporary Lycos messaging board was used by regular members while they awaited the resurrection of LegendofZelda.com. As people celebrated New Years 2004, it became apparent that Link of Hyrule wasn't going to relaunch the site any time soon. Prominent members and then administrators Megaman X, Remus, and Droshi led a migration to a new site, XeroGaming.com. This site centered on all gaming, not just the Legend of Zelda series.

Rebirth of LegendofZelda.com
LegendofZelda.com was relaunched nearly two years after originally promised, and was officially reborn in November of 2004. Prominent members from the old forums and Xerogaming.com were accepted into the Oldies group and given access to an Oldies-only restricted forum. Link of Hyrule appointed KingKrazyLink as an administrator.

Members of the boards saw the site destroyed and rebuilt several times by hackers in the summer of 2005. Quick action to restore order was impossible because Link of Hyrule and KingKrazyLink were often offline, incapable of doing anything. After a hack, Link of Hyrule gave Cartoons of ZeldaDungeon.net administrative powers to rebuild the site. Because nobody had heard of him before and he was now an administrator, most members assumed he was the hacker who destroyed the site. He rebuilt the site within hours, but many still insisted he was a hacker. Angered by the accusations, Cartoons abandoned the site in the face of yet another hack. Only a moderator at this point, Chance was promoted to administrator to restore the forums. For three days in July of 2005, he struggled through code to not just rebuild the forums, but to make them better.

Resurrection of XeroGaming.net
About a month later, Chance was informed by three close friends that Link of Hyrule and KingKrazyLink were planning to remove him as administrator, and on August 17th, 2005, Chance erased the forums of LoZ.com, replacing them with a letter of explanation. He also changed his username and profile to appear that he was KingKrazyLink and said that everyone should go to XeroGaming.net, a reincarnation of the old XeroGaming.com (the new domain name being XeroGaming.net). Along with Darth X (formerly Megaman X), Chance recreated Xerogaming.net. Twenty members followed, and XeroGaming.net once again had a healthy community, now devoted to bad-mouthing LegendofZelda.com.

Shortly thereafter, Link of Hyrule (Alex) returned from a vacation that would end up conflicting with the time he was supposedly conferring with KingKrazyLink to fire Chance. Upon learning this, Chance formally apologized to Link of Hyrule for destroying his site, and tension between both sites eased a bit. KingKrazyLink had managed to restore the forums of LegendofZelda.com, but due to a slew of forum Modifications to the open phpBB code, the forum code became so garbled that after just a couple of months, Link of Hyrule asked Chance to return as an administrator and fix the forums. Chance agreed and returned, joining KingKrazyLink and Link of Hyrule as Administrators of the forums. In January of 2006, KinkKrazyLink left to devote more time to his own site, ZeldaGaming.net, after a period of slipping activity. Chance officially became a co-owner of LegendofZelda.com in April of 2006 after LegendofZelda.com switched servers. XeroGaming.net merged with LegendofZelda.com on August 4th, 2006. Just a few days later, in lieu of the vast amount of new members, many veterans of LoZ.com, a change was made to the Oldies and Sage groups at LoZ.com. The Oldies were renamed the Sheikah, and the Sages retained their name, but their purposes flip-flopped, and their definitions clearly outlined.

vBulletin
In October 2006, LegendofZelda.com underwent a massive layout change. LegendofZelda.com switched from being powered by phpBB to vBulletin. The main site and forums became integrated. After the switch, LegendofZelda.com forum activity skyrocketed, with membership surpassing 10,000 members in half of a year.

Xizor became a forum administrator. In April of 2007, LegendofZelda.com and ZeldaDungeon.net tried to merge, but failed due to lack of support on both sides. Chance labored over a new layout, which was launched in June of 2007 with the live assistance of several staff members, including Xizor, Kandid, Incubus, and Runeblade. It was met with an overall positive reaction, with only 28% of polled members stating that they preferred the old layout more.

LegendofZelda.com switched servers again in April of 2008 after a string of server problems. In June 2008, however, the administrators were made aware that the LegendofZelda.com server was expending too many resources for the type of server it was. At the time, LegendofZelda.com was also hosting ExplodingDekuNut.net and ZeldaBlog.com. On July 5, 2008 all three sites were taken down temporarily. On July 26th 2008, LegendofZelda.com and ExplodingDekuNut.net were re-opened. However, Zelda Blog continues to remain offline to this day, indefinitely waiting to be relaunched.

Recent Events
On March 22nd, 2009, Xizor announced that members of the three Social Membergroups, based on popular races from the Zelda games, would be allowed to run for "President of the Groups", a new position that will help get the Forum Staff more in touch with the regular members. Elections for Group Candidates were held in March, and the election of the President will be held in July.

On April 8th, 2009, it was unveiled by Xizor that Kandid was being promoted to be a Forum Administrator, having previously been a forum moderator for some time, among other roles. This promotion was viewed as a long time coming, and thus was not a major shock to the LoZ.com community.

On April 20th, 2009, Legendofzelda.com has gone public with a need for monetary donations in order to sustain the site, which doesn't bring in enough money through the lone Google ad on their front page. The total sum needed is about $550 US, needed by the end of May, 2009. After this year's financial situation is taken care of, Chance and Xizor have plans to find ways to increase the site's revenue.

On April 28th, 2009, Legendofzelda.com became a contributor to ZeldaWiki.org.

Staff
Owners: Link of Hyrule, Last Chance

Webmasters: Link of Hyrule, Last Chance, Xizor

Forum Administrators: Link of Hyrule, Last Chance, Xizor, Kandid

Forum Moderators: Triforce Guardian, Menelaus, Abyss Master, Death's Head, AlbinoWolf, Guilty Tribute

News Updaters: WithTheDawn, Triforce Guardian