Community:LegendOfZelda.com: Difference between revisions

Overview

Legendofzelda.com is one of the oldest and most prominent sites in the Online Zelda Community. The site is led officially by Link of Hyrule and »-LasT-ChaNcE-«, but »-LasT-ChaNcE-«  (better known as simply "Chance") and Xízør™ run most of the day-to-day affairs of the site, with Link of Hyrule popping his head in every once in a while. LoZ.com's media is managed and updated by Incubus, with additions being made to fanart and screenshots regularly. LoZ.com culture is based around its forums, which are one of the larger forums are in the Zelda community ^{[citation needed]}. Humor, freedom of expression, tolerance, and love of fun are the major motifs of LoZ.com culture. Such things are declared in various posts made by Chance and Xizor However, LoZ.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.

History

Early History

LegendOfZelda.com was founded in 1999 by Alex Jones, better known as Link of Hyrule. In an age where message boards were second nature, LoZ.com was the exception to thus rule and was centered around an active forum community. It was also during this time that Nintendo stepped in and put a claim towards the LegendOfZelda.com domain name, claiming it as copyright infringement^[1]. The lawsuit was not credible enough and thus, was soon dropped shortly after it was issued.

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.com'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.com saw a tremendous spike in user activity. 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 a substantial member-base as the actual perpetrator in the hacking^[2]. Due to this "ungratefulness", Cartoons abandoned the site in the face of yet another hack and left the reconstruction to the new administrator, Chance. Over the course of three days in the month of July, 2005, Chance rebuilt the forums, struggling through code and administrative procedures, not just to rebuild the forums, but with the intention 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 and Xero Gaming Reborn

On August 17th, 2005, 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.com of rebuilding the site. Along with the administrator Darth X (formerly Megaman X), 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.com's best and brightest followed the two and Xero Gaming was an initial success, most of its activity focused on badmouthing LoZ.com. This schism was not reconciled until almost a year later, on August 4th, 2006 when Xero Gaming (XG) and LoZ.com 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 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.com's ability to function and provide for a more active userbase. The rest of 2006 was uneventful for LoZ.com, 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.com had been using for several 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.com forum activity skyrocketed, with membership surpassing 10,000 members in just over a half years time. 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.com. In April of 2007, a short-lived merge was attempted between LoZ.com 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.com layout, and in June, with the help of many staff members, launched the layout. The layout (LoZ.com'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, both Chance and Xizor have stated that LoZ.com 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.

Server Blues

Beginning around June 2008, Chance and Xizor were made aware that the LoZ.com server was expending too many resources for the type of server it was. At the time, LoZ.com was hosting www.legendofzelda.com, www.explodingdekunut.net, and www.zeldablog.com, with the combined strain of these three sites being just too much. Many measures were taken to try and lessen the load: LoZ.com's Shoutbox was disabled, the forums were unviewable to non-registered members, all meta-tags were removed, and other things similar. However, nothing proved effective, and so, on July 5th 2008, all three websites were temporarily shut down and taken offline. The index for the LoZ.com forums was even edited to ensure total lock-out. About three weeks later, on July 26th 2008, the sites LoZ.com and Exploding Deku Nut were re-opened. An announcement post made by Xizor explained all of this on that day^[3]. However, Zelda Blog continues to remain offline to this day, indefinitely waiting to be relaunched. There have been no issues with the LoZ.com servers since.

Recent History

In the last few months, LoZ.com's growth has slowed a bit^{[citation needed]}. However, on June 5th, 2007, LoZ.com gained its 10,000th registered user. On December 4th, 2007, the 100,000th post was made. LoZ.com continues to grow, approaching 110,000 posts and 20,000 registered members. After server problems stunted the growth of LoZ.com for a short period, a successful server switch in April of 2008 has led the site to running smoother than ever.

Sources