Zelda Dungeon Forums

A website dedicated to The Legend Of Zelda. It was created by a guy named Mases Hagopian in August 19,2001. It was originaly hosted on Yahoo Geocities. In time it was Hosted on Vbulleten before getting moved again to Xenforo. This is the website where Zelda RP is. It has a chat as well as many Emoticons. Here is some of its history,credit to Zelda Dungeon where I Copied it from:

Check it out here:

http://zeldadungeon.net/forum/

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The site launched on August 19th, 2001 and was originally hosted at Yahoo Geocities, a free hosting service. The site initially launched as part of a network of sites about several other gaming and TV show series' that I had remote interest in, including Mega Man and Beavis and Butthead. The first layout was built using the Yahoo Geocities Site Builder and was incredibly basic and very primitive looking. Each subsequent page of the website had a different visual layout.

This early era didn't last long, and by October of 2001 all of the other sites on the network had gone inactive and only Zelda Dungeon remained. This primitive version of Zelda Dungeon had very little game content, and it was in October of 2001 that Mases began working on an Ocarina of Time Walkthrough. After about a month of work, Mases was beginning to lose interest in working on the site, based on the fact that there were no incoming visitors. came to a complete halt in December of 2001. It wasn't until January 2nd, 2002, when Zelda Dungeon was first listed on the good Google Search engine. For the first time, consistent visitors began to flow into Zelda Dungeon. While it was such a tiny number in retrospect, the site was receiving 5-10 hits per day, and this caused work to resume on Zelda Dungeon. The site got its first affiliate in City of Clocktown, an aspiring website at the time, and Mases became very close friends with the Webmaster of City of Clocktown. Zelda Dungeon continued to rack up more affiliates and there was a consistent flow of new content appearing at the site. With the help of the Webmaster of City of Clocktown, Mases setup an account at shorturl, and the site could now be found at the much easier to remember zeldadungeon.vze.com.

Controversy hit Zelda Dungeon during this early period, when Mases was directly linking to mp3 audio files that were hosted by Zelda Power. Mases did not know that he was not supposed to do this at the time, but in response to these new audio files, more visitors began to come to the website. After a few weeks, Mases was contacted by Aaron Holt, Webmaster of Zelda Power, and was asked to remove the direct links to Zelda Power's media. Completely oblivious to the legality, Mases quickly removed the links, but hits remained consistent at the website, reaching 25-30 hits per day.

On March 27th, 2002, Zelda Dungeon launched Layout version 2.0, and it was the first layout that was built with html coding. The layout was built by Mofokuban, the Webmaster of City of Clocktown. With the introduction of HTML coding, the website now had a consistent appearance throughout all of the pages.

Two versions of this layout were actually released. Upon release, version 2.0 had a listing of all the Zelda games along the left navigation, and every specific page of content for each of the games was also listed. This worked well at the layouts launch, as there were so few content pages. However, the website began to grow and new pages were constantly being added to the site, which caused the left navigation to become very lengthy. Additionally, because site was using basic HTML, after every new page or affiliate was added, every single page of the website had to be individually edited.

Several months into the layouts existence, version 2.5 was launched. The noticeable difference was that the game menu on the left has been compacted so that it only listed the actual games. With version 2.5, the website began using shtml. This allowed the navigation bars to be adjusted without having to go through and edit every single page when a single link was changed, and this made editing the website a lot more efficient.

The site was growing rapidly during this layout, reaching over 50 hits a day and yahoo geocities was no longer large enough for Zelda Dungeon. At the end of each month, Zelda Dungeon was being taken offline due to overuse of the allowed bandwidth. After searching online for other free hosts that were more reliable, Mases stumbled upon a website known as Zelda Odyssey, which was part of the Chatville network. After contacting the webmaster of Zelda Odyssey, Zelda Dungeon was accepted for hosting, and moved to this new network.

During this time frame, Zelda Dungeon hired its first ever staff member, Steph. Steph originated from Link's Domain, a Zelda website which had just closed down. After seeing her work and seeing the closure of the Link's Domain, Mases contacted Steph and offered her a job at the website, where she officially became a staff member on October 27th, 2002. Steph ended up creating much of the Adventure of Link content at the time, and had set a new standard of content for Zelda Dungeon. Steph was only at the website for a few months before leaving her position behind. Almost all of her content has since been replaced, but Steph still leaves behind a legacy of being the first hired staff member at Zelda Dungeon, as well as raising the bar for content.

Just prior to the launch of Layout 2.0, Zelda Dungeon became affiliated with one of the leading Zelda websites online at the time, Zelda Central. Victor, the Webmaster of Zelda Central had grown to be close friends with Mases, and because of this, he offered to create Zelda Dungeon a brand new layout. On November 23rd, 2002, layout 3.0 was launched and it was quite a visual upgrade over layout 2.0, as it added more color to the website. Several noticeable changes could immediately be seen with the new layout, including the first official  that the website had at the top of the layout. In previous layouts, there was just simply a line of text stating the websites name, but now a traditional banner was in place including the sites name and  from the Zelda franchise. Also, prior to layout 3.0, the site was always referred to as The Zelda Dungeon, but with the new layout, 'the' was dropped from the website title, and it was now simply referred to as Zelda Dungeon.

Zelda Odyssey, the host of Zelda Dungeon, was experiencing frequent downtime, and this led to Zelda Dungeon being offline rather frequently. With the growth of Zelda Dungeon being stunted because of hosting issues, Mases again began looking elsewhere in the Zelda community for websites that offered free hosting. On December 14th, 2002, Zelda Dungeon was accepted by Lars-Christian of Zelda Universe and began to move to its new home. Zelda Universe did not support shtml at the time, and this caused the transition process to be a bit more difficult. Zelda Dungeon abandoned shtml, and shifted towards php, of which remains the primary coding system of the website today. One of the luxuries of being hosted by Zelda Universe, was the large influx of fans that began pouring into the website. Zelda Universe was one of the largest Zelda websites online during this time, and this brought a lot of traffic to Zelda Dungeon. The site was now reaching an audience of over 200 unique visitors each day.

In early 2003, Mases applied for a domain name at acidmist.com, a website that offered free domain names. Zelda Dungeon was accepted, and the new url for the website was now zeldadungeon.com. In March of 2003, Zelda Dungeon once again contacted acidmist, and this time applied for the free hosting package that acidmist offered. Free hosting would be provided in exchange for the placement of a small banner advertisement at the top of each page of the website. Zelda Dungeon was accepted and in March of 2003 left Zelda Universe and found its new home at Acidmist. Leaving Zelda Universe slowed the growth process of Zelda Dungeon, but Zelda Dungeon was now on its own, outside of the shadow of being hosted at other Zelda websites.

Zelda Dungeon released Layout version 4.0 on May 3rd, 2003. Mases found this layout online from a website known as Free Layouts. The site offered a bunch of free layout templates that could be freely used by anybody who runs a website. The layouts color scheme was drastically different than the previous two white layouts, as it had a much darker feel to it. After the initial release of the layout, Mases found that there was another, much smaller Zelda website, using the exact same layout template found at Free Layouts. This lack of uniqueness caused the layout to not be much of a hit with the frequent visitors of the website or with Mases himself.

After Steph became the first staff member of Zelda Dungeon a year earlier, the website hired numerous staff members to create content and write articles and editorials, but none of these staff members ever ended up sticking around for more than a couple weeks. On May 3rd, the same day as the launch of the new layout, Mases hired a new staff member who went by the alias of Cartoons. Upon his hiring, Cartoons was treated as a normal staff member and was assigned to work on content projects for Ocarina of Time as well as some material for Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages. After being given projects to work, Cartoons worked very hard and efficiently and just mere hours after being assigned material, his first content pieces were ready to be released online.

Mases saw this dedication that Cartoons had for the website, and over the next several months of the websites existence, updates became very frequent, content was being added on a daily basis, and the sites visitors were experiencing record highs. The site blossomed to getting over 500 unique visitors each day and on August 18th of 2003, the eve of the websites second birthday, Zelda Dungeon hit the mark of 1000 visitors in a single day. With his hard work and the success of the website, Cartoons was promoted to a Webmaster role at Zelda Dungeon.

It was also during this time period, that the first ideas of a Zelda Dungeon Forums were being tossed around. Mases was reluctant to create his own forum, as he felt it would be distracting from growth of the actual website, and because of the relative youth of Zelda Dungeon, it would not become very active. However, Mases began seeing the importance of giving a fan base a place to discuss, and formed the first of what became a series of partnered forums. Rather than attempting to create his own forum, Mases agreed to link to existing forums of various affiliate Zelda websites of Zelda Dungeon.

Layout 5.0 was released on November 25th, 2003. The layout was created by Avenged, who at the time, was the Webmaster of an affiliate website, Zelda Chronicles. The website marked the return of the green color scheme that was seen in Layout 1.0. The layout was filled with dozens of variations of the color green, and this could be seen with a quick glance of the index page. There were very few images within the layout, and this allowed the green to really stand out and the page to load rather quickly.

It was also during this time period of this layout, Zelda Dungeon was able to affiliate with ZeldaPower, one of the biggest inspirations for Mases throughout the creation and growth of Zelda Dungeon.

Towards the end of this layouts lifespan, a stunt to the growth of Zelda Dungeon occurred once again because of hosting problems. Acidmist had been a great website for free hosting and a free domain name, but the big downfall was the poor technical support that was offered, and the reluctance of them to comply with the needs of their clients. In this case, Zelda Dungeon had outgrown the hosting package that acidmist offered, and towards the end of each month, the site was reaching its bandwidth limits and the site was coming offline.

This time period did see the hiring of Metalmallow, a new staff member that was brought on board to help the graphics field. Metalmallow created dozens of messenger icons, wallpaper images, avatars, and more. In addition to his graphics expertise, Metalmallow spent a lot of his time working on behind the scenes projects and would become an important member of the team in the coming years.

During the rough stretch towards the end of the lifespan of Layout 5.0, Zelda Dungeon also hired a new staff member to help produce a brand new layout. This new staff member began creating layout 6.0, but never quite finished before he vanished from the website. It is not known exactly what happened to this member or to where this member went off to, but the layout was not completed. Mases and Cartoons had all the various images that went with the layout, but it was only partially coded when the creator left. Cartoons and Mases slowly pieced together the layout, which at the time was quite difficult given the primitive knowledge that both Mases and Cartoons had with coding. After nearly three weeks of the site going without an update, Layout 6.0 was launched on March 30th, 2004. It was the first Zelda Dungeon layout to be created and hand coded by members of the Zelda Dungeon staff.

The hosting problems with Acidmist continued, and the search for yet another new host had begun. Unfortunately this also meant that the zeldadungeon.com domain name was also in serious jeopardy, because due to contractual fine print, it was owned by Acidmist. After a search for various other websites that offered free hosting services, Zelda Dungeon discovered a website known as Telefragged. The website was a well established gaming website that hosted several large fan websites from all over the gaming spectrum. They offered free hosting in exchange for a simple banner advertisement that had to be placed on the website. Mases jumped at this offer and after weeks of uncertainty with acidmist, the website moved to Telefragged and was now located at zd.telefragged.com.

With the domain name switch, visitors immediately plummeted. Fortunately enough for Zelda Dungeon, the switch ended up being a great benefit, as for the first time in quite awhile, the website was hosted on a stable server and visitors soon rebounded back to their peak position during the layout 5.0 era.

The 6th layout of Zelda Dungeon was the first layout that had a quick navigation system for the Zelda games. This was a trend started by popular Zelda websites such as Zelda Elements and Zelda Universe, and during this period, nearly every single large Zelda website had a similar quick navigation menu. The quick menu and the additional images on the side bars led this layout to be by far the most image complex layout to date. The lavender colored layout was also something quite different than any previous Zelda Dungeon layout, and was quite a unique look in color for its time. However, after the strong initial reaction of the layouts launch, most fans did not have good opinions of the look.

During this time period, Zelda Dungeon switched to Cutenews, a news system that allowed users to make edits on the sites index page without having to edit and upload pages through a FTP program. Having a new content management system like this allowed Zelda Dungeon to have staff members that can work independently to post news articles without having to go through one of the Webmasters or upload through FTP. Thus, during this time period, several new staff members were hired strictly as news reporters. Unfortunately, none of these staff members ever stuck around for more than just a couple of months.

Zelda Dungeon also saw its first active participation in a forum during this time period. One of the websites closest friends at the time was a website known as Zelda Legacies. They had their own community forum, but it was run by Cartoons, a webmaster of Zelda Dungeon. While not officially a part of Zelda Dungeon at its conception, the forums were actively promoted at Zelda Dungeon with links and consistent mentions of the forums. Throughout this time period, Zelda Legacies was beginning to dwindle away, and the forums were becoming more and more interlaced with Zelda Dungeon. This forum was known as the Forsaken Forums and in retrospect, is known as the 1st generation of Zelda Dungeon forums. The forum was run on the vBulletin forum software, which was licensed to the webmaster of Zelda Legacies. Unfortunately, Zelda Legacies and its forums experienced some rough times and went offline, leaving Zelda Dungeon without its own community forum. Throughout its lifetime, the first generation of forums for Zelda Dungeon accumulated over 300 registered members and 7,000 total posts.

Layout 7.0 was launched on August 23rd, 2004, just four days after the websites third anniversary. This was the first of three layouts that would keep the tradition of launching a new layout in celebration of the websites birthday. The layout itself returned Zelda Dungeon to a white background that wasn't seen since the websites 3rd layout. The layout was created by Metalmallow of Zelda Dungeon, and it was his first attempt at a layout. The layout did however receive a mostly positive reaction from fans of the website.

Zelda Dungeon's content areas began making a gradual shift from standard content to full blown walkthroughs during the period just prior to the launch of this layout, as well as through much of this layouts lifespan. The first of these walkthroughs was completed in the summer of 2004 and it was the A Link to the Past site walkthrough. It was the first full game guide at Zelda Dungeon to have a complete walkthrough of the game, complete with both text and screenshots. This new standard of game guides carried over to the original Legend of Zelda, which was completed in October of 2004. In retrospect, many of these early guides appear to be quite primitive, but at the time of their release, it was top of the line material.

Shortly after the fall of the first generation of forums, Cartoons wanted to re-launch the forums once again, and he did so on October 10th of 2004. This was the first forum software to be hosted by Zelda Dungeon and it became known as the 2nd generation of Zelda Dungeon forums. The forum program used for this second forum was the phpbb software. Phpbb is a very popular free forum software that was used by several Zelda fan websites at the time. Activity at the forum sparked immediately upon the launch of the forums, and a steady incline in activity followed for the next several months.

Near the end of 2004, Cartoons had taken over much of the day to day operations of the website. Mases' focus turned to being almost exclusively on creating game walkthroughs for some of the various Zelda titles.

Zelda Dungeon launched layout 8.0 on February 25th, 2005. The layout was MetalMallow's second attempt at a layout, and it took upon a gold color scheme. The layout had dropped the quick links navigation system at the top of the site that was present in the previous two layouts.

This era of the website saw some major changes in the day to day activities and updates at the website. In the previous four layouts, Mases and Cartoons were the primary news posters at the website, with the occasional post by MetalMallow. However, during the months after the release of layout 8.0, Zelda Dungeon hired several new staff members in Air Grady and Chance. Air Grady was brought on board to report on recent Nintendo and Zelda news, while Chance was hired at the website to help boaster the graphics department of the site, adding various new icons and buttons, as well as Zelda related wallpapers. Updates had reached their peak during this layout, with nearly daily updates occurring for several months.

In January of 2005, The Minish Cap was released for the Game Boy Advance in the United States, and just a few months later, Mases began working on a Minish Cap Walkthrough. Work on the walkthrough continued throughout the summer, fall and winter until its eventual completion in January of 2006. With the updates on the Minish Cap Walkthrough and content sections, as well as the frequent updates by the staff members of the website, visitors began soaring to new heights. The website repeatedly was breaking new records in total visitors for a single day. On April 2nd of 2005, Zelda Dungeon received 3159 unique visitors, which was a single day record at the time, and a record that would stand for the next 29 months.

The Zelda Dungeon Forums also continued to slowly grow during this point in time, eclipsing the 200 member mark and the 5000 posts count. It was during this point in time that the Zelda Dungeon Forums saw the registration of several members who would go on to become forum staff members. Many of these members that joined the forums during this period of time still remain a part of the Zelda Dungeon forum staff including Super Moderator Linkman8.

And thats just a teensy bit of the long history of Zelda Dungeon.