News 2007

Contents 1 1500 and 500 2 New Exclusive Article 3 Now Hiring Newsy People 4 Wii Browser Update 5 We're Moving... Again!! 6 Nintendo Fixes TP Glitch 7 Two Years 8 And the 100th Game is... 9 We're Back! 10 Several Thingamajiggers 11 ZeldaInformer Joins the ZW.org Family 12 Nintendo Updates Phantom Hourglass Box Art 13 New Extension: Videos

1500 and 500

Two very nice numbers, those things are. Zelda Wiki.org now boasts 1500 articles and 500 users. It's hard to imagine that when this project started, we laughed about ever reaching 1000! You guys sure showed us.

ZeldaWiki.org was started in early 2005 - around April or so, perhaps even sooner (the exact date escapes me), so while we near the wonderful two year anniversary of wikiness, good things begin to happen. This is one of them. It really was a wild dream for the wiki ever to reach 1000 articles. Lars joked about it, and I, personally, acknowledged it when he said, "I can't wait to see it when it hits 1000!" When it did that, it was pretty exciting. Then the wiki slowed down for a while, but since being picked up as ZW.org, 500 more no longer seems like a dream. In fact, it's happened.

And while, when we had 1000 articles, there were 250 users, now there are 1500 articles and 500 users. People are registering at a 200% higher rate than before! I don't know if I'm the only one astounded by this.

Anyways, just a big hearty thanks to every contributing person and every contributing site. Here's to 2000 articles and 1000 users! :) --Jase 17:03, 7 January 2007 (CST)

New Exclusive Article

Thanks to Joe Henson, ZW.org now boasts two (count 'em) exclusive articles.

I like how they seem to come once per month, but if any of you readers out there feel compelled to.. *ahem*... change this frequency and "make the wavelength" of the flow of articles "shorter" (Physics for "send in more than one article per month if you like seeing exclusives and think they offer nice, fresh opinions about Nintendo and Zelda"), by all means do. I quite like what Henson has done - it's a very original concept, and I hope, personally, that there are many Joe Henson's out there with ideas floating in their heads, not just for this wiki of course, but it's a nice trait to have. ;)

--Jase 19:53, 26 February 2007 (CST)

Now Hiring Newsy People

As you can see, ZW.org is currently slow with Zelda and Nintendo news, mostly because that isn't a top priority, and secondly because lots of the people who should be helping out (webmasters who volunteered, I'm looking at you!) actually don't help out (go figure). This means that ZW.org needs at least one other dedicated person to fill in the Zelda/Nintendo News section on the front page and keep it at least semi-up-to-date.

We're looking for an active contributor who isn't too busy to go out and look for Nintendo or Zelda-related news and put those stories on the front page. This person should be confident in their linguistic abilities and willing to write more than a paragraph for each news article. Obviously, because news isn't the focus of the wiki, the requirements are far more lax than those of a regular Zelda fan site. We just need something to keep the front page looking nice and fresh.

The perks of this job? Besides being the uber-cool news guy, you get sysop powers to lord over the rest of the wiki as well. You also get showered with gold, respect from your peers, new friends, etc., all who will love you just for putting up the news! Sounds tempting, right? ;)

If you think you're up for the job, send an email to jason [at] zeldawiki.org, and let me know why you want to help out. In a few weeks or so, depending on how many applications are sent, we'll pick the news person.

UPDATE: After two weeks, not a single person has applied! I don't know whether to feel embarrassed or something, but I almost do. In any case, I suppose I'll have to find the help on my own. --Jase 08:20, 9 March 2007 (CST)

Wii Browser Update

The Wii Opera Browser is being updated and the finalized version will be available come april. Click read more to get more information.

Since late December, Wii owners have been able to download a trial version of the Opera Internet browser. After receiving substantial and helpful feedback from consumers, friends and family members, Nintendo developers have made a number of improvements to the final version of the browser, including:

• improved zooming and scrolling
• an improved zoomed font
• shortened startup times
• quicker access to "favorites"
• an ability to hide the toolbar
• buttons that will instantly type common preset letters, such as "www" or ".com"

More details about these and other functions will be announced in the near future. To ensure that the browser incorporates all of these enhancements, the final version will be available for download in April, a few weeks later than previously announced. The browser will remain free for Wii owners to download through the end of June. After June, users who haven't already downloaded the Opera browser can go to the Wii Shop Channel to download it for 500 Wii Points.

Originaly Posted Original Source --Nathan 11:06, 23 March 2007 (CST)

We're Moving... Again!!

To compensate for bandwidth, ZW.org is getting a nice hosting plan switch - this means we'll be moving servers. I'm not entirely sure how the hosting company does this, so there may or may not be some downtime in the near future as we make this quick move. Afterward, however, we'll have 4000 times the bandwidth and 4 times the space! And that's only one step up to the next plan. ;)

To clarify that I'm not insane for doing this: This new plan is only one step up from the old plan. So I don't have much other choice, and it's not really much more per month, at all. Which is great, because I find the hosting company I use very reliable. They have great customer support and the downtime is minimal, and with this new plan it will be even less.

So when the time comes to move in a few days, please bear with us as the site switchers over to a different set of servers. It'll be worth it, like I hope all downtime at ZW.org usually is in the end ;)... (I really should stop screwing around at random intervals trying to install nifty plugins and hacks.) --Jase 04:49, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

Nintendo Fixes TP Glitch

Those of you plagued by the horrible Cannon Room Glitch in Twilight Princess need not worry about your game any longer. Nintendo has promised to replace all defective discs.

At first glance it might look like Nintendo was trying to keep it a secret, never publicly mentioning that it would replace the defective game discs. But the key to getting a buggy game replaced is as simple as mailing it straight to the source.

Many players have experienced a glitch that occurs when Link enters the Cannon Room in Kakariko Village that causes Link to be trapped within the room, thereby rendering the game unplayable as it is impossible to escape the room. For more details on the glitch, please use the internal link above or click here.

However, Nintendo has "promised" (discreetly) to replace the discs. All anyone must do is grab a fairly large envelope, write a letter explaining how they encountered the problem, place their name, address and telephone number within the letter, and mail all of that with the Twilight Princess game disc. However, as our source states, do not include the game packaging, only the game disc.

Hopefully most everybody here at ZW.org has been fortunate enough not to encounter such an issue, but for those who have, and have followed the steps in the above paragraph, the mail is then sent to the follow address:

NINTENDO OF AMERICA
ATTN: CS ADMIN
4900 150TH AVE NE
REDMOND WA 98052-5171 Happy snail-mailing! Source. --Jase 14:18, 8 April 2007 (CDT)

Two Years

After two years of being around, Zelda Wiki.org has gone from site project to the project of many sites. It has become, supposedly, the foremost Zelda Wiki on the internet, and has over 2000 articles and over 800 users. Quite hard to believe it's turned into this!

So, around two years ago, this wiki was just the brainchild of myself and Yami, one of my friends on the Zelda Universe boards who is largely responsible for me knowing graphic arts knowhow and such. Back then, I was just ZU's content monkey (this was, obviously, before Lars took his leave), constantly writing articles, mostly Minish Cap content. However, I did have quite a bit of jurisdiction over the site itself, and when I had some spare time, I discussed with Yami about creating a wiki. He said that he'd been thinking the same thing. I spoke with Lars about it, and then it was done - we had a brand new MediaWiki installation. Because I was staff, I was allowed one subdomain (this was my personal rule - I'm sure Lars would have given me as many as I liked). I used up that one subdomain to create the wiki, henceforth known as wiki.zeldauniverse.net.

Lars's personal dream for the wiki was to see it replace the withered old Zelda Encyclopedia with more in-depth information, while I intended it to be more of a fun community hub that also wrote great Zelda content. It was a great strategy to improving Zelda Universe's already vast amount of content and, me being the content monkey and loving to write, couldn't help but be attracted to what the wiki turned into. People played on it for a while, but it eventually became the Zelda-central encyclopedia Lars wanted to see. He joked about seeing 1000 articles one day, and when that day finally came, he seemed pretty excited! It confirmed that the project had been a success. One community had come together and enthusiastically combined their knowledge of a game into one place.

This was much over a year ago.

Obviously, I don't do much for Zelda Universe anymore. I became webmaster, continued to watch over the wiki, and after some disputes with the server managers and new owners, took my leave after about seven months in that position. I requested to be able to keep power over the wiki and on the chat room, but the chat room is irrelevant. Not long after I left, the wiki crashed, and went largely unattended for some time. I completely neglected it, and since I was one of the only staff (or former staff) members who had ever looked at it and kept it nice, it fell into disrepair.

I saw it that way after a large attack from 4chan.org - luckily, the wiki was in such disrepair that there was an odd ghost copy on the server. The people from 4chan hadn't actually attacked the real wiki, but the ghost copy. So, while people were freaking out, I was talking to Scott, getting a backup of the real wiki. I installed it on my own hosting account, and begged for permission to remake the wiki as I saw fit, to give it more of a cause, and bring it out of its constant neglect. I was shot down, but refused to give up - sneaky me, I told him that the wiki was hosted on my own personal subdomain that Lars had given me. Okay, that didn't convince him at all, but Scott and I were always prone to having arguments like that, then tossing them aside and not caring in the end. That's the beauty of being friends, isn't it?

So, the wiki was "revamped" into something called "The Zelda Effect," a spinoff of my own blog's title, The Jason Effect, where the wiki was hosted at zelda.thejasoneffect.net. That URL, though out-of-date, still redirects to the wiki.

Right now in the timeline, we're mid-to-late 2006, and the wiki had around 1200 articles, which wasn't changing from month to month. I had promised the ZU staff that the wiki would remain ZU's property, but also said I had some plans in store. I saw that a lot of Zelda sites, over the year and a half the wiki had accumulated articles, had attempted wikis of their own. Some of them were rousing successes, like the Zelda Legends wiki, which gathered a great amount of short articles, while others were complete failures, gathering from five to one hundred. Something about me didn't like that. I thought it was like trying to manage usernames and passwords for a million sites - having tons of jumbled wikis seemed... inefficient. So I cooked up the plan to give ZU's wiki away, and create a big, merged wiki with all the other large Zelda sites I was already friends with, and in turn attract the smaller and the larger ones I was not friendly with.

Zelda Central's Mr. Wiggles, a long time ZU affiliate and friend, was the first to accept my invitation to sign up and get the ball rolling. Some others followed, such as Fury Three from HTLOZ II. I especially wanted Nathan of Zelda Domain to join up, he being one of the greatest affiliates I've had in my experience as a webmaster, but his site was down and he was experiencing issues getting it back up. On top of that, he just plain wasn't around. Eventually, the wiki got sixteen sites hooked up to it, and I decided to revamp the place again.

Going by Lars's suggestion, I bought the domain ZeldaWiki.org, to make it seem like an organization - which it was - and to make it seem like an official, real Zelda Wiki worth being the competitor of other, not-a-collaboration-between-awesome-Zelda-sites wikis.

So, here we are, two years into the wiki's history, and we've doubled the amount of articles Lars originally intended to see, and amassed over 800 users! I never thought I'd see myself looking down at a large website again, and I keep trying to convince myself that this wiki is still a small website like it used to be, but I can't deny it anymore - you guys who make the articles and work so hard to give accurate and interesting data are awesome. I can't think of another word, except perhaps astounding, incredible, and deserving of some sort of award (yes, that isn't a word). And that's why, just a couple days ago, when the wiki was almost lost due to corrupted backups, I nearly cried; because this place has amounted to so much more than I, or anyone else for that matter, ever thought possible. And it's not because of me (I just kept it around on a server and made a skin for it), but because of the people who create and edit articles.

Two years and you guys haven't stopped going! How long will you be able to go for? God knows, but I hope that I live to see the day when the wiki grows even larger, when the Zelda sites who run it actually come and collaborate inside the wiki, and when I'm older and have moved on to other things, that some trustworthy person can take the site off my hands and continue it on. I think the strongest type of site is one that can live through several webmasters, that doesn't need its founder to continue on. ZU, I think, is a site like that - Lars left, then I left, then Lee left, and now they have a new man at the helm, Yusuf. And the site has kept on running, despite years of thoughts about internet-Armageddon and whatnot.

So, when Lars left and people said the site would die, and Scott and I took over and it didn't die, and when I left and people said the site would die, but Scott and Lee took over and it didn't die; that's my next dream for the site. I already know it will keep getting bigger, but can it become... self-sustaining?

This should be already possible, because there should be at least thirteen other webmasters besides myself running this place. ;)

What are some plans for the future? Obviously the wiki needs at least one upgrade! I made a comment above about how much I hate remembering usernames and passwords, which is why I'm working hard to implement OpenID into ZW.org. If you don't know what the heck that is, in short it's a system that gives a person one username and password for the entire internet. Your information is kept on one website, and when you go to an OpenID login box, you type in the URL of your OpenID. Mine is my own website, thejasoneffect.net, so when I see an OpenID login box, I type in that URL. It then takes me to a screen asking if I want to allow this site to log me in, etc, and I hit okay - then I'm logged into the site!

So, if all goes well, not only will people with OpenID's be able to login to ZW.org, but ZW.org will itself be an OpenID provider - that is, everyone's user page will be their very own OpenID. And just in case you have a website of your own that you want to be your OpenID, but don't want to set up an OpenID server, we'll provide instructions on how to set it up so that typing in your own site's URL uses your OpenID on the wiki.

That said, I'm not entirely sure if this can be done, but I'm researching it and have been testing some things out and tweaking with some extensions and programs. So, with any luck, you'll see this around soon.

Here's to two more years! Thanks a bunch, everyone, --Jase 17:57, 16 April 2007 (PDT)

And the 100th Game is...

Nintendo has released its 100th game for the virtual console. What could it possibly be?

This should come as no surprise to the truly avid Zelda fans out there. Nintendo's 100th Wii Shop (Virtual Console) game is The Adventure of Link. From Nintendo:

Zelda II™ - The Adventure of Link® - (NES, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone - Mild Fantasy Violence, 500 Wii Points): Link returns to Hyrule to search for the Triforce and to awaken Zelda from an endless sleep. Embark on a quest to find the Triforce of Courage and save Hyrule from ruin. Learn magic spells, talk to people in towns to get clues, collect items to increase your power and explore six palaces where the underlings of the evil Ganon await you. This sequel to the Adventure classic uses a side-scrolling visual engine unique to the series for more technical combat, and features more in-depth world roaming as Link encounters townsfolk while on his quest.

AoL and the other three games launched along with it went live on 9pm Monday, June 4th, Pacific time. So, if you didn't already know that AoL was now available on the Virtual Console, you can run and grab it! --Jase 19:07, 6 June 2007 (PDT)

We're Back!

Sorry about the downtime - there was a freak traffic increase of some sort that overloaded the server and got us shut down for a little while ;)... but we're back, and with some other interesting news as well!

Before and during the time while ZW.org was down, I was contacted by somebody named Angela Beesley. For those of you who have never heard of her, she is the co-founder of Wikia, the other co-founder of whom is the man who founded Wikipedia. And, for those of you who have never heard of Wikia, it is a very, VERY large network of wikis all hosted by one company.

So, because you guys do such an awesome job making such an awesome wiki, Angela was quite interested in, well, seeing it perhaps move to Wikia. But not just that - she was also interested in merging ZW.org with Wikia's already existing Zelda Wiki, which many of you probably know about, have visited, or currently edit on. So, it sounded like a good deal at first, and very flattering as well, plus beneficial due to the increase in articles ZW.org would get from merging with Wikia's Zelda Wiki.

Of course, not all things are so simple and so great, and in the end myself and the other owners of ZW.org who I were able to contact and talk to a bit couldn't see the advantage: Our wiki and theirs, although compatible, would take a TON of work (possibly a whole community) to merge together. On top of that, the promised increase in traffic did not justify this insane amount of work, nor did it justify actually having to move the wiki to Wikia, where we'd all lose control over the site, as well as ownership of the site. Wikia refers to their wikis AS "their" wikis - and that doesn't work well with what ZW.org really stands for, and that's not being TRULY owned by anybody. But, obviously, as the technical owner of the domain I had to make some sort of decision, and in the end, with the input of the other owners and some friends, it was unanimously decided not to move to Wikia or to merge with Wikia's Zelda Wiki.

And, as a side note, I'm not even sure if Angela ever spoke with the owner of Wikia's Zelda Wiki!

In any case, I found this whole ordeal very interesting, and quite flattering, because now we have concrete proof that you people have made a wiki that's truly unique and valuable, not just to the people who edit it, but to the big, corporate people in the sky, and to the many, many people who visit every day and probably love this place more than I do. And it's because of that that I will never make the decision to sell this site for profit - even if Angela had asked me to sell it for thousands (God forbid), I feel that it would be a betrayal of the users on this wiki to sell it to someone else unless absolutely necessary for the wiki to function. And even then, I couldn't just pick anyone, and I wouldn't dare do it without the help and support of the people who really own this site - the owners of the Zelda sites that use the wiki, and the users that edit the wiki.

So, enough philosophy - back to editing and having fun. ;)

--Jase 11:48, 17 June 2007 (PDT)

Several Thingamajiggers

In the last few weeks, a bunch has happened. You might have noticed we lost a bit of content a few days ago - that's because we were moved to a better server by out host so that the site would run faster. Aren't they awesome? Read on for s'more stuff.

I've moved back to working on Zelda Universe, the Zelda site that spawned this wiki and spawned my interest in webmastering and development. So you'll see that I've made several tweaks and improvements, as well as done my fair share of blowing stuff up. All at a good cost for construction, I say. But now I'll have to learn how to juggle running two site, so if I seem a little less active - on both sites, not just the wiki - please forgive me, and know that I'm still constantly looking for ways to improve the site as well as moderate and keep it clean and awesome.

The second goings on is the new server. A few days back, I received an email from my host, Lunarpages, that the shared server we were on was getting mighty full and that it was time for us to be shoved off onto a more empty server. What does that mean for us? Well, we lost a few hours worth of editing, which is always bad, but now that we're on a more empty server we have more resources to hog to ourselves. The site, overall, runs faster because of this. And they did that all for free for us - I absolutely HAVE to recommend Lunarpages because of what they do for their sites... what spectacular hosting!

The final announcement might be a tad sad. You see, starting Sunday, I shall be gone for three weeks. I'll be taking an intensive summer course on Engineering, where I'll be working on a project about the Plasma-based Medicine Market as well as Non-Thermal Atmospheric Pressure Plasma and its effect on living tissue and bacteria. I wanted a mechanical engineering project, but biomedical is just as cool - the two are basically the same, anyway!

So, I say bon voyage, and I shall see you all at the very very end of July. Have fun wikiing without me for a while. ;) --Jase 09:16, 6 July 2007 (PDT)

ZeldaInformer Joins the ZW.org Family

I am proud to announce that ZeldaInformer has just joined the list of sites connected to ZW.org. Given the fact that a good portion of our members were around to help build this wiki in its early days when it was still on Zelda Universe, you can be sure that we'll be treating it as if it were our own, and we look forward to contributing to it in the future. --Captain Cornflake 15:40, 28 July 2007 (PDT)

Nintendo Updates Phantom Hourglass Box Art

The Phantom Hourglass boxart has been updated, providing us with two new symbols to look at: Its ESRB Rating, and the Nintendo Wifi Connection logo.

Phantom Hourglass has been given an ESRB Rating of "E", which means every last one of you will be playing it.

On top of this, the Ninendo Wifi Connection logo has been added to the top left corner of the box, signifying that the multiplayer mode of PH, called "Hide and Go Seek", can also be played through wifi. The updated boxart can also be found in the Zelda Universe gallery.

Nintendo has also released new character art for Phantom Hourglass. Included in these new pieces is an old man with a bulbous staff, a queer-eyed Tetra, three Ice Climber-like characters, and a Phantom Guard. These can also be viewed in the ZU gallery.

--Jase 06:47, 7 August 2007 (PDT)

New Extension: Videos

By popular demand, you can now add YouTube videos and videos from other websites directly into articles. More info inside. You can do much more than YouTube. In fact, you can add the following video sites to ZW.org:

• Dailymotion
• FunnyOrDie
• Google Video
• sevenload
• Revver
• YouTube

How do you do it? This is the template and usage:

• {{#ev:service|id}} -or-
• {{#ev:service|id|width}}

...where "service" is the name of the site (like "youtube" or "google video") and "id" is the video ID on that site. All video sites have a spot at the end of their URL where a big string of characters and numbers are. When that's changed, the video you're looking at changes. For example, on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjA5faZF1A8 <--- The "QjA5faZF1A8" would be the video ID. This video happens to go to "guitar."

You can also change the size of the videos - scale them up or down - just as you would any normal thumbnail. However, you do not use the suffix "px" in your numbers. If you wanted to make the video thumbnail 200px, you would simply type "200".

I hope everybody enjoys this plugin, because I sure do! How often can we hear a Theremin played on ZW.org?

--Jase 08:01, 7 October 2007 (EDT)