How did ZU become the number 1 fan website?

What are your thoughts about why ZU seems to have the more posts and members than any of zelda fan forum?

One day, about ten years or so ago, I found a lamp. You know, one of those olde time oil lamps.
As it turns out, there was a genie inside waiting with bated breath to give me three wishes. I wont get into what I did with the other two, but I did, however, manage to save a wish for Zelda fans everywhere. I wished, nay, pleaded with the genie to create the largest Zelda fansite ever with a superior forum community that no one could match.
As it so happens... here we are.

Originally Posted by Aniday

One day, about ten years or so ago, I found a lamp. You know, one of those olde time oil lamps.
As it turns out, there was a genie inside waiting with bated breath to give me three wishes. I wont get into what I did with the other two, but I did, however, manage to save a wish for Zelda fans everywhere. I wished, nay, pleaded with the genie to create the largest Zelda fansite ever with a superior forum community that no one could match.
As it so happens... here we are.

I'm surprised you haven't won an award for that one. Wow man, thanks a bunch!

The community.

Aniday, you know that was totally Lars' wish.

Lamp-thief.

It's because I post nudes in the Farore Scrapbook.


Milk shake brings all the boys to the yard etc

"Milk", he says.

Well the staff of the sites that preceded/ were opened around the same time as ZU were for the most part incompetent (eg LOZ.com, Zelda Dungeon) and those sites that actually had a competent staff (eg. Zelda Informer) were too late to the party.

Zelda Dungeon branched off into Pokemon and Darksiders.

Zelda Universe is still Zelda exclusive for the most part (with some Nintendo news). Zelda Universe is often the first to show breaking news about Zelda and its fanbase, while Zelda Informer and Zelda Dungeon sometimes are sometimes a few days late.

A large part of the recent successes (this means the past 3+ years) are basically thanks to the hard work and dedication of Cody. As a webmaster, he has done more for this site (and the whole Zelda community) in the few years he's been in charge than all the owners and other site staff peeps combined.

On the web, he's done lots of hard work getting involved with other sites/affiliates, created inter-site projects and negotiated the merger of ZU + TSR giving us lots of colourful members, as well as two awesome webbies and a brilliant new admin.

For the main site, he's created a vibrant team of posters eager to talk about Zelda with the help of our two new webbies Lysia and TML and has really kept them on track and motivated. He's constantly produces new content himself, whether its for the podcast, the ZU Youtube which he basically pioneered or just news articles themselves.

And for the forums, when he was active, he made a lot of wise decisions with regards to who to mod and where and the repercussions of these decisions have really shown down the line as these great mods have chosen other great mods. Now a days he's less active within the forum stuff because he has Liah who focuses a lot on it, but when he contributes it's great.

So yeah, I think a lot of the success ZU has had in the past few years has been largely due to Cody's influence and I think that ZU is pretty damn lucky to have him as a webbie.

HOPE THAT ANSWERS YOUR QUESTION.

I agree with Mike 100%.

That said, however, ZU was huge and the largest long before Cody was around. Why exactly that happened is hard to say (it wasn't my doing, although I'd certainly love to take credit for it). I'd say that a large part was luck, and a choice by Lars (the guy that started this place) long ago that the most important thing for ZU is the community. Here, the forums.

ZU's been the place to go for discussing Zelda, or things that aren't Zelda with people who happen to have an affinity for it. And it's always been an important thing for the site, even when forums were still kinda a fringe thing that not everybody was familiar with. So, that helped keep people coming to the site.


A lot of people who have been here for a long time maintain the joke, "ZU has a 'main site'?" That was the joke. It was not until times mentioned by Mike there that ZU was actually a good place for news. Before then, we had great big informational guides, articles, and the community. Article series, written by people that came from the forum community, tie in with it being 'all about community.' We had some amazing writers over time.

Not that I was around in 2003 but I also heard ZU grew the most when TWW was released since it provided a lot of new content and in game analysis. According to the wiki page 15,000 people visited a day.

15,000 is currently our slow-day average, in case you're curious.

But, yeah. I think things really got huge around tWW. I do remember it growing quite a bit.

Cody and the site staff break their backs trying to get the drop on the latest Zelda junk. Even going to events like E3 to get the low down. Plus, the wiki is the best Zelda wiki around. So yeah. Theres a lot of work that goes into this place and the numbers show it.

Originally Posted by Nen desharu

Zelda Universe is still Zelda exclusive for the most part (with some Nintendo news). Zelda Universe is often the first to show breaking news about Zelda and its fanbase, while Zelda Informer and Zelda Dungeon sometimes are sometimes a few days late.

Sorry to be a wet blanket here, but this is not true. ZU almost always seems to be late with gaming news (zelda and Nintendo in general). Nintendo Life and Zelda Informer do a much better job at staying on top with such things.



Nah, ZU is all about the community. I've tried to leave on several occasions, but always found myself crawling back.

They always come back.

Originally Posted by Zecora

Sorry to be a wet blanket here, but this is not true. ZU almost always seems to be late with gaming news (zelda and Nintendo in general). Nintendo Life and Zelda Informer do a much better job at staying on top with such things.



Nah, ZU is all about the community. I've tried to leave on several occasions, but always found myself crawling back.

They always come back.

So it appears that Zelda informer, ZU and Zelda dungeon are perhaps the top 3 sites. Zelda legends use to be up there as well but it changed a lot over the past 4 years.

I been on and off on several occasions for the past 3 years. I will pop my head in every so often and post a little. Whenever a new zelda game is about to come out I become more active.

Mike and Scott got most of it down. I'd like to also mention that Jason, the site's current owner, created the Zelda Wiki and for a long time a lot of the contributors to that site were from ZU's own forums. The rise in popularity of wikis, including the Zelda Wiki, helped ZU maintain the #1 spot.

They put something in the water. I hate Zelda and yet I can't leave. They have my family. They won't let me leave.

I think all the nice people here is a factor too. I've made more friends on this forum than my whole life previous (maybe a bit of an overstatement, but whatever), and the staff are not power hungry ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s (for the most part) who ban people for life for little tiny reasons.

As a forum in general, it's pretty good. I just found it in a google search.

True. I did leave for about two years, if my memory serves me well...
And I came back in 2011, though I don't really belong here, I think

The online magnets of ZU pulled me out of depths of darkness, it makes me feel alien in here though

Originally Posted by Zecora

ZU is all about the community. I've tried to leave on several occasions, but always found myself crawling back.

They always come back.

Originally Posted by Dovahkiin

They put something in the water. I hate Zelda and yet I can't leave. They have my family. They won't let me leave.

I think all the nice people here is a factor too. I've made more friends on this forum than my whole life previous (maybe a bit of an overstatement, but whatever), and the staff are not power hungry ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s (for the most part) who ban people for life for little tiny reasons.

As a forum in general, it's pretty good. I just found it in a google search.

Yup, basically. The only reason I still visit is because of the really friends I have here. I'm not even interested in Zelda anymore honestly.