The Temple Ruins Version 2.3.1

THE HISTORY OF THE TEMPLE RUINS
- The Temple Ruins has not existed in it’s current form for very long, but it does have a long history dating back to 2002. That is when I first opened my Zelda website and while it has been renamed more than a few times and been offline for long periods of time, I still consider this to be that very same website. We’ve had our fair share of troubles over the years, but we’ve had some awesome times as well.
  
  This website has seen countless layouts and formats. At times, we covered only The Legend of Zelda (as we do now) and at other times we’ve covered other series as well. In fact, one very short lived version of this website covered gaming as a whole. Hitting every name and format change would be literally impossible to put on this page, but I will hit on some of the bigger versions. As a special treat, I’ve also included some of the layouts of the website. Unfortunately, over the years most of them have been lost due to hackings, PC crashes, simply being lost, and a variety of other reasons. Very few still exist in digital form and not many more exist in image form. It’s a shame the 14 year old me didn’t do a better job of preserving the website’s history.
  
  In addition, this is going to act as my “special thanks” page. I’d like to recognize the contributions that some people and websites have made to our success over the years. Some of these people have become good friends of mine and I have unfortunately lost contant with some others. Some of the websites are online to this day and others have fallen victim to hackings and other various things. Regardless of their fate, each one has influenced and inspired me in some way. In fact, some of these people were so influential that their influence contributed to my decision to make web and graphic design my career of choice.
  
  On June 20, 2002, at the age of 14, I created a Geocities account with the URL http://www.geocities.com/hylian_sheik and official opened a fansite dedicated to The Legend of Zelda. I called the site The Temple of Time (the word “the” is very important) and I decided to go by the alias “Sheik”. The entire site was built with the Geocities page builder, but I was able to make a decent layout with a black background, white text, and some blue graphics. We got off to a very slow start, and I decided that some staff members would be good. So, I put up a message asking for help, but didn’t actually expect anyone to respond. To my surprise, only a couple days later I received an email from a young woman. She was brought on board as our first staff member and went by the name “Kaepora Gaebora”. Soon after that, I received another email from a boy about my age wanting to help. He went by “Link” (I know, our aliases are all very original) and quickly started writing content. Soon after that, his younger brother came on board as well. Together, the two brothers wrote more content for the site than I did. They were responsible for a good portion of the game content and for almost all of the original features. After a few weeks, we found our last staff member in ThunderFire, a graphic designer who was likely the youngest of the bunch. Although young, he was good at what he did. He crafted new, animated banners for the website (which I loved).
  
  The website did ok for it’s first month or so in existance. However, by the beginning of July 2002 we had reorganized the site onto a new Geocities account at http://www.geocities.com/sheik_kaepora_link. We found our first affiliates in Legends and Adventures (at that time called “The Legend”), Zelda Master, and Zelda Dungeon. I quickly became friends with the webmasters of these websites and I still chit chat with them from time to time. Unfortunately, our “glory” was short-lived. School started in August and things started going downhill. Kaepora disappeared and I still haven’t heard from her (I’ve pretty much given up on finder her, she’s probably married with chilren now). Then ThunderFire disappeared (I’m still trying to find him). Shortly after that, I also lost contact with the two brothers.
  
  Things were looking pretty dull for The Temple of Time. To make matters somewhat worse, another website called Temple of Time (no “the”) emerged in July 2002 with a much more professional layout and a lot more content. I started reminding affiliates that our name had the word “the” in it to help make it slightly more obvious that the two sites were not the same. After school started and the staff disappeared, I made the decision to close down The Temple of Time, at least for a while.
  
  Over the next few months, I created several websites trying to replace TTOT. We had several different names and lots of layouts and different content. Of them all, the most notable was Cloud’s Chronicles, a Final Fantasy/Legend of Zelda fansite. However, even that is a very small and relatively unimportant piece of our history. The next real chapter wouldn’t begin until November of 2002 when I found The Player Domain and met Syler.
  
  In November, I started work on a website dedicated to both The Legend of Zelda series and the hit RPG, Chrono Trigger. I decided it was time to move away from using the Geocities and it’s page builder. The Epoch was originally built in Microsoft Publisher and I found a host in a gaming website called The Player Domain. The webmaster was a college-aged guy named Jason, or Syler. He had a somewhat impressive gaming site for himself with a nice collection of very nice staff members. He accepted me as his second hostee and The Epoch was officially opened (http://www.playerdomain.com/~theepoch). Soon after that, I met the other hostee, a guy my age named Aric. He ran a Metroid site at the time, and while neither The Player Domain or his site (which I regretably cannot remember the name of) are still online, I still talk with him regularly. He’s become a good friend.
  
  In addition to being a hostee, I was brought on board as the staff member in charge of The Player Domain’s Zelda section. The section of the website never really took off, but it was there. I spent most of my time working on The Epoch and we had a pretty decent amount of content (especially on the Chrono Trigger side of things). We did great for a while, lasting into the new year. I redesigned the website a couple of times but the name and content remained the same. Among those redesigned was an orange and black layout that Syler made for me. For the first time, we had a good HTML hand-coded layout. I had known some HTML, but not nearly enough to produce a good layout with. Syler taught me how to use it, and so I did. The period of The Epoch was one of the most stable in the history of this website. However, just a month or so before the 1 year anniversary of the website, we came crashing down. The Player Domain was hacked (if I remember correctly; it was shut down either way) and shut down. It was brought back with the claim that a redesigned website would appear, but it never did. Fortunately, the hostees were able to stay online. However, we entered a transition period and The Epoch was split up. The Chrono Trigger side remained at The Player Domain by the name The End of Time. The End of Time went on to be one of my more successful websites before being lost to the end of The Player Domain.
  
  The Zelda side of things headed back to its roots. I really like the name “The Temple of Time” and I wanted to use it again, so I did.
  
  Following the first anniversary of the website, which I missed due to the hacking, The Epoch was split and became The End of Time and The Temple of Time, a version of the website I refer to as TTOT Reborn. Armed with my new skills in HTML I designed a layout of my own and received hosting or a short time at VESH Networks (http://ttot.vesh.net). As with the Player Domain, I worked for VESH for a short time as a news writer. However, VESH was very short lived and I quickly needed another host. Temple of Light Networks was my solution. I received hosting and things went well for a good while (http://ttot.toln.net). While there, I met GO (Golden Ocarina), co-webmaster of TOLN, and he helped me out a bit for a while. TOLN went down and GO was quick to offer me hosting at his own website, Go’s Dump. I accepted and quickly got things put back together (http://ttot.gosdump.net - I think). TTOT Reborn did alright, but nothing really exciting happened. We didn’t make any real progress, but I was happy to be able to celebrate the second anniversary. However, following that the website silently faded away.
  
  I planned another website called The Pyramid of Power for a very short time, but it was never actually put online. My effors turned to other projects. In late 2003 (December 1st to be exact), I joined Nintendo’s NSider Forums and Yumil1988 was born (although I had used that as my AIM screenname for years). I quickly became involved in daily trivia on Nintendo’s forums and my efforts turned towards smaller websites, most importantly a small gaming site called Atlin Gaming.
  
  On December 2nd, 2003 (one day after I joined NSider) I met Miles Conlan. Originally we only talked about Pokemon. A conversation had been started on the forums about what a 3D Pokemon game could be like. Miles and I got very involved and even created some mock-ups in Paint. Miles ran a small gaming website as well. We became good friends and helped each other out for a while before finally deciding to merge the two sites. The result was Lindquist-Conlan Gaming (LCG), but was quickly renamed NCase. We enjoying running the website, but there were some clashes on how things should be done. While running the website was fun, I longed to get back to the Zelda community and to re-visit my original website.
  
  I began work on a secret project and the result became The Seven’s Seal (more on that below). Around the same time (Fall of 2004), OOT2D (a fan-made 2D remake of Ocarina of Time) was a big deal and I got involved in the Zelda Fan Gaming community. I developed was decent spriting abilities and Sheik became known as “Sheik the Spriter”. Unfortunately, OOT2D was ditched (although several people have tried to bring it back) and my involvement in the community quickly diminished. However, to this day I still have some presence there (more on that below).
  
  In the fall of 2004 I secretly began developing a new Zelda website while still operating NCase, one to be better than all of the others. I called it The Seven’s Seal and it lived up to all my expectations. While I had been using free hosts, I decided that TSS needed a real one, so I began searching. By chance, I happened to be on Zelda Universe and saw that Lars (AnakiN), the webmaster at the time was looking for hostees. As silly as it sounds, I was really nervous about talking with Lars (after all, he was the webmaster of probably the biggest Zelda website on the Internet. And while it may all be rumors and stereotypes, little websites don’t usually mess with the big guys because all they care about are hits). Even so, I caught him on MSN Messenger and we talked for a good while. I had created a HostUltra account just for Lars to view the website and he did. To my surprise, Lars believed the website had potential and agreed to give me hosting.
  
  Needless to say, I was ecstatic. My new Zelda website was the only hostee of the largest Zelda website on the Internet. The Seven’s Seal quickly became the most successful period of this website’s history, but I’ll be the first to admit that the success was almost entirely because we had a link on every page of ZU. However, TSS did get a chance to stand on it’s own. Lars left ZU and the link was removed. In fact, it now appears that even the staff remaining at ZU were unaware that there were any hostees. However, I was surprised to see that the lack of the ZU link didn’t totally chop out the traffic. TSS could make it without ZU.
  
  While I was thrilled with the success of The Seven’s Seal, Miles was not as thrilled. By the time he learned about it, the website had been opened for a good while. He didn’t like the idea of me running NCase (which had a Zelda section) and The Seven’s Seal. In a way, I ignored his comments for a while. However, before the Summer of 2005 I agreed to merge The Seven’s Seal into NCase. That summer, I moved and had no time for any kind of web development. NCase was renamed NinCase, The Seven’s Seal was totally consumed by NinCase, and Miles and I didn’t talk nearly as much. I continued to work on the Zelda section of NinCase for a short while after that. Following the end of The Seven’s Seal, my efforts shifted back towards trivia on NSider.
  
  The first half of 2006 saw very little web design activity going on. The website was offline and I wasn’t running anything else. That summer, I got a job as a graphic designer and I spent some time looking at new things I could play with. As my first year of college approached, I decided I needed to open another website. I debated for a long time on what to create, but ultimately fell back on The Temple of Time. I started this website and I’m not ready to call it quits.
  
  Over the years, The Temple of Time has had tons of layouts and different “versions”. The original TTOT had 14 (including all of the name changes and the The Epoch). TTOT Reborn had a couple layouts and The Seven Seal had two or three of it’s own as well. I decided that it was time to re-think the numbering of versions. I couldn’t call it The Temple of Time 2.0 because that sounds like version two. So, I added another zero: Version 2.0.0 (The current layout is Version 2.3.0). I put together a layout and content and started the search for a host. What I found has been one of my most reliable hosts: Zelda Oracles. HenHouse quickly accepted me into his growing list of hostees and, believe it or not, it’s been a year and this one still exists.
  
  However, that’s not to say this year as gone by without some obstacles in the way of progress. The first, and most obvious one, is college. While I don’t have excessive amounts of school work, working and friends stole a lot of time from the website. In addition, the new family pet (a dog) decided to dig up all the Internet wiring (and rip the satellite dish off the roof) and chew it into tiny pieces. Needless to say, that dog is no longer a part of the family. However, whenever I went home I was without Internet and that meant long periods of time with no updates (especially over the holidays and the summer of 2007). Until the Fall, 2007 has seen very few updates on the website. In addition, another website emerged with the name Temple of Time. However, this time I jumped into action. While I knew there was little I could do, I decided that I needed to defend my ability to use the name.
  
  As I understand it, an established Zelda fansite changed their name to Temple of Time because a friend of the owner paid for the domain. When I spoke with him, he said he was aware of TTOT’s existance and was mainly taking name because he had the domain. Overall, our conversation was very positive even though little was actually done. In the end, neither one of us truly has the “rights” to the name Temple of Time, but since he owned the domain he was in a much better position. We did agree to just go on like it never happened, so, for a time, there were two Zelda fansites with similar names: The Temple of Time and Temple of Time. I was cool with that for a while, but after completing Twilight Princess in December of 2006, I had a better idea.
  
  While playing through Twilight Princess, you visit the ruins of the Temple of Time on more than one occasion. I decided that this was perfect. Not only would it allow me to have a different name than the other Temple of Time, but I felt the name fit the history of the site. So, in early 2007 the website was once again redesigned and the name was changed to The Temple Ruins. I felt it fit because while I hope this website will perform well and I still write new content, it is more or less the ruins, or what is left over, of my original website. In addition, my web design skills had improved greatly and for the first time I ditched table based layouts in favor of a CSS powered layout.
  
  Unfortunately, from there not much can be said. My spring semester involved a lot of web design work, but almost none of it was directed at The Temple Ruins. When I went home for summer, I still had no Internet. Even if I had been able to get online, I wouldn’t have had much time to work on the website. Working consumed most of my time. And yet, here we are again. I’m still not ready to give up. The Temple Ruins has been recreated once again in what is without a doubt the greatest layout I’ve ever created. I’m glad I didn’t stick with my “perfect” layout I had created not long before.