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| ==Layout 16== | | ==Layout 16== |
| Beginning in February of 2008, Mases began revealing a project at the website known as the Zelda Dungeon Alliance. Over the next several months, Mases began revealing websites that were a part of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance. The original goal that Mases had envisioned with the alliance, was to have a network of eight Zelda websites, each who were unique in their own way. At Zelda Dungeon, rather than having minuscule sections devoted to things like fan artwork, a sprite comic, or a fan games section, Mases preferred to focus strictly on game content and allow other websites in the alliance to satisfy the needs of the other areas. These sites would then be featured at Zelda Dungeon with news updates on the index page, highlighting their exclusive content. At the launch of the 16th layout of Zelda Dungeon, all non-game guide sections at Zelda Dungeon were to be deleted, with focus now shifting exclusively to game guides.
| | {{Main|Zelda Dungeon:Layout 16.0|Layout 16.0}} |
| | | Launched on May 18th, 2008, the website had a change of direction, focusing more directly on game guides and game walkthroughs. Many of the outdated sections of the websites that focused on some of the other aspects of the Zelda community were removed, including sections regarding fan artwork, fan music, and fan games. Instead, the website focused on walkthroughs, and provided updates to other Legend of Zelda websites that did a good job promoting this material. The website also had a much larger pop-out menu for game navigation, allowing for one click navigation to specific chapters in the various walkthroughs. |
| One of the first websites introduced into the alliance was North Castle, a website devoted to fan artwork, fan fictions, and an assortment of other fan submitted content. Each month, Juliet, the webmaster of North Castle, made an update revealing the newest pieces of artwork and fiction. Mases would then feature several of these fan artwork images in what would become known as the monthly artwork update. Four to Six pieces of artwork would be posted at Zelda Dungeon, and this allowed a constant flow of updates to be put on Zelda Dungeon, yet not many resources needed to be focused on news updating and more time could be spent on guides. It also gave a lot of extra exposure to these pieces of unique content and gave the fans of Zelda Dungeon something interesting and unique. Some of the other unique websites that were announced as being a part of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance were Zelda Comic, Zelda Reorchestrated, and Zelda Classic. On May 18th of 2008, Layout 16, which was created by Caleb, was launched, and the alliance websites were now being fully implemented.
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| The layout had a quite a few drastic changes made to the website. With the inclusion of the alliance, all material at Zelda Dungeon was removed, other than game content, site content, and selective media content. All of the site content was stored in pop down navigation bars that could be found along the left navigation and within the header of the layout. The game menus along the left navigation now had huge pop out menus that displayed every piece of content for each game. The compacted navigation bars made it so that it was no longer needed to have two navigation bars on every page of the website. On the right navigation bar on the index page, there was a listing of site projects and affiliates. This page however, was only seen on the index page, and if a user navigated to a game content or a media page, the right navigation would be removed and it will be replaced with an expanded content area. This extra space of content allowed the staff members of Zelda Dungeon a wider area to work with and this ultimately led to higher quality guides because there was more room, allowing for larger thumbnail images to used. New sections of the Ocarina of Time walkthrough that Caleb was working on were the first pages that took these adjustments into effect. | |
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| The layout also saw the release of a new slogan for Zelda Dungeon that Caleb created, 'Let us take you through the dungeons'. This signified the extra stress the website had on game content and specifically, game walkthroughs. Content continued to pour in during this time period, with several new chapters of the Ocarina of Time walkthrough being completed, as well as the beginnings of the Twilight Princess walkthrough.
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| Prior to the launch of layout, Caleb had been working on another layout that had a black and red color scheme. This layout was never officially released, although it did have the same functioning mechanics as the final blue variation. The red variation of the layout was very image intensive, taking a long while to load, and it was decided that this was not practical. The blue variation also had quite a bit of imagery, but it was significantly smaller in file size.
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| On August 19th, 2008 Zelda Dungeon celebrated its seventh birthday and released a retro version of layout 1.0. Caleb created a mimic of layout 1.0 in a short period of time, and for several hours, it was available for viewing at the Zelda Dungeon index page. The actual birthday update was one of the largest content updates in site history, which included the complete Twilight Princess textual walkthrough.
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| The period of time during this layout saw a drastic increase in active members and total posts at the Zelda Dungeon Forums. Beginning in April of 2008, every consecutive month after April, had more total posts than the previous month. This trend continued every month through the entire lifespan of Layout 16 and into Layout 17. On September 19th, the Zelda Dungeon Forums reached the milestone of 10,000 total posts.
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| The Zelda Dungeon alliance had not worked out entirely as was originally planned. Many of the alliance websites were going through rough times or simply didn't have the type of material that warranted news posts. North Castle had been the only alliance websites that has been constantly featured at Zelda Dungeon with monthly artwork updates. When discussion of the new layout was being made, Mases and Caleb decided to reduce the alliance down to four websites, only keeping what they felt made the most sense for Zelda Dungeon.
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| There were a handful of other staff changes during this layouts era, including the hiring of Josh, who was the lead content specialist at a now debunked Zelda website, Zelda Oracles. After seeing his work at what was an inactive website, Mases approached Josh and offered him a chance to help out at Zelda Dungeon, at which Josh quickly jumped aboard and began working on various content projects, including the Wind Waker Walkthrough.
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| ==Layout 17== | | ==Layout 17== |