ZI’s Wiki Returns at a New URL, Soon You’ll be Able to Connect All Accounts Via Facebook

We’re always looking to clean things up at Zelda Informer, and strive to provide a better user experience. This week, Dennis and myself have been spending a lot of time getting things cleaned up. A lot of the cleanup was simply cleaning the code up in the layout, but we’ll be making a few stylistic changes over the next few days. The right navigation, as an example, will have a nice stylistic feel to it.

That being said, one of the major changes was moving the Wiki to a new url, specifically to http://wiki.zeldadungeon.net. The best part in this move? We’ve activated short URL’s, something that wasn’t previously able to be done since the wiki conflicted with our sites backend system.

One major feature we are working on right now is connecting our forums and comment section in terms of having one solitary account. The method we are choosing to do this with is Facebook Connect. While you still have to register individually with the forums and the comments, you can choose to register via Facebook, which will allow you to connect the accounts to a single login. It’s not a perfect system, but it works. We’ll likely include other ways to do this between both accounts down the road. Eventually, if we get big enough to be able to afford the paid version of Disqus, we may have a single registration across the whole site.

Unfortunately, this wont apply to the Wiki out the gate, but we’ll look into integrating that into facebook connect down the line.

For those who have been following our feed via Feedburner, we finally fixed issues that caused the feed to occasionally not update. In essence, we cleaned up our XML code to reduce the file size, which is what caused the issues with Feedburner. So, there has never been a better time to subscribe to our RSS Feed!

Last week I updated the text link code to a new company, Vibrant Media, which has been producing much higher quality ads than you guys are accustomed to. For those who previously moused over the old blue links, you’ll notice the now green links are actually advertising relevant content, including stuff from Nintendo. Unfortunately removing text link ads isn’t a financial possibility right now, but this change was made for you guys. Infolinks had a decent income, but I personally could not bare the fact that the ads were completely irrelevant to our user base. Vibrant Media wont make us “more” money, but at least it creates an all inclusive video game environment.

ZI is in a small transitional stage right now and we look to the future of the site. Of course, that doesn’t mean we are forgetting who we are or where we came from in this transition. It also means we haven’t forgotten to keep things up to date. The entire site, wiki, and forum have been put through the ringer of a massive update today that may have caused some very limited downtime (no longer than a few minutes). All of this is about looking towards the future, as we have some plans in store.

One thing our forum community may appreciate is that we are working on a brand new customized skin, one that works and functions much better than the present default skin, which includes some issues that sometimes log you out randomly. As for the viewers at the site, you can look forward to us consistently pushing unique content out. For awhile we got complacent and just relied on recycled news stories and the same topics being repeated in a new light.

Moving forward, we look to bring you more varied and fun to read content than before. Included in this is more video features, one of which is in the final editing stages at the time of this post, and hopefully the return of the podcast we keep bringing up. We also want to continue to bring you all the Zelda content you crave. Did you know we are the only site on the internet with a detailed Demo Walkthrough for Skyward Sword? Just imagine what our full blown Skyward Sword Walkthrough has in store! You can look for more great features as we move forward, especially for theorizing community.

Naturally, we’ll expand our “other” coverage more, as we look to review more of the titles you care about, and talk about the various things going on in and around Nintendo. One big thing I want to push is creating more talking points, and the erase any disconnect the reader feels with our writers. We want and appreciate your feedback, despite what I or anyone else may have said time to time. This site is for you, and while we do what “we want”, it doesn’t hurt to also do what the “fans want”.

Here’s to a brighter tomorrow.