Question #1: Is this site just ZHQ renamed, or is it the official successor to ZHQ?

Answer: Neither. ZHQ is not officially dead, but after a year of not being updated it was finally placed into officially being at rest. This site is created independantly of ZHQ and although the webmaster here did for some time webmaster for ZHQ, and some of the staff members of this site may be recognized from ZHQ, it is an entirely new web site. On Niels's own site, about his site, he says "I'm sure that the site will rise again." If that happens, I do not anticipate HYLIA.Com going down, and in such a case both ZHQ and HYLIA.Com would be operating simultaneously and independantly of each other. This is a new web site.

Question #2: What work has been done on the web site?

Answer: The main portion of the web site is not ready to be "launched". While I would like to start the site and get it moving, I am more interested in doing it right. When I was webmastering ZHQ, I felt that the site required a major re-design, almost to the point where doing a good job would require making the design from scratch and tossing out much of the old design. Even if such a thing wasn't required, it would be a good idea. Since I envision HYLIA.Com becoming bigger than what ZHQ was, I need to create a design that will better serve such a larger web site.

After doing some research, I decided that I should try to "borrow" some JavaScript routines. In order to figure out how to get someone else's JavaScript to work the way I wanted it to, I went through an online tutorial and ended up learning much more than originally anticipated. I ended up making new routines of my own, and never did just copy someone else's materials.

Question #3: What is the current status of the web site?

Answer: Although you might be more interested in this question than question #2, this answer picks up where Question #2's answer left off. Please read that question first.

At the beginning of the year, Conrad had a preliminary version of the technical part of the new navigation system that will support this large web site almost completed. At that time, he purposefully slowed his work on the web site so he could focus on school, and ended up "slowing down" to such an extent that he didn't touch the site for about 3 months. Quite unhappy with the great extent of my time away from the site, he decided that he absolutely would not repeat that over the next school quarter (which is now).

According to his latest reports, he remembers having all of the technology (programming) of the menus done, and I was about 2/3 of the way completed of integrating it into the site. The rest was menial labor, like filling in the blanks, and shouldn't take long. With a way to get around the site, there will finally be a spot for the material to go and so we'll finally be able to start posting the material we have backlogged just waiting to go, and then we can start generating new stuff.

In the meantime, now that the site has a bit of an audience, the site is going to start getting updated regularily; if not more interesting updates then at least with some status/progress reports so that people know what to expect from this site when it's ready. Since we've got some people visiting, Conrad would rather do what it takes to keep them around until the site is ready, than to lose them and then try to regain them back somehow.

Question #4: Can I help?

Answer: Not at this time. The development of the entire site is waiting on Conrad to finish the technical menu stuff. Once that's completed, we need to give our already-selected new staff members a chance to do their part of drawing menu buttons and so forth. Depending on the quality of such artwork, the time it takes to make, and the business of the lives of the current staff members assigned to such tasks, we may be in need of help in that area soon, but not now.

After that point of time, which may be as early as a couple of weeks from now when all that is finished, there are some positions that will need to be filled. However, we should be able to fill those positions at that time. Right now, trying to deal with new staff members would detract Conrad from getting the site up, and we don't need that right now. Check back because we will be having openings.

Question #5: Will I be able to view HYLIA.Com with my browser?

Answer: At launch time, I expect HYLIA.Com the site to be compatible with MS IE, Netscape, and any browser compatible with W3C's standards for the DOM and CSS-P (CSS Positioning). (I assume that this does include Konquerer and Opera. I'm guessing this does not include older or simpler browsers including WebTV, Lynx, OS/2 Web Explorer (that came with OS/2 Warp), the Dreamcast's web browser, etc. Read below for more details on those browsers.) With MS IE and Netscape, I expect versions 4.x and higher (including versions 6.x and higher) to work, and versions 3.x and lower to, initially, not work very well. Netscape 6.x was originally NOT going to be supported at launch, and only MS IE's recent changes to be more compatible with Netscape 6 made it so that immediate Netscape 6 compatibility seemed far more worthwhile to invest time into sooner rather than later.

This section will be updated when more information is known. Eventually something will be developed for non-JavaScript browsers to be able to navigate the site. Conrad is interested in having this, and has selected Tril, locally-known friend and system administrator of HYLIA.Com's webhost and the Hyrule.DHS.Org system that Conrad has used to serve ZHQ's mailing lists for years, to work closely with him to enable such support. However, it is more important that we have a well-designed, easy-to-navigate site that most people can use because the more people who use the site, the better the site is. (Not only does it create more fan participation and act as a greater incentive for staff members to work on the site, but it also creates a larger pool of people to become new staff members and is a greater incentive for people to become staff members of this site.) Support for more browsers is a key interest of the site's webmaster but getting the site up is a higher priority.

I expect that very soon after launch, or perhaps post-launch, we will provide *minimal* compatibility with other browsers, at least enough so that the main page can be viewable and that people can follow links from the main news page that point at all the new material. I'm really not sure how to impliment any more navigation than that for the older web browsers, and is something I will look into. at a later time.

Question #6: Is this TRIZ?

Yes. This is, as I have kept phrasing it over and over, "what is publicly known as 'TRiZ'". (Actually, TRiZ is my incorrect rememberence of its capitalization: ZHQ calls it TRIZ or TriZ.)

I spent quite a bit of time looking at various names for the site: The first I used was "Totally Revering the Incredibleness of Zelda", which abbreviates to TriZ (which had a couple of double-significances hidden behind it: Tri also being singificant in the series due to the Triforce not to mention the number of pendants found in some games, and Z of course being the initial of the series). However, some company had made approach of management that they called "Tri-Z".

I considered many other names. When the previous site with the URL of ZELDA.Com stopped working, it appeared for a while that I'd be calling my site Zealously Enjoying Link's Daring Adventures. However, Nintendo did get ahold of that domain name and later started using it as the official site. I was kind of glad, actually, that I didn't get the ZELDA.Com web site. I don't think Nintendo will mind me naming my site HYLIA.Com, but I would have been a bit worried about how Nintendo might react if I were using the more appealing and perhaps even more official-sounding ZELDA.Com domain name for an unofficial site.

So, I had to find another name. TriZ.Com was taken and Zelda.Com was out of my control. I came up with Cherishing Our Universally Revered And Great Explorer (Of Unmatched Skill) was a consideration, but both Courage.Com and Courageous.Com were taken.

Adlez.Com was taken. LegendOfZelda.Com was taken. Wisdom.Com and Power.Com were taken. Link.Com was taken. Triforce.Com was taken. Hyrule.Com was taken. So were the .Net and .Org versions of all these site names. I thought that since the Courage of Link is not at all a hidden part of the game, maybe I ought to check out words that mean that.

Intrepid. Intrepidity. Brave. Bravery. Valor. Resolute. Spirit. Daring. Daringness. Gallantry. Confidence. Mettle.

All taken.

I finally found one word meaning Courage that was free. Penthesilean. In a list of words forming a sentence-like structure, I noticed it was the only word other than the first of the "sentence" which was capatalized. I researched it to find out how this word with a meaning similar to Courage might at all differ from the actual word Courage. I found out the word comes from Penthesilea, the ancient goddess of the greeks, who fought a war against incredible odds against the greeks and won. Okay, sounds appropriate, but what a long and hard word to resort to.

Oh, great. Actually, that winning the war was read from an Australian site-- described one text of an Australian college course studying rewritten versions of texts from Classical history. The real, established Greek Myth says that Penthesilea died in battle against her arch-enemy. Well, who wants to use that as a basis for the name of a Zelda site which is about a video game series where a young boy consistantly overcomes great odds on a very long journey filled with trials before meeting up with his great enemy?

I talked with my father who had started multiple businesses in his lifetime, but he never had quite the same problem. If someone in Southeastern Florida in the Southeast of the nation we lived in which stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific had started up a business called "Lou's Flowers", that doesn't necessarily prevent my father, in Northwest Washington State in the Northwest of the USA, from also creating a business called Lou's Flowers. In the world of the internet, though, only one organization can have a domain name. Some company that has a Tri-Z management approach was preventing me from calling my site "TRIZ" (unless I ridiculously didn't want my site name and its address to match).

My dad asked me several questions and proposed several names, most of which I tried and were taken and others of which I rejected, when somehow I had a name enter my head which was, somehow, available. Heroic Young Link In Action. HYLIA. I registered HYLIA.Com.

With a potential site name under my belt as well as a purchased domain name, I thought even more about the name and eventually decided I liked a slightly different version a bit better: Heroic Young Link's Incredible Adventures.

And that is my story on the creation of this site's name.

Question #7: Is there going to be background music?

Answer: Yes, absolutely. However, unwelcome MIDI music will not be. I will make sure it's easy to change the background music, including shutting it off. I don't know how to do that yet, but I think I can learn with minimal effort and I will do so before putting it on the pages. I imagine I may use cookies to store your settings on your hard drive, so that your music-listening preferences are saved and you don't have to keep turning the sound off. Right now, the pre-launch site is really quite silent for my likings, but it will remain so until I get all this sorted out. I do not intend to be putting music on the site, post- or pre-launch, until it's done right, and that means making it easy to shut it off.

I think that background music on a web site is nice, and it's a pleasant surprise, for me, when I find another web site doing it. Far too few web sites do it, in my opinion. I like them. And so, yes, background music will definitely be a part of this web site.

At least originally, expect background music to come in the form of MIDI's, since MP3's would really hurt the browsing experience of people without broadband.

Question #8

Question #9

Answer:It's really best that I began to work on my own site, for I think ZHQ had a certain quality that the new ZHQ site design will not have. The new ZHQ may be a quality site, but it will have different qualities, and will lack a certain one which I do not want to let pass into obscurity: One I wish to capture and hang onto which Niels is letting pass. (Of course, it could also be very accurately said that his plans include certain qualities that my plans lack.)

I hope to be able to capture the spirit of "ZHQ's glory days", and also of "TGL's glory days". One thing that helped both of those sites, clearly, were frequent updates. I have discussed with my staff and my impression is that we've all seemed to agree that it's doable (or at least there were no objections that it wasn't doable), an update schedule where the site gets updated "daily", that is 5 times a week, and these updates do not even include updates to News (such as Nintendo announcements of future products), the Games sections, site redesigns, or other "big things" which may be worked on as well the things with regular scheduled updates. (In fact, there are more than 5 ideas, but I limit them to 5 days a week in order to make site updating more managable. If multiple people begin to have update power on the site, which I am certainly considering, we could update even more often than that-- done even easier if we come up with more ideas.) I don't know just how feasible it will really be to update this often when other factors in life (like college classes and homework) decide they want to interfere, but 5 days a week is the current sought-after plan.

I do want to have the site be advertising sponsored so that the site can enjoy things such as paid-for time being spent on it (which can sometimes be a little more abundant than volunteer time), a nice fast juicy web host, renewal of the domain name when its about ready to expire, etc. Even if the ad-sponsored web site doesn't pay webmasters like they used to, it would still be nice. I expect to be rather picky about my advertisements, showing only relevant ones targetted to my site's audience (such as advertising a new video game, and not, for example, a "Punch the monkey" ad).

The site will exist post-launch. It will launch. I feel the site will be a good thing for not only the visitors who are considered "the online Zelda community", but also for some of the staff members who simply deserve a high-quality site to be associated with. The web site is not just about myself, and I have no intentions of abandoning the project even if I do tire a bit of it from time to time. It is going to launch.

After launch, if at some point I find myself not having the desire to keep running the site, I will seek to make an honorable exit. That could mean passing the site onto another staff member, or to some other interested party (like the webmaster of another web site with content different than this site's), or worse come to worse I'll try to do what I did with old-style ZHQ: Zip it up and make it easy to download. On my own site, I would never abandon it without letting people know what's going on.

I'd like to improve the voting system a bit... I believe I can get the voting results to integrate within the main page. It should be nicer that way, but it will take a bit of time to set up and I thought getting this page up was a higher priority.

Finally, some status reports. That's about all I can say, right now, that I intend to do pre-launch. The other things, I'm hoping to delay until post-launch. In other words, I hope to get launch done before many of the other ideas I have for the site.

Question #11: Can I exchange links with you?

No, not at this time. Currently, I'm only linking to some other Zelda sites that I have decided look like they're good sites that are really worth checking out, and most likely are worth visiting frequently. If you think you have a large web site that fits that description or have something ground-breaking going on that can't wait, let me know. Please keep in mind that even though this site may be getting updated a bit frequently, it is still considered by me to be "pre-launch". After launch, I expect this web site to have a serious links section that has a greater number of outgoing links. At that time, I'll have different instructions about getting linked to. At the current time, I simply don't want to spend much time keeping a real links page, because I find working on anything preventing the site from launching right now to be a higher priority.

As for linking to HYLIA.Com, you are welcome to do so. I don't require it in order to get linked to from this page. I'm only going to link to your site if it looks like it's a good site that really shouldn't be excluded from even a small list of links. Whether you link back to this site isn't a consideration. HYLIA.Com is not seeking a lot more visitors at this pre-launch time. Since ZHQ started linking to HYLIA.Com, I'm trying to keep the site updated enough to keep the interest of the visitors which we do have, so that I don't lose them. I'm not presently trying to seek out more, though.

There will be a time when I'm going to want to serve slewfuls of visitors, and that's going to be when I have something really good to show them (launch time), instead of just some promises which is, for the most part, what this site currently is. When it comes time for this site to really launch, I intend to E-Mail webmasters of other Zelda sites hoping that they will spread the word of this site at that time.

I've already been offered a link exchange by the webmaster of Ganon's Tower. I found his site worth linking to and I linked to it. After I explained my position to him (before I wrote this entry into the FAQ), he decided not to link to me until my site's about ready to launch. I'm perfectly okay with that. So while we may end up putting links on our sites to each other, such linking is done only on a volunteer basis either way, and so it's not an "exchange" of links in the typical sense.

If you do want to link to me at this time, I certainly don't object. If you do, please call the site "HYLIA.Com" or its alternate, expanded official name when it's announced, and not just "Hylia" (without the ".COM") like Niels did on ZHQ.

Question #12: What are your plans about message boards?

If I created a message board, I'd have to maintain the board or make sure there is a current maintainer who keeps the standards I expect for the site. If people of a message board start writing quite nasty to each other, I'd rather let other maintainers decide if they should censor the topic, close or delete the thread, and ban posters. It's nice not to need to be involved in getting things sorted out so that people can get along again. I expect to keep busy enough if other sections of the site.

I'd also want to make sure the message board is a success, and I'd rather not compete with other message boards trying to steal many of their visitors who don't want to visit many different boards. At this time, I don't feel I have anything special to offer as far as message boards go. I don't mind creating a website because I think I can create a website with something good which isn't found on other web sites. I can't say the same thing about message boards.

I expect to have a seperate Links section or, more likely, a clear division of the Links section dedicated to Forums. Just because a web site has a lot of information about Zelda 1 doesn't mean that its message board is the preferred hangout of people who like to talk about Zelda 1. Unexciting web sites with little information not worth browsing but a very active automated real-time fans' area should stand out from web sites which may be bigger, updated more often by the staff, but which have a rather limited fan area.

Some people have wondered if HYLIA.Com intends to adopt KVS as its official message board. The answer is, no. While I'm not greatly opposed to the idea, there's no need. HYLIA.Com doesn't a part or extention of itself which is a message board. KVS has been in operation in one format or another with very little aid from ZHQ. While there are plenty of options that could happen down the road, there doesn't appear to be any hurry by either side to rush into such an exclusive agreement.

Question #13:What's Going On With ZHQ?