VincentASM Posted October 2, 2009 Share Posted October 2, 2009 I wrote this in pretty much a few hours, for kicks, although I did do a fairly heavy amount of research. I'd consider it a decently written draft. Also, I didn't cover the forums in much detail since the forums aren't really my forte. If anyone wants to write a history about the forums, feel free o__o History of Serenes Forest (By VincentASM) Angel Sword (Geocities) The first iteration of the site was created on Yahoo! GeoCities, a free webspace provider, around October 2004. Incidentally, Geocities is set to close during late October 2009, the UK and Ireland part at least, which isn't long off at the time of writing. Back then, the site was simply known as "Angel Sword" (the name of an original RPG series that will never see the light of day) and served as a filler homepage for the webmaster. You know, since it was always cool to have a homepage of your own, even if you never updated it afterwards. Around the same time, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones had just been released in Japan and naturally fans, Japanese or otherwise, were anxious to see what the game was like. Fortunately, the webmaster was part of a mysterious organisation who were sent a ROM image of the game as an early "Christmas present" and quickly blazed through the game to get a feel for it. There were many English fans who were also playing the game, either via import or emulation, and the trickiest thing for people to figure out was how to recruit some of the characters. Taking some initiative, the webmaster thought it would be useful to compile a character recruitment guide for The Sacred Stones to aid troubled fans, especially after receiving so much Fire Emblem-related help in the past themself. Consequently, a few people commented that the page was quite helpful and all was well in the world. So, the site was a simple homepage with just one Fire Emblem content page, but it was a start. Angel Sword: Memories (Tiscali) The lack of freedom with Geocities was a bit annoying, and thus it was time to search for something better. However it probably wasn't going to be an easy task and the thought of paying for webspace existed, but alas the webmaster had no easy means of paying online. After time passed, something suitable did appear and it was right under our noses all this time. The webmaster's own internet provider, Tiscali, provided its members with a fairly decent free webspace package. Being a customer already, it couldn't hurt to squeeze the worth out of this offer... Well, Tiscali's free webspace ended up being much useful than expected. After testing it out for a couple of days and checking all the notes and disclaimers, it was evidently time to start moving. 1st February 2005 was when the new site was ready, under a new name Angel Sword: Memories (to make the site's acronym the same as the last part of the webmaster's username ASM). There was a change of scenery, involving a cheaply made banner, navigation buttons and a repeating sky blue cloud background. Afterwards, Fire Emblem content was slowly but surely being added. In case people were wondering what Angel Sword was, there were a few pages dedicated to it during this time, although the webmaster prefers to forget about them. The Angel Sword name was also used for forum-based RPGs played in Fire Emblem style (maps, stats, battles and all) that the webmaster used to organise. Some older fans might recognise the name "Miracle of the Sky Dagger", which was one of the popular forum RPGs a long ago, which was based on the Angel Sword universe (technically a spin-off universe to remove continuity issues). Eventually all Angel Sword pages were scrapped for various reasons. Around May 2005, The Sacred Stones was released in North America. The webmaster was a bit of a bad boy and was amongst a few who obtained the ROM image days ahead of the official release date. By the time the game was released in shops, many forum goers were shocked to find a strong resource already and with all the proper English names and changes as well. At this stage, the site was probably a small, reputable Fire Emblem site that you wouldn't mind linking to, but not nearly enough fans knew of its existence still. There was a forum at one time, but it quickly died. Serenes Forest During 7th November 2006, the site received a substantial facelift and henceforth became known as "Serenes Forest", named after a wonderful location from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. The blinding sky blue colour scheme was binned in favour of a blinding forest green colour scheme. On the plus side, we got a great banner from Tiltyu and the site finally started using css, coded by Rookie (which was a necessity after racking up so many pages). This was also when the frame-based navigation was dumped and the site was given the slogan "a pretty good Fire Emblem fan site". To this day, nobody probably knows what that meant. From 25th November 2006, affiliates were added, so Serenes Forest was no longer an outcast from the rest of the fandom. The first two affiliates to join were fellow UK site Fire Emblem Online, as well as FE Planet, famous for their extensive sprite and media collection. Around this time, Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn was nearing its Japanese release so it looked like a great time to start moving up the Fire Emblem world. Around March 2007, some The Sacred Stones pages were submitted to the English Fire Emblem Documentary (EFED), which was the leading Fire Emblem data site then. A domain One of the greatest changes occured around 20th June 2007 when the site finally got itself a domain name, serenes-forest.net. This name, along with the hosting, was provided by Jyosua, who was probably better known at the time as somebody who wouldn't stop trying to evade his ban at the Fire Emblem: Sanctuary of Strategy (FESS) forums. Tiscali's webspace was pretty cool, but paid webspace is always better. Two days later, the Serenes Forest forums were opened. Unfortunately, a month or so later, the entire site died after the server it was hosted on was attacked. Nothing could be salvaged, so the site was moved back to Tiscali. Back to Tiscali Around 22nd November 2007, images hosted on the webmaster's Photobucket account died after the bandwidth quota was exceeded. There were a few times throughout the site's history where this occured. This time, it was caused by the recent release of Radiant Dawn in North America. In fact, the Radiant Dawn section of the site became so popular that the bandwidth limit at Tiscali, itself, was reaching its limit. To prevent the site from dying, the webmaster was forced to split the Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn sections from the rest of the site and host them on another Tiscali name (Tiscali lets you register 6). However in the end, even this wasn't good enough and the Radiant Dawn section had to be split into two! By the way (although I doubt anybody would be interested), the 6 names registered under Tiscali include: angelsword (where Angel Sword: Memories was hosted of course), elaice (where Serenes Forest was hosted, Elaice is Ilyana's Japanese name), neyfa (ROM hacks were put in here, Neyfa is from TearRing Saga), tiena (probably where RPG-related things went, Tiena is from the Fire Emblem: Hasha no Tsurugi manga), tiara (where the Radiant Dawn section was moved to, Tiara is from Zwei!!, an adorable game by Falcom) and vocalstar (NomadicTrooperGirl's site). Another domain On 27th December 2007, Serenes Forest got itself a domain once again, donated by Jyosua. The webmaster sighed a breath of relief, no longer needing to spread the entire site over 3 or more names. A few days later, 9th January 2008, a new forum was added. Back then, the following message was posted to ease worries about the site dying like before: "Last time we lost our host due to events beyond our control, but I don't think we'll have any problems this time ^^" At the time of writing, the very same site and forums are still standing today. With the influx of visitors from Radiant Dawn's English release, the site started becoming a (gasp) popular Fire Emblem site. As well extensive information for the recent English releases, fans were also delighted to see a decent amount of coverage for the lesser-known, but dearly loved, older titles. At the beginning of August 2008, the site passed 1,000,000 unique visitors. This was also near the time when Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon was released in Japan. Naturally, the webmaster worked many night shifts to get all the information ready for eager fans ASAP. Bad news On a side note, August 2008 was also when fellow fan site EFED closed after almost a year of inactivity. EFED's content was succeeded by FESS, so there wasn't any real loss to fans. Eaichu, the webmaster of EFED, once joked that he considered Serenes Forest a rival, so that the two sites could compete and both improve as a consequence. At the time, this site severely lagged behind EFED and didn't possess the same ambitions. In any case, EFED was one of the inspirations for this site, so it was sad to see it disappear. Not long after EFED closed, on November 2008, FESS itself closed due to lowering interest. This was a sad day for many fans, as FESS had been the prominent Fire Emblem-centric community for many years. The webmaster of this site was a long-term member of FESS and learnt many things from there, related to Fire Emblem and website building. The administrator of FESS recommended any members still interested in Fire Emblem to register at Serenes Forest forums. Not surprisingly, the next few days were fairly hectic on this side, with an infamous clash between existing SF members and FESS members (which the webmaster facepalmed over). During June 2009, this site suffered a major setdown after a serious attack on the server where it was hosted caused virtually all data to be lost. The main site was least affected, since most of the data was stored on disk anyway. However the forums had to be rollbacked to its version from 3 months ago. To prevent a similar situation from happening, the site was moved to a dedicated server and automatic backups were set more frequently. Recent happenings Besides the usual new pages and media, there hasn't really been many major changes to the site. On the forums side, the forum software was upgraded during July 2009 and the forums were without custom skins for 2 or 3 months. It was only during late September 2009 that the webmaster decided to restore the good ol' Serenes Forest skin out of boredom. Otherwise, stay tuned, because the site will always be improving, every little at a time. The webmaster is also hoping to revamp the site one more time in the distant future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox Posted October 2, 2009 Share Posted October 2, 2009 Then shit got crazy. The end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheEnd Posted October 2, 2009 Share Posted October 2, 2009 Geocities is closing down worldwide, as far I know. Then shit got crazy. The end. I'm pretty sure I joined before shit got crazy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kriemhild Posted October 2, 2009 Share Posted October 2, 2009 Needs more mentioning of the Magical Purple skin. Also, this seemed quite helpful. I didn't know all of that before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Camtech075 Posted October 11, 2009 Share Posted October 11, 2009 You should mention the recent time the server was hacked; i.e. the time when we lost about 3 month's worth of data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Defeatist Elitist Posted October 11, 2009 Share Posted October 11, 2009 You forgot the part where I joined. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roxas Posted October 11, 2009 Share Posted October 11, 2009 During June 2009, this site suffered a major setdown after a serious attack on the server where it was hosted caused virtually all data to be lost. The main site was least affected, since most of the data was stored on disk anyway. However the forums had to be rollbacked to its version from 3 months ago. To prevent a similar situation from happening, the site was moved to a dedicated server and automatic backups were set more frequently. You should mention the recent time the server was hacked; i.e. the time when we lost about 3 month's worth of data. :/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Candlejack Posted October 11, 2009 Share Posted October 11, 2009 Do not forget to mention MY arrival! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Camtech075 Posted October 11, 2009 Share Posted October 11, 2009 During June 2009, this site suffered a major setdown after a serious attack on the server where it was hosted caused virtually all data to be lost. The main site was least affected, since most of the data was stored on disk anyway. However the forums had to be rollbacked to its version from 3 months ago. To prevent a similar situation from happening, the site was moved to a dedicated server and automatic backups were set more frequently. You should mention the recent time the server was hacked; i.e. the time when we lost about 3 month's worth of data. :/ MEH. Stupid account. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kriemhild Posted October 11, 2009 Share Posted October 11, 2009 Since it apparently wasn't mentioned here, I was wondering how and when Lord Glenn came into all of this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hero Posted October 12, 2009 Share Posted October 12, 2009 Needs more mentioning of the Magical Purple skin. Seriously. I was a big fan of that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheEnd Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Since it apparently wasn't mentioned here, I was wondering how and when Lord Glenn came into all of this. First of all... Also, I didn't cover the forums in much detail since the forums aren't really my forte. If anyone wants to write a history about the forums, feel free o__o Second, Lord Glenn was promoted to admin because of this: The administrator of FESS recommended any members still interested in Fire Emblem to register at Serenes Forest forums. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts