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The Fire Emblem Shrine has had a long history as a Fire Emblem fansite. Here you can find many details
on how the FEShrine came about as well as other information about the site.
... I believe it was sometime in 2004 where the true beginning began. I, Fire Blazer, was a little kid interested in Fire Emblem. I saw it in stores
and being the kid I was, was induced by the fantasy aspect into buying the game known as Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword.
The original Fire Emblem Shrine was on the host Freewebs.com, which at the time of this writing, has changed to webs.com and developed very very far.
HTML was for the most part a new concept to me. I looked around for some free templates until I found something interesting-- a greenish
layout with navigation bars on both the right and left and space at the top for a banner. After quite a bit of unprofessional
editing where I messed up some aspects and filled the page with web design errors, I started recreating pages.
Fire Emblem Universe was a quickly growing and expanding forum. It had great members, pretty good administration, and one of my old best
friends Arch ran the website. At some point we decided that my mainsite could merge with the forums and that's what we did. We were
affiliates and the mainsite now had it's own forums--sorta--I just linked to Fire Emblem Universe and got it a bunch of hits and whatnot.
In any case, it helped both of us out.
Site updates past, pages fixed, content added, and serious business occurred. I don't really remember the details, as I think I said before,
but our sites split apart, and it wasn't even very... 'professional'. It just kinda happened. I was lazy at the time so it took me
a long while before I actually took off the link to his site, but oh well. Arch started slowly building his site and I kinda got interested
in a variety of things and didn't pay as much attention to mine.
I, Blazer, became more busy with school and interested in various other things besides my site. I didn't update it or advertise it as much--
in fact, for a long period of time, I generally avoided it, only checking in for small things like statistical updates, making sure the
page was working, and occasionally updating saying "I'll do more stuff soon", but I never really got motivated to.
After some time, perhaps half a year or more, I'm not sure, I decided the current Fire Emblem Shrine layout kinda sucked, looked ugly, had a lot
of design problems and aethestical problems. Thus began my 2nd major attempt at revamping a site's layout.
Ah, "the domain"... Well, here's a secret I don't think I've told anyone. When I first got my domain name for the Fire Emblem Shrine, which I wanted
oh-so-badly, I didn't even pay for it. Well, at least I don't think I did... Hah, here comes the memory loss~.
A new domain name was great, but now I had to actually get a website. Now, back when I first created the outline for the history section
of my website, I had a major idea for each section, with each section having some sort of main plot event. But now, I can't remember much of that,
except that I know I used the template before this one, I believe. It was also red, like my other ones, except with a little orange.
Thus, I created the Fire Emblem Shrine Forums IV. Why "IV"? Because that means 4 in roman numerals, and it was the 4th forum I created. This time,
however, I planned to just spam about it everywhere, and best of all, I had loyal friends from websites like Fire Emblem Universe (cough DH_Ninja), Sealed Sword (a pretty
much dead site now, unfortunately... it was awesome back in the day. I hope their administrator is doing well, we had good times...), and then
there were people I just knew that didn't really hang around forums too much, and people from another dead website called GameTalk. In other words,
I knew enough people to get my site going, and I was a persistent guy. I'd post as much as I needed to and make as many topics as I needed to
in order to keep my site alive. And heck, that still applies. I mean, no offense to Fire Emblem, but with the way it is now, there's just not
enough Fire Emblem stuff to talk about to keep communities roaring with activity.
Lost...
The forum crash... A stain in the history of our forums. Oh no, this one wasn't where the forum just died off due to inactivity. The forum
crashed. I should have known it would happen, because these kind of things happened when you used free hosts. But I wasn't smart and like
most things I couldn't predict because I'm not psychic... Man, sometimes I wish I were psychic.
Incomplete.
Incomplete.
Incomplete.
The Beginning
Super Smash Bros. Melee expanded on my like for this, obviously, as sword-based characters were quite appealing to me. With this in mind I went online
trying to find information and I found a site called Game Talk, a forum for people to chat without having to go through a registration process.
I met up with some people who would be some of my top friends and supporters, like Dark Lustre Magician, Simple Tactician, and Steroidboi, to name a few.
I found Dark Twilkitri's incomplete translation patch of Fire Emblem 6 and went crazy about it, advertising it all over. In addition I wanted to make a website
of my own where I could make reviews, walkthroughs, ratings, and do my own thing. I created a semi-successful site known as Ragnarok Fire,
which is now no longer existent. It was a website made using http://www.freewebs.com and simple to boot but my obsessively noobish advertisment
kept it going a little. I learned a lot about websites from this and it wasn't really smarts as much as taking a long time to learn-- all this was in 2004.
It was either late 2004 or early 2005 when I created Little Frenzy, a site where I hosted files for Ragnarok Fire. Soon after this I also made
the Fire Emblem Shrine using another freewebs account, where the site was specifically about Fire Emblem. Just like now, back in the day the site
had that same intense red color theme to it.
I didn't have much content on the Fire Emblem Shrine. I was more interested in making up names for sections, giving out "special info" that nobody else had,
and making lots of updates. I still do that 'till today, don't I? As the Fire Emblem Shrine became more of my focus I lost sight of Ragnarok Fire. In 2006,
I closed my first website and a lot of memories. I kind of wish I didn't, but back then closing Ragnarok Fire was a drama thing and I liked to make drama.
The Little Frenzy remained as a file host, but it moved from Ragnarok Fire to the Fire Emblem Shrine after RF closed. With this, the Fire Emblem Shrine became
the main center attention, as well as all the affiliates, friends, forums, and memories along with it.
Freewebs Era
Originally, FES was just a freewebs site. No HTML coding, or CSS, or any fancy stuff. Just the good ol' web site builder, but only 1/2 as automated as
now adays. Regardless, the original scheme was indeed red. I don't know why I chose red, but I did, and well, that's that.
Believe it or not, I didn't start with pages for all the games and hacking and stuff. Rather, I was more interested in writing Walkthroughs
and Reviews for the games. So I just put up some sections for that and some images here and there and wala, a Fire Emblem site. Once in a while
I'd make a small update or an excuse to update; for instance, "Sorry For the Lack of Updates, I'll be doing something soon", kind of like how I do now adays.
I met up with a lot of people, and my online friends visited my site regardless of how much it sucked. I was very, very, VERY naive back then (sorry for not using the special
character in the word 'naive') and I bugged my friends over and over to get them to help. Yeah, I feel bad now. Like, guilty. Still, good to know
I had such loyal friends. ^_^
At some point around this time I met up with some of my favorite affiliates. Pooshies of Doom was a comedy site with random updated and random pages.
It was really good and for whatever reason I had a lot of respect for it. It's where I got the quote "It's not laziness, it's a lack of motivation"-- maybe
that's why. XD
Also around this time I got some random staff member that never did anything that I can't remember. I'm not sure if it was still this early in its stages,
however my now good friend Seraphinox joined the crew. Seraphinox is a very loyal Irish (he can speak English, mind you) friend, walkthrough writer, and
generally knowledgeable Fire Emblem player. I would have never gotten as far as I did without his guides to support because honestly, I only get so much done
with my laziness.
Within time, I decided there there was going to be some changes... Kinda bored of the old layout and wanted a new spark. Having a website was always really
cool for me, enjoyable, and I wanted to get another spark in that great enjoyability by making a "fresh start".
New Layout #1
The site was still located at http://www.freewebs.com/fireemblemshrine/ (believe it or not) but I started to use the "advanced" mode of
freewebs instead of the typical site builder. Somewhere around sometime I also created other freewebs accounts where I uploaded
files because I needed more space. One of them was http://www.freewebs.com/firemblemshrine/, the only difference from
the actual site being that it only had ONE 'e' between 'fire' and 'emblem' instead of two. :P
With the new layout I also started to expand my website into many different sections. Random miscellaneous sections, lots of pages
for different media and projects, and sections for each Fire Emblem that existed at the time. I even had somebody hired to find
the latest Fire Emblem news/info and I made a page just for that :). This old site can still be viewed but you have to know
the URL to one of the old pages because the main page has been deleted.
Another interesting note about this is that I made a section on hacking where I posted hacks, patches, documents, and other stuff.
One of the key features about it was that it was the only hacking section ever and I made a form where people could ask for hacks
to be made for them. In the end I only finished 1 hack that was requested and because I got about 100 requests for hacks I closed
down the form to stop people from requesting. This is getting ahead of myself a little because when this version of FES was closed
I was STILL getting requests, but I'm not exactly to the point where I closed FES in my story.
The Merge with Fire Emblem Universe
Arch at some point did have administrative privelages over the website. Yes, he could actually make his own updates to the site and
whatnot. Here's where my memory gets cloudy; at some point the thing started to not work out, I didn't want my website to change its name
to "Fire Emblem Universe" and Arch didn't want to change his site's name either. In addition, Arch wanted to make his own mainsite
to go along with his forums. Our affiliation with each other was not very long lived but interesting and beneficial and a good experience.
Once again, I think I'm getting ahead of myself...
Split Apart
On a side note, here's some information about Fire Emblem Universe. Arch created it as a simple IPBFree forum and advertised it on
Fire Emblem Anthology, an old Fire Emblem forum. I was the 7th member to join (yes, I do remember) but because it wasn't too active and
neither was I. At some point I decided to start being active and post around. I enjoyed my time there and met new people.
It also became a pretty good place for hacking, and in the present it is currently the best hacking resource alive, and it was that way for
a long time, and I do believe it will take a while before any site surpasses FEU's reputation as a great Fire Emblem hacking forum.
Within a while FEU started doing things on its own although I remained (for the most part) a loyal member. The dates get fuzzy once again
but it at some point switched to IPB, and then its IPB forums got deleted or something. Once again it moved, but this time it was moved
to SMF (Simple Machine Forums), and after a longer while it moved to IPB, where it currently is hosted. I think that's enough information
for now, right? I mean, this is the Fire Emblem Shrine, not the Fire Emblem Universe. ^_^
Left to Rot
With great neglection comes little responsibility. The site got even less page views than before and I wasn't keeping up with the times
too much. Simply put, the Fire Emblem Shrine was left to rot.
Somewhat Alive: 50Webs Era
First of all, I was still on Freewebs, and it bothered me some. I didn't like the restrictions and a lot of aspects about how it worked.
After some searching, I found a new site, which was misleadingly good. It had FTP, significantly more space and more general control over what
I could do, and it sounded better to me for my purposes. With a "what the heck" attitude, I made an account at http://50webs.com
for the Fire Emblem Shrine.
Now that this was done, I needed a new layout. I went to find a free template that I could edit to my liking. Without knowing very much HTML, and
knowing practically no CSS, however, I had a hard time editing it much. The template had a red background and was an orange-red scheme. Now that
I look back on it, it really wasn't that cool. It definitely doesn't live up to the current site!
There were some ugly theme graphics on there that I didn't like. I updated the Copyright, added some more menu categories, added links, and decided
on where I would put affiliates. Then I transferred over my decent banner (it's not as good as the ones that I have today, XD) made by a generous friend
of mine, and copied the new page over and over for every page I planned on having. Wee, fun.
I was all excited at the time, because this kinda thing where I make new sites/revamp old sites is always exciting at first. I edited the original
website's homepage (at http://www.freewebs.com/fireemblemshrine/) to direct the user to the new website. If you try and look there now, it'll just
take you to an error page, but that's because I effectively deleted the home page for the website. The new website was located at
http://feshrine.50webs.com and I bugged everyone I knew about it within a few hours, even if it had
practically no content and some of the pages were missing.
If you're wondering why the title for this section is named "Somewhat Alive", it is because some pages of the website were broken, there wasn't too
much content (not that this site has much content even right now), and it wasn't getting too much activity either (I'm big about how many people
visit one of my websites). Regardless, the era of the 50Webs website allowed the Fire Emblem Shrine to live, albeit barely, and inconsistently
(it was in a choma every other month), such that I could eventually get back to my beloved site and actually make it worth visiting.
Feshrine.net - The Domain
You see, at the time, register.com, a website that offers domains (amongst many other things), was having a special deal where they offered
small businesses a free domain name for a year. I was like "What? That's amazing! It's not a scam, either? I'm totally getting it!". And so I did,
and I chose none other than "feshrine.net"--all the other Fire Emblem websites with domain names also ended in 'net', which made sense, at least
in my opinion, because the Fire Emblem Shrine is part of a network of Fire Emblem sites supplying information, and it has a forum with a network
of members... or something. Okay, so maybe the logic isn't all there, but that's what I chose, and it was much shorter than putting the entire
name in the domain, which would have been "fireemblemshrine.net".
Thus I signed up for my first ever real domain name. I had fake domain names like www.feshrine.tk and www.feshrine.vze.com and probably
other random "fake" domain names before. But now I just felt really professional, and I felt like I had robbed register.com, because I didn't
have to pay for my first year. Little did I know that paying for the next few years would be one of the biggest website dilemmas I'd ever have...
A New Start
I needed some content, so I started looking for people to hire, but I never really found anyone dedicated enough to helping me make pages, so I ended
up slowly adding statistical pages and random pages--a lot of random pages. I believe that at this time I was hyped about having my domain and created
a sub-site called http://mugen.feshrine.net which was all about my now discontinued MUGEN project, appropriately called Fire Emblem Mugen, which
you should be able to find on this site to this day.
However, when getting new affiliates, and looking at other sites, I felt like I was missing something big... and that was a community. It was true.
My three previous forums all died, and unfortunately, without much of a fight. The last one had a good fight, but even then, its post were only
in the low thousands, with maybe less than a 100 members. Compared to say, Fire Emblem Planet, who was only born 2 years before me, I was nothing.
And as sad as it is, that was the truth of the matter at the time.
FEShrine Forums IV
Anyway, these forums were the most successful forums I'd had. Not only that, but with the members I had there, I felt like I was at home.
We had our ups and downs with activity and drama, but every forum had that. Anyhow, I'd really like to thank the old staff back then,
people like DH_Ninja and Mori and Tino and even the lazy Felover3 and anyone else I missed because I'm sure there were people back then
that I missed... Oh, Soren, one of our few female members. Yeah, those were good days, but like with all good days, time moves along...
Moving Along
The Forum Crash
Anyway, back to the issue. It seems to me that, after forums get too big, InvisionFree just feels like deleting them. Maybe it was just that--we had
gotten too epic for a free host. Maybe someone reported us for abuse and InvisionFree didn't feel like actually checking to see if we had actually
done anything wrong, because I doubt they would have found anything. Or maybe it was just an accident on Invision's part... who knows. It's over with,
and there's nothing I can do, so I'll leave it at that.
The forums crashed. If you want to know when, I can give you a real good guess. Since I joined the current forums, FESFV, the forums made right
after FESFIV's crash, on November 26th of 2008 (hah, that was a while ago!), I'm guessing the forums crashed the day before, November 25th, of 2008.
Okay, so problem solved, I just make a new forum on jcink instead of InvisionFree. What was the big deal?
...WHAT DO YOU MEAN "what's the big deal"?! I lost about 25,000 posts (about 2.4k of which were mine, funny enough), tons of members, and I had no way
to contact most of the members who had joined the board. I couldn't go into my admin CP and make an offline message saying "okay everyone, relocate!",
or give an e-mail to everyone about the new address. I just had to spread it by word and hope that those members were either on AIM or some other forum,
because if they weren't, they were gone, and that terrified me, because I hate losing friends. As a kid, I lost friends, and I just stopped talking
to them, and it's sad, and I hate that feeling. That's why I was terrified of that feeling.
Ultimately, yes, everything worked out. I was determined to make my forum successful so I just made one of my big posts about how sad everything was and
how dumb Invisionfree was. And then I started playing around with the many new features I got on Jcink, and we had a good time on the new forums. In fact,
the forums got a new link of http://forums.feshrine.net (instead of feshrine.b1.jcink.com) because I had learned how to better make use of my domain name.
I guess sometimes when bad things happen, they allow for change for the better... if only that were always the case.
Because when my domain name expired and I couldn't get it back up for a few days, nothing good came out of that. It was bad. I now
refer to that infamous time as "The Domain Incident".
The Domain Incident
A New Look
The Present