As the 2008 comes to an end, I wanted to wish everyone a happy new year and hope the fourth coming year will be filled with more new shrines and less domains disappearing. Haha, just joking! =P

Anyway, I thought it would be a neat idea if we compiled a list of shrines that came online this year. This isn't limited to brand new sites-- it could be shrines that were offline for sometime and then recently came back up or even shrines added on to fanlistings.

So, if you guys would be so kind as to post links to shrines in the comments section, that would be awesome (because God only knows how hard I fail when it comes to finding new shrines). It doesn't have to necessarily be your shrine; just post a link to any shrine that was put up this year, and I'll add it in. I'll check this post and my e-mail often within the next few days, and I will update the list accordingly.

Also, if you see one of your shrines being linked here and you don't want it up, feel free to shoot me an e-mail and I'll take it down asap.

Other than that, thanks everyone, and have a good new year!


Shrines of 2008

Ace Attorney - Phoenix Wright: Checkmate

Final Fantasy VII - Aeris: Fated
Final Fantasy VII - Aeris: Great Gospel
Final Fantasy VII - Barret: On the Edge

Final Fantasy VIII - Squall: Shift

Final Fantasy X - Lenne: Pearl
Final Fantasy X - Shuyin: Nocturne
Final Fantasy X - Yuna: Will

Final Fantasy XII - Gabranth: Stray
Final Fantasy XII - Larsa: Armistice

Long time no see! So, charactershrine's second birthday is coming up soon (which I would technically count as the 26th of December, the day of the first post two years ago), and, honestly, I can't believe it's been that long.

Although 2008 was kind of empty, I would like to thank everyone for contributing to an amazing start way back in '06-'07. I'm sure most of us have been busy this past year, though we definitely covered a lot of the community's most important concerns and topics in the past, which we can hopefully leave open as an archive for future reference. More importantly, I'm glad that each of us got to know one another in the community a little better not just as web designers, but as friends and acquaintances who are willing to help each other out. Because, you know, the internet is quite a big place =D But enough of that for now.

Cutting to some well-needed discussion, out of curiosity, what was your original motivation when you first got into making shrines? How did you start off?

( Lenne.nu: ring a bell for anyone? )

In all honesty, I can't remember if we've talked about this before, nor can I find something similar in the archives. I guess it's been too long?

Hey everyone! Long time no see. Sorry for the delay, but as you can see from the title above, there's been a change to the rules for plugging your shrine. We're now allowing members to post their link for new layouts. We didn't permit this in the past, but the moderators thought it would be a good idea for site promotion as well as community activity. After all, advertising is part of the shrine making experience, right?

Also, I'd like to ask if everyone could post links to new shrines that opened up this year. I'm sure a few people, including myself, have missed out on new!shrine announcements. It doesn't have to be a shrine that you own yourself; you may post links up to shrines that you happened to stumble across and wanted to share. If you could reply with a link, perhaps a short description as well, that would be awesome.

Thanks everyone!

As of late, there have been more and more character shrines out there with a philosophy or a purpose aside from being a major source of information on the character. This conflicts with other people’s shrines (and philosophies!) that are major sources of fact on characters from various obscure sources. This conflict causes a lot of strain and a lot of nasty things to be said both in and outside of shrines… particularly on FAQ pages. What do you guys think about this new revolution of shrines with a philosophy rather than a source of information?

I would categorize myself as someone with the “my shrine has a purpose” mentality seeing as how I usually just write essays on things I interpret and slap it into a site. I’m not one for media sections and I really dislike writing up in-game statistics unless they are going to tie in with my content somehow. However, I am still one to enjoy these sites filled with nothing but factual information from things I either cannot read or refuse to purchase/play/watch.

I suppose I am not one to force this philosophy onto other shrine makers. I really love reading information that’s from sources that I have no access to, but at the same time I also like reading other people’s interpretations. There is a place for both. Noticing the hostility in people’s actual sites just made me wonder about it. Everyone is entitled to making a shrine or a site however they want, whatever makes them feel accomplished and happy with their work is all that really matters right?

Here's a question that's been bugging me for a while.

Let me start by saying that I run a fan site (and fanlisting) to Roll.EXE from the Battle Network/EXE series of Rockman (AKA the Blue Bomber). The Battle Network/EXE series consists of a game (which came first), and it later spawned into an anime and manga.

If you're familiar with all three medias, you know that although they use the same characters and similar plot lines, the stories are completely different... such as the concept of Saito and Barrel/Baryl.

Roll is not a developing character in personality despite being one of the main characters. She barely gets any screentime in the game and the manga, and the anime has only dedicated about 1-2 episodes for character development, yet her battle statistics in the games change in every sequel.

How would I incorporate all this into my site without making it look perplexing?

Firstly, mostly because I can and I'm shameless, I'm going to plug two of my shrines that have gotten a content makeover in the last few weeks. Libertine is probably my most popular site, but Renaissance is my favorite.


And now for a topic of discussion. As I was sorting through my old content on Renaissance I decided that a lot of my sub-pages weren't long enough. I didn't think I could really add all that much to them, so instead I started combining them. It got me thinking about how long sub-pages should be. I get kinda annoyed when I go to a shrine and it seems like there's a lot of content, but every sub-page is just two or three sentences I probably could have gotten from a strategy guide.

For example, if there was a subsection "Family" on a shrine, I'd be expecting a bit more than: "Cloud's mother is named Edea, and he has a sister Rydia too. But unbeknownst to him, the villain Kuja is actually his brother!"

That's obviously an extreme case, and factually inaccurate besides, but it's not too far off from what I've seen at some shrines.

At the same time, I think a page can be too long, rambling, and tangental, which can make it hard to read. Overlong chunks of text are just kinda unsightly in websites-- that's what pagination is for. But how much is too much? When does something become worthy of a separate section? Do you try to just stick with the standard, user-friendly subsections, like profile, personality, and relationships, or do you try to organize them based around what you feel strongly about? (For example, I really believe that a character's hairstyle is a v. v. important part of their character, and consequently have more than one "hair" subsection.) This is my discussion topic for today!

Thought I'd take an opportunity to ~*plug*~ my new site, Shinobi, a shrine to Yuffie Kisaragi of Final Fantasy VII that I've worked on and off on for years and put off putting up for too long! (what a sentence!) There are still some minor adjustments/additions I'll be making over the next couple of days, but it's pretty much how I want it to be for the time being.

I finally got my Tidus shrine up and running. =)

And dang, it's practically dead here. I'm going to try starting a discussion and see if it'll liven things up a bit: Does it bother you when a webmaster constantly repeats himself/herself on a shrine?

I know it bothers me a little to read the same things over and over in different phrasing on shrines. Some shrines I've been to have even copied entire paragraphs from other pages on their shrines and put them on a new page. With characters like Tidus (because he's fresh on my mind), I know it's difficult to not talk about the same things (like it was hard to keep my Fate, Fayths, and Zenarkand sections separated), but I find it beneficial to link to other pages on the shrine if you need to refer back to something. Either that, or state it really quickly without much depth and move on.

My new shrine is reasonably complete, for now, and I'm using it to test-drive my new hosting. Please check it out!

Hello everyone, I've decided to rebuild an old character shrine that I had back in 2001. I had to close it originally because of a loss of content due to a dead hard drive. I'm curious as to what programs you all use to capture (or extract?) images for your media galleries. I had one previously that worked on most Playstation games, but I no longer recall what it was named and was hoping that maybe someone here could help or provide an alternative. Thanks for your time!