Kirby's Rainbow Resort

Hey! Long time no see, I guess. I don't know how many people read the forums anymore, or even post (judging by the most recent posts in each forum... not many...). I can't blame anyone. It's been a while since I've even looked here. I guess, to begin, I'd like to tell a story.

When I was 12 years old (12 years ago...), I was a dang Kirby maniac. I had to know everything I could and searched desperately for other people to connect with. The Internet was new to me and its possibilities seemed to be without end. That's how I found this site. It was pretty basic back then, though the main website was not much different than you know it to be today. Sure it's been modernized and made easier to work with, but the main layout was the same and the pages all had a certain charm to the way they were written.

I spent most of my formative years here. I made a lot of mistakes, learned a lot about myself. I made some friends back then that are still with me today, sticking with me much longer than any other set of friends I've made since. I wouldn't trade that away for anything. It doesn't really feel like enough to say that this site was, and still is, very important to me. I've seen the community go from tiny to huge, back to tiny, now to almost nonexistent. But why are things the way they are?

You could argue that with the advent of social media and Wikis, fansites became less important or necessary. I think part of it actually is this way. Back when I started, there was only one place to talk to other English-speaking Kirby fans, and it was here. But now with a few searches you can find groups of people on Twitter, Facebook, whatever you may use. I'm not condemning this or saying it's a bad thing-- in the last two or four years I've pretty much lived on Twitter. It's an amazing tool that I've connected to many great people through.

The real reason, I think, that things went downhill, is conflicts of interest among the staff that couldn't get settled in a nice way. I'm as guilty of this as anyone else. It's no secret anymore that I didn't really get along with Bimblesnaff or Ometon, but even back then, I had to respect the work they'd put in. They had an idea of what they wanted to do and they were good at it. But me and some of the other staff were very, very ambitious about things that we wanted to do. The problem was that we're all older now than we were when we were able to put a lot of time into this place-- I'm about to graduate from university and become a teacher. This is the busiest time of my life. I don't have the skills to enact everything I wanted to do with the site, and I definitely don't have as much time as I'd need to get to that point.

Communication also makes things difficult. With so many interweaving projects and so many people involved, communication is key. As a part of that, respect for one another has always been my ultimate goal. If someone wasn't okay with something, I wanted to talk to them about it, and try to make it right. This can really get in the way of timely progress, but I still think it's very important. I'd rather have things take a long time and turn out great for everyone involved than things go fast and have feelings get hurt.

Since I've left here, at least two new Kirby games have come out, with a few more announced. The new Super Smash Bros. for 3DS is out (Wii Fit Trainer/Shulk are my mains!) and the Wii U version is just around the corner. To say it plainly, we're way behind. It's a shame and I know that baby me coming to the site for the first time would've been disappointed. With the way the site was to me when I was a young fan, I can't in good conscience leave things the way they are now.

I'm contacting people about fixing things up (Disk actually patched up a few things already!). I don't have a lot of technical skills that I can put towards the place, but heck if I can't organize people and get everyone in contact. I have a few ideas for things I'd like to fix up and implement around the site, but I'm trying to keep goals smaller so that they're realistic to achieve.
- First I'd like to get in contact with one of the big established Kirby wikis. I love wikis, they're great tools for any subject at all. And there are one or two out there that are already packed with knowledge-- why try and pass them up when instead we could maybe just link off-site to them?
- Second, I'd like to get the site back up in an easily-updated form, so that I can write posts on it whenever something happens that I feel is noteworthy. It wouldn't be too much work for me to just write things once the system's in place.
- Third, and this is a big maybe, I'd like to overhaul the site's looks. Ivyna, another old member, has contacted me about it, and ultimately that's gonna come down to Kindar, the owner of the site. I'm contacting her as well, so here's hoping.

I don't know if anyone's actually going to read this, but I would feel really wrong just leaving things how they are now. I'd either like to get the site all fixed up and current or send it off properly. Thanks for reading, if you did!

Another thing I forgot to talk about until after: integration of other social media stuff. It'd be an easy thing to do but someone's squatting on the kirbysrainbowresort name on Tumblr so I'd have to figure that out at some point

I read it, glod

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Magi's Great Earthbound Epic! Chapter 14 is out! Read it to spite Pokey!
| Magi's Livejournal | Magi on last.fm | Magi on Twitter |
September 17, 2007. Support our troops !!!!4 YEARS!!!!

see i would love to help but i have finals this week

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the end

So is anyone with the ability to work on the main site still willing/able to work on updating and reviving Kirby's Rainbow Resort?

I came onto this website on a whim yesterday for the first time in ages, and I was... depressed to see the state of the place. The first thing I noted was that the last real news updates were posted nearly 3 years ago. The "Recent News" column is even more sparse, with its latest entry dated 2011 and its earliest entry dated 2008. Considering that the games are basically the core of the Kirby franchise, the lack of any pages for 3DS or Wii U games featuring Kirby confirmed my suspicions that KRR is basically a generation behind on updates.

I then proceeded to check out the forums, only to learn that registration had been closed 2 years ago. I figured I could at least chat with any regulars that might still be around... but after spending half an hour digging up my login details, I noticed that the only other active registered users were search engine bots. Even if I started some new game discussions or something, I doubt much of anyone would be around to add to them.

I dunno, I guess I'm just sad that Kirby's Rainbow Resort, the most extensive website I know of dedicated to to my favorite video game franchise, has been steadily declining for the past several years. I enjoyed browsing the site in years past, but I suppose I understand why the forums are so inactive now. I'm well aware that KRR's core userbase was of a certain age group, and after getting involved with real life matters, they've lost interest in the site. Furthermore, no websites are immune to an ever-changing Internet, and with the immense popularity of social networking sites and the like, relatively few care about getting involved in message boards nowadays.

On the other hand, I don't see why the main part of the site, in particular the games section, is so outdated. I only know the basics of designing web pages, but if I could, I'd love to help update/add information for both new and classic Kirby games, as well as add what I can to the multimedia section. And I'm sure there are others that would like to help out as well. Yet, from what I've read in this topic and another recent post, it seems as though the site's founding staff are actually the biggest obstacles blocking progress. Is there anything we can do to bring KRR up to date, or is the only option at this point to start an entirely new fansite from scratch?

Try The Kirby Club: http://thekirbyclub.net/index.php

I am a mod there.

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Visiting this site at work because I'm stressed about training I'm giving to a customer of ours onsite tomorrow and thursday, and needed to think about where I came from and how I got here.

Miss them.

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dusted off my account for a bit. tiny me was so wee. I'm pretty sure I lied about my age too when I registered haha.
it's so interesting how a lot of the people I met here, especially the mods, went on to do a bunch of cool stuff that comes across in my internet experience, even when I'm not actively following anyone about. It's kind of cool. It's kind of weird too.

I hope if the forum gets revived, people will make more memories. I learned a lot from here. sorry for this weird nostalgiaing.

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hello krr