The History of this Website
The idea behind this website began just after the start of the new Millennium. Being a fan of the Panzer Dragoon series since Panzer Dragoon II Zwei, I wanted to do something as a tribute to my favourite video game series, especially the RPG, Panzer Dragoon Saga. In 2000 I launched a Panzer Dragoon fansite called Azel Online which was hosted by Yahoo! Geocities. At that time there wasn't many Panzer Dragoon sites in existence and it seemed like a logical idea to start with a general information site.
 Azel Online grew into one of the main English Panzer Dragoon websites and was unique from others thanks to its selection of fan fiction and texts from the games. However with the announcement of Panzer Dragoon Orta I felt it was time for a new look and some fresh content. In June of 2002 I began work on 'The Will of the Ancients', which contained all the information that was on Azel Online and more. The first version of The Will of the Ancients is the one shown on the left (click on the image for a larger version). Although it was nothing impressive, the design was a step up from Azel Online.
As The Will of the Ancients grew in size, so did the need for a more stable web host. I was offered some free web space by the kind folks at Macemu.com, near the end of 2002. The site grew considerably thanks to the increase in web space and the availability of tools such as PHP. This eventually lead to the idea of a second version of The Will of the Ancients...
 In Late 2002 I decided that the purple design was too plain and began work on a second version of this site - what you can see to the right. It took a while to move everything over but it was finally launched on the 19th of April 2003. The Will of the Ancients version 2 used simple PHP scripts to make the design simpler to modify, and the contents menu on the left easier to update. However, although the second version of the site (technically the fourth if you count the two versions of Azel Online) served its purpose well enough, I began to feel that it wasn't 'panzerish' enough for my tastes.
Before I began work on yet another layout for the site, I bought the domain panzerdragoon.net and some web space, giving The Will of the Ancients a unique name on the Internet at last. The website was hosted by E-Starr Webhosting, an American company that I heard about from a friend.
The design you're using to view the site now is the third version of The Will of the Ancients. It's by far my favourite of the three layouts, although there's still room for much improvement in my mind. It also took the longest to design because I unwittingly lost the whole thing when it was almost ready to be launched. The drone's head and the grey area were created using Macromedia Flash MX and Adobe Photoshop Elements, while the rest of the site was hand written in HTML and a small amount of PHP.
As of October 2006, The Will of the Ancients is current hosted by PowWeb.
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