History of The Codex of Ultima Wisdom

This article tries to give an overview of the History of the Codex.

'''Note: This is a draft and made from memory. Other members should add from their memory as well.'''

Before the Codex
The roots of the Codex lie in a time before it actually existed. Originally the Codex had been a wiki for the Ultima V remake Lazarus, founded early in 2006 at the wikia-hoster Wikia. However, the wiki never really got off and sported less than 30 articles after half a year and otherwise was pretty much deserted and would have been forgotten, if not for a coincidence in fate, that led to its re-animation.

The Beginning
At December 31st 2006, the user Tribun discovered the empty hulk of the Lazarus wiki and decided, since he had lots of time at hand and was bored, to fill it with life as there hadn't yet been a real wiki about the main series Ultimas. The basic structure the Codex now still has was developed in roughly a month. However, for the first two years, the Codex mostly was a one-man efford and inexperience with coding and wiki-standards made it more difficult to use than it should have been.

The fact that one user contributed the vast majority of the content also led to a slump in submissions after the first year, which lasted for 2008 and half of 2009. During that time, things only changed little.

Time of Change
The situation changed significantly in later 2009 and early 2010. This time saw many new users like Dungy, Terilem, Sega381 and Polygoncount arrive, who would bing fresh wind into the project. Also, Fenyx4 became much more active during that time and Tribun re-discovered work on the wiki. This time saw a flood of new articles and many improvements in navigation and quality of the aricles.

In early October 2010, Blu3vib3 joined. Her constant work for major improvement of article content and covering of the more obscure topics enriched the Codex a lot. During that time, the Codex began to cover Ultima Online as well and also started to add lore quotes to all articles for further information.

Moving to Aiera
Later October 2010 brought great change. Wikia made big changes on their hosting policies, including a forced new skin that broke many articles and made reading a pain. The choice was made to leave Wikia behind and move the wiki to Ultima Aiera instead, with WTF Dragon providing hosting. Once the move was complete, the Codex began to vastly increase its content.

During that time, besides content expansion, quality and navigation were improved, while most illustrations from the manuals and cluebooks were replaced with high-quality scans. As of now this is still the current status quo, although by now, most content has been added.