My name is Zack, and I founded Saiyan Warrior in 1997, shortly after buying a book on HTML and CSS. I was just a kid at the time, and the Internet was a vastly different landscape than it is today. There was no Google, no Facebook, and no Wikipedia to fact-check the rumors. Instead, we relied on Yahoo, Yahooligans, and a tight-knit community of fans to navigate the Dragon Ball universe.
There were probably fewer than 100 actual Dragon Ball fan sites when I started. Being part of that initial wave of discovery, sifting through misinformation and rumors, was an experience that still pings my nostalgia meter.
The Golden Era
By 1998, Saiyan Warrior had grown beyond my wildest expectations. The site was averaging 100,000 hits a month and appeared above even the official DBZ website on Yahooligans. I was overwhelmed (and delighted) by the 100 emails I received daily from fans. Maintaining the site was difficult work for a student, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
The Team & The Struggle
Around 2000, I gained incredible help from a friend and fellow aspiring developer, Justin. We met after I overheard him talking about Dragon Ball Z after a Tae Kwon Do class. Justin officially joined the team in 2000, giving the site a badly needed makeover.
Looking back, it’s hilarious to think about the technical struggles we faced. Hosting wasn’t accessible or affordable for “broke kids,” so we bounced around free hosts like Angelfire and Homestead, constantly hunting for a reliable place to live. If you dig through our archives, you’ll see countless posts just dealing with site migrations!
The Hiatus & The Return
As I grew older, school and life got in the way. I didn’t have the time to update the site, and hopping from host to host lost its charm. I eventually let the domain expire, closing a major chapter of my life. I always hoped to reopen it, though I had no idea it would take over a decade.
After finishing graduate school, I decided it was time. With a mixture of nostalgia and excitement for the future, I relaunched Saiyan Warrior in 2016 with the hope of reconnecting with the amazing community I was part of so many years ago.