The Day Has Come ≫
Breathe it in, it's not everyday we get a total site overhaul around here. I'm gonna guess nobody saw this coming, because this was never supposed to happen again. I honestly thought I'd closed the proverbial book on MMLS with V5. So what happened? Well, it all started in February of 2019. I forget why, but I searched Google for "mega man legends" and could not find MMLS. It was buried on page 98 of the search results, and a week later I found it on page 108. Other search engines didn't rank it much better. I made some SEO tweaks, but given how important mobile support is, I knew I'd have redo the whole layout to really do it right. It was tempting to leave well enough alone, but the more I thought it over, the more it bothered me.

After all the hard work I'd poured into this place, what good is it if nobody can find it? Such a waste!

And so, I examined the site as it was to assess what it would need to become. And without deciding for sure whether I really wanted to go through with it, I began to toy with new layout designs in the slowest, most noncommital fashion imagineable. Months of nothing would go by, then I'd open up what I had and tinker some more. Little by little I worked until everything seemed about as good as I was gonna get it. That was in August 2020, when I finally got a second opinion from my brother.

After a year and a half I finally had a layout—the fun and relatively easy part of having a website. Again, without deciding for sure whether I really wanted to go through with it, I began to migrate the content, which in many cases needed sprucing up. Unfortunately for me but fortunately for the site, it had been nearly 10 years since I'd done this, and the sheer volume of work these things take had faded a bit from memory. I'm not sure when it was exactly, but at some point it just hit me that I had to go through with this, because I'd already sunk too much time not to. And so here we are today, with the fruits of that labor!


Looking Good ≫
I'm not particularly fond of most modern web design, but there is a tendency toward more spacious design that I do appreciate. Looking at MMLS with an eye toward the future, it really struck me how cramped and tiny the important elements were. It really hadn't aged well at all. Add to that the dark colors of the default V4 Classic style, and it had an almost oppressive feeling. Truth be told, I never was completely satisfied with that style in 2008, and still not when it was improved in 2011—a sentiment I know many of you shared.

So, I knew I wanted a brighter and more spacious layout, built to scale up and down for mobile friendliness. I know many of us old-timers have our fondest MMLS memories rooted in the V3 era, and I wanted to lean in that direction for the new design. But what about the old designs? Well, it simply wasn't feasible to keep so many styles going, plus it's hard to move forward when you're busy looking back. But it seemed a shame to just toss them away, and lose the style change option that we've had for so long.

My compromise was to create three new styles, each based off a combination of two old ones. V3 Sterile & V4 Classic have merged to become the Terra Style. V2 Mechanical & V5 System have merged to become the Elysium Style. And V1 Ancient & V5 Reaverbot have merged to become the Sub-Gate Style. I think they all turned out nicely, and hope there's enough variety that every visitor can find at least one that suits them.


More Than Meets The Eye ≫
It takes more than a new look to make a new Station. With each version of MMLS there's also been an upgrade in content, and V6 is no exception. Even though I was previously satisfied with things as they were, while reassessing the site I couldn't help noticing a lot of areas where content could use work, and I made a list. I have not crossed everything off said list, nor do I expect I ever will. But I have improved and/or added a lot along the way. Here's a quick summary.

Show/Hide Content Change List

New MML Series page gives an overview of the series on a product level, and includes a gallery for mixed-series artwork.
New Rockman X Dive page has been added to the cameos list, and other cameo pages have received addition content.
New World of Legends page gives an overview of the in-game world and its many distinctive elements.
New MML Locations page (still in progress) gives overviews of the in-game places like Kattelox Island, Nino Island, and Elysium.
New Merchandise page is an extensive (but by no means complete) gallery of the various books and other collectibles out there. This was a biggie, and something I've been wanting on the site for about 15 years.
MML1's Story page has been fleshed out, going from a little 300-word intro summary to a full 6400-word, semi-detailed writeup of the game's events from start to finish. Maybe I'll do the same for MML2 and MoTB someday...
Official Artwork pages for MoTB, MML1, and most notably MML2 have some new additions and quality upgrades for existing images.
MML1 Art Book scans have been upgraded to higher quality thanks to Rockman Cosmo.
MML2 Art Book scans have been given a proper gallery page instead of a ZIP file.
Wallpaper pages for MoTB, MML1, and MML2 have added a few new images and removed old ones that were at sizes too small for modern devices.
MoTB's Screenshots have been upgraded from 600px JPGs to 800px PNGs (since I still had the original screencaps from way back!).
New Community page gives an overview of our history and acts as a hub for Fan Submissions, Forum stuff, Affiliates, and other Legends links.
Fan Fiction page now sorts contributors by quantity of submissions, with the option to also sort alphabetically and randomly. Each individual story also lists the number of chapters and total word count. A little warns readers that the story has been left unfinished (hopefully I haven't marked any by mistake).
Countless pages have received minor layout improvements and text tweaks.

Find What You Seek ≫
Bridging the gap between layout and content is... organization! MMLS has always been a bit quirky with certain links being difficult to find outside of the Site Map, and the way content is divided across the four core games. You'll now find a number of things have moved around to make them easier to locate. For example, the main navigation's flimsy Site & Forums page link has been replaced by the MML Series link, where non-game-specific content now has a good home. And the forum pages have been grouped with the fan sections under a main navigation heading of Community. The Site Map is better arranged. The News Archives have been reworked to use searchable tags. Individual character pages have been merged instead of duplicating content per game. Voice Cast pages have been absorbed into their respective game's Credits pages. Box Art pages and Various Releases pages have been absorbed into their respective game's index pages. And so on.

Note also that ?id= has replaced ?page= in the urls. I've setup redirects to handle this where possible, but a number of pages have been given different urls entirely for better SEO, so there will be plenty of "broken" links. Be sure to update your bookmarks and such.


Time Better Spent ≫
Since I'm already being long-winded, I thought it might be worth mentioning my other MML projects in the context of MMLS V6's timeline. Creative projects like Tuttle's Legendary Travels require creative energy. After expending creative energy all day professionally, I've had next-to-none to spare in my free time. V6 on the other hand was mostly a mechanical process, requiring very little creativity. So while it's true that V6 ate up a lot of time, very little of that time was likely to go into other projects anyway.


Closing Statements ≫
It'll probably take some getting used to for some, but I really do hope everyone likes what I've done with the place, and that this time it can stand proud for years to come as a monument of devotion to our beloved series. If you're a member of the forums, please drop by this thread to share your thoughts, and weigh in on the question of doing up the forums to match.