Happy Pokécharms Day! Every year on the 17th of March – in one way or another – we celebrate our official birthday. This year, however, is a particularly special one as 2023 marks our official twentieth anniversary. Few other Pokémon fan sites have stood the same test of time, but not only are we continuing into a third decade online, but we’re arguably a better site and resource than we’ve ever been and growing in a way we haven’t seen for years.

Before I get into the celebrations themselves, though, I want to take a quick moment to thank each and every one of you who has everpassed through our servers over the years.

While I’ve always said that I would continue with Pokécharms if even only one person other than myself ever got something out of it, the fact is that quite literally millionsof people have, over the past 20 years, found something for themselves out of what we’ve been putting out here. Whether that’s following our news coverage, using our various PokéDexes or games guides & resources over the years or being part of our community in one way or another, all of you have made and continue to make all of the work and money that’s gone into the site for 20 years, all worth it.

Across the site today, we’ll be sharing messages and artwork from staff and other members that represents their time as part of this community. If you have anything to add, I encourage you to join us on our Discord server or in the forums and share it with us.

Birthday Presents!

To celebrate the day, first up, we have a small update to the Trainer Card Maker with some backgrounds celebrating the site over the years.

You can make your own with these new backgrounds here – please be sure to share them with us in Discord or on the forums if you use them!

Secondly, I want to touch on last year’s Pokécharms Day a little. As you may know, this time last year – in what is probably one of the busiest 48 hours of my life – we relaunched the site into the form you see today after several years of being a bit stuck in the mud by our outdated forum software.

One year later, I can confirm that the relaunch was a huge success. Not only has there been a significant improvement in what we’ve been able to deliver in terms of news and guides for Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, our Cryptidex and later our fully-fledged PokéDex and of course, the Trainer Card Maker, but the growth targets to go with it all was completely smashed out of the park during the end of 2022. 

However, to achieve what we were able to last year, a few compromises had to be made. In particular, user accounts became a bit trapped to just the forums – meaning no comments on the news and no ability to save your Trainer Cards to your profile. Most of all, however, we were unable to continue with the Creative Corner – a space for everyone in the community to share their artworks and writing – because redeveloping that feature from scratch would have taken more time than the entire relaunch had needed up until that point last year.

I know many people in the community were disappointed to lose the Corner, and I can promise you none more so than myself. That’s why I’m extremely pleased to confirm that we’re already in the early development stages of upgrading the entire site to support and feed directly into your user accounts – meaning, amongst other things, you’ll once again be able to save your Trainer Cards to your profile again – but also that, eventually, the Creative Corner will also be returning!

As I’ve highlighted before, the work required for a feature like the Corner is quite extensive. While we wanted to celebrate today with that news, I will have to caution that it’s going to be a while before we can begin rolling the feature out. We’ll keep you updated as we start moving towards it, but we’re going to have to approach it in several steps – with the Creative Corner being the final piece of the puzzle itself. 

That’s not all that we’ll be working on for the site throughout the year, though. Expect plenty of updates to the Trainer Card Maker, as well as our PokéDex, alongside complete coverage of the upcoming Hidden Treasures of Area Zero DLC for Pokémon Scarlet & Violet. Our guide coverage for Scarlet & Violet was slightly limited by the time we had to dedicate to it but proved extremely popular – and hopefully helpful to boot. This year, we’ll be planning to expand our coverage of the DLC’s features, mechanics and Pokémon even further. 

We will even have plenty of other new features and surprises to come! 

Enjoy the Day!

This is just the first of a handful of posts today celebrating the event, and we’ll be around all day on Discord if you want to swing by and reminisce with us. While it might be a day that is particularly special to us, I hope everyone out there will still get something out of it, just as you have for the rest of the last 7,300 or so days!

Thank you!