Planet Tolkien

Planet Tolkien has been around for ages and has a wealth of information including a chronology of Tolkien's life, live chat room for registered members, slide show movie gallery, fan fiction area for members, message forums and personal journals for members. There's more of course but you'll have to go searching the site to find all the little nuggets they hide there. It's a family friendly site so you kids could also hang out on Planet Tolkien.

The Hall of Fire

The Hall of Fire is a very friendly message board. If you are a current member of The One Ring.net's message boards you will recognize many members at The Hall.

The folks which post are knowledgeable and some of their forums include discussions of Tolkien's letters, chapter to chapter discussions and a forum for the book Arda Reconstructed: The Creation of the Published Silmarillion written by the administrator of The Hall of Fire Douglas Charles Kane.

The Arda Reconstructed forum is open to the general public. You do not have to be a registered member for this forum. Though most forums are open to view, there are a few you will need to register to read.

Easy to follow and friendly, check out The Hall of Fire.

The Council of Elrond

The Council of Elrond or as they like to be known as 'The Original' Council of Elrond is a massive site. There are pages for the New Line Cinema movies, Elrond's Library has artists, Tolkien's poetry, summeries, a book forum and 'book club'. There is a Tolkien section with biography, artwork, articles to name a few topics.

There is a humor section, media section, fonts and you can even find recipes. I have not begun to dive into CoE but I can say once you go digging it is easy to find your way home again. It's huge, informative and a delight.

The Tolkien Trail

The Tolkien Trail is a unique site in that it's pages uses original artwork. There are games to play, a message board, fan writings and they have a Cafe Press marketplace to buy Entmoot t-shirts. There are MP3's of spoken word poetry, parodies of songs and more. One of my favorite pages is Lothlorien. Here you will find original art by fans. My favorite by far is Juan Albuerne of Spain sculptures.

For a different feel of Tolkien visit The Tolkien Trail.

Council-of-Elrond

The Council-of-Elrond.com (not to be mixed up with The Council of Elrond) is a massive site. Their welcome letter says it all.

Greetings friends, from the Council-of-Elrond, the last homely house. The Council-of-Elrond was created by fans and admirers of JRR Tolkien to continue the community that had developed over the years at imladris.net when it closed.

Here you can find transcripts of all the LotR films, Middle Earth Fonts, Middle Earth Genealogy charts, Middle Earth Fan Fiction, a LotR Gallery, a large selection of Middle Earth Online Java Games, a friendly forum where you can find discussions and fun on a wealth of subjects, and a whole lot more.

All are welcome here who come in peace.

You can view the message forums and all of the other reference materials, their fan fictions sections as well as sending an e-card using their massive New Line movie stills collection (currently unavailable). All in all it's quite easy to get around and worth a look.

Council of Elrond.com

The Tolkien Forum

The Tolkien Forum has been around for quite some time. Their vast forums cover every aspect of Middle-earth and than some. Other than the literary discussions there are forums for members art and writing, language discussions, articles written by the members in academic fashion, gaming and of course movie talk.

I said vast and that is the truth. It's large but not unmanageable and many to participate with.

The Tolkien Forum

War of the Ring

War of the Ring offers quite a lot. Starting with the New Line Cinema LoTR craze the site posted up to date news regarding the movies. Currently they still do post news Tolkien related and have an active message forum. Also included in their pages are book reviews, photo forums, a shop (includes everything from shirts to weapons), fan fic page and downloads.

They also have a large archive section for news and such prior to 2004. It's worth a look for a variety of reasons.

War of the Ring

The One Ring.net

TheOneRing.net was founded in 1999 by Xoanon and Tehanu. Primarily driven for news regarding Peter Jackson/New Line Cinemas's LoTR movies they hunted for any pre-production news they could find. This site truly is one created by fans for fans and you can read about their history here.

This site has grown to an immense size even out growing it's original one which you can still view in their archive.

Besides current news on the Hobbit movie in pre-production and any news to do with Tolkien including gaming, the site also holds a message forum, Barlimans Chat, polls, a scrapbook from events, a page just for merchandise, events and much more.

It is vast, fresh and fun.