About Pokémon Database

Philosophy

Pokémon Database started with one mission: to make Pokémon game information as easy to find and digest as possible. We try to be concise while also containing everything you need, and keep the site as fast as possible. We are also one of the few remaining fully independent Pokémon websites.

Pokémon Database is also the home of PokéBase, our Q&A forum. This works quite differently to most forums - general chatter is discouraged in favour of clear, non-opinionated answers. This means questions are not just useful to the original asker, they are also useful for future visitors. Someone can open the question page and quickly see the best answer right near the top. We now have over 15,000 questions with great answers, thanks to our great community!

We were one of the first Pokémon sites to have a responsive design - a layout which works well on all devices from desktop computers down to smartphones (and the Nintendo 3DS). We were also the first to use HTTPS which offers greater security (for example when using a public wi-fi network) and speed.

History

Pokémon Database started as a little test site in January 2008. Back then it was just a simple list of Pokémon on a white page with some basic details (screenshots here). As more and more details were added, a proper design was made to hold the content and the site was moved to a new domain, pokemondb.co.uk, in March 2008.

The site continued to grow beyond expectations and soon we were receiving over 100 visitors a day. Two years later in March 2010 we switched to a .net domain name, to indicate that it's a worldwide site (.co.uk is supposed to be for British websites only). Now we were receiving many thousands of visitors every day!

In April 2010 a new section was set up - a Q&A forum called the Pokémon Knowledgebase, or PokéBase for short. This kind of forum has never been done by any Pokémon fansite; it was a big hit and is still proving its usefulness today.

Pokémon Black & White were released in March 2011 and we got a huge boost in traffic. The visitor numbers continued to stay high and Pokémon Database became one of the top 5 Pokémon fansites in the world.

Around Christmas 2012 work began on a new design for the site. The basic design itself was put together fairly quickly, but one of the main goals was to be responsive, which means the exact same code working well on smartphones and tablets as well as desktop computers. However this meant that every page had to be remade from scratch! The opportunity was taken to redo a lot of the programming behind the scenes too, as well as move to a new more powerful server. This project turned out to be incredibly time consuming, but finally in July 2013 version 3 was open to the public!

In 2018 we embarked upon another redesign. This one was mainly focused on improving navigation on mobile. We redesigned the menu for easier use on smaller screens, and finally made the quick search box visible. But like the previous redesign it ended up requiring a larger code rewrite and took several months to finish. It launched in June 2018.

So what's next? Well we have a ridiculously long to-do list so there are always more things to add! We hope to have a general discussion forum at some point in the future for more community involvement, as well as many more general guides and written content.

Frequently Asked Questions

In order to stem the high number of repeat questions I'm getting through email, here are some FAQs - that actually are asked frequently!

Can I use some content from your site?

In general, no. All written content, site design and data display/layouts have had a huge amount of research and effort put into them to make as easy to read as possible. Do not steal our content!

However, official Pokémon artwork and sprites are not our creations and are used under a Fair Use Policy, so you are free to use them however you like. Each of the Pokémon sprites pages has an easy way to add images to your site or forum post.

Do you have a downloadable database or API?

Despite being named Pokémon Database, currently we do not offer any database or API (Application Programming Interface) for use, though it may be something we offer in the future. However, there are many sources of data out there:

Incidentally, this question is often asked in relation to smartphone apps. It should be noted here that we are unable to make a Pokémon app as Nintendo/TPCi gets them taken down from all app stores. The website is designed to work well on mobile!

What did you use to make this site?

There is very little specialist software required to make a website; most work is done in a text editor. This site uses the PHP programming language with a MySQL database, all hosted on an Nginx server.

PokéBase runs on an external application called Question2Answer for which I have recently taken over development.

Other software I use:

  • VS Code (text editor, for programming)
  • SASS (a CSS pre-processor)
  • jQuery (a JavaScript library) we now use plain (aka vanilla) JavaScript across the site for even faster loading
  • Gulp.js, a task runner and build tool
  • Git (version control software)

How do I advertise on PokemonDb?

We have limited advertising here via BuySellAds to cover our costs. Do not email us about custom advertising because we are not interested and your email will be marked as spam.

Is PokemonDb for sale?

No! This site is independently run by one person (with help from our great community) and is not for sale, wholly or partially. Do not email us with stupid offers because we are not interested.

Credit where credit's due

Although the vast majority of the site is the work of one person, we also have contributions from other sources:

  • Much of the the core data (Pokémon learnsets and locations) for recent games comes from the brilliant folks over at Project Pokémon.
  • Core data for Scarlet/Violet was datamined by slp32.
  • Core data for Pokémon GO (Pokémon stats & moves) comes from the wonderful PokeMiners.
  • Portions of our site data come from the Veekun project.
  • And thanks to our many members and visitors who have sent in corrections or updates to our pages over the years.

Also be sure to visit our friends over at PokéJungle.net who post news, merchandise, rumors and other interesting articles.

Contact Us

Have you spotted an error on the site? Or do you just want to tell us how awesome we are? ;)

First, make sure to read the FAQs below, as your question has likely been asked before. We are NOT interested in custom advertising.

For anything else, you can email us at:

We welcome all comments, but due to the number of emails we get we cannot reply to all messages personally, sorry.

For site suggestions, you can also use Meta-PokéBase, our Q&A forum. Here you are more likely to hear back from me or our other members on whether your idea is good.

Privacy Policy

No personal information is required to access this website or view any regular pages.

To participate in the community (PokéBase) a valid email address is required; it is only visible to site administrators and is only used for account validation (to prevent spam) and to send opt-in notifications.

Members may fill out a public profile which includes gender, country and any other information they wish to post. This is entirely optional and we recommend users do not post personally identifiable information. All other information posted (i.e. as questions, answers and comments) is also public and visible to anyone.

We use BuySellAds on this site to cover our high costs. Ads are non-personalized.