Short answers, pulled from the story.
Hackers breached Nausicaa.net in October 1998 and stripped the site of its content, leaving a hollow shell of code where thousands of pages of history once resided. The breach caused a catastrophic loss for the community that had spent years building a sanctuary for Japanese animation enthusiasts.
Nausicaa.net was originally named The Miyazaki Web and was hosted on tcp.com since 1994 before moving to a dedicated host under the stewardship of Jeremy Blackman in 1996. The site was rebranded as Nausicaa.net two years after 1996 to honor Hayao Miyazaki's 1984 film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
By early 1999, Nausicaa.net was back online through a combination of backups preserved by early versions of Google Search and the collective effort of volunteers who had used the site as a primary resource. This recovery effort laid the groundwork for what would become the most comprehensive English-language archive of Studio Ghibli information ever assembled.
Nausicaa.net created and distributed press kits for major Studio Ghibli releases including Kiki's Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke that included high-resolution images, production notes, and exclusive interviews. These kits were distributed to media outlets, retailers, and event organizers to help build anticipation and understanding for Studio Ghibli's films in the West.
Neil Gaiman relied heavily on Nausicaa.net during the early stages of his work on Princess Mononoke because he was unfamiliar with the nuances of Studio Ghibli's production history. The site provided him with context and background that he could not have accessed through official channels alone, which informed his approach to the script.
By 1999, Nausicaa.net earned the title of Site of the Week from Science Fiction Weekly for being the best resource on the Web for anything related to Miyazaki. In January 2007, the site was named one of Intute's Best of the Web in the Arts & Humanities category.