This years focus was largely on updating features. New Rares (such as the Enchanted Golden Trunk) were released and could be gotten in Forums and in Gaia Towns. Gaians who had a chance to encounter a Rare in Gaia Towns, saw a "Shocked" emote which appeared and alert the user when there was an event present in the square. A town upgrade in June included: Creating topics in Towns and Home, personalized name for Towns and Homes, also checking one's PM from mailbox, when it came to trees and rocks being shook they would now give Gold (10g being the highest increment). With the new navigation, Gaians could mark a Town as their favorite, view up to 10 recent topics and go to that topics location, view current active population, see homes detailed information and Gaians were able to get to their own house, by click "My Home". Lighting in houses was also supported and profiles could be accessed.

When December arrived, a snow falling feature was present in to the town during the winter seasons. Adding people to friendlist from Towns was now possible, and Gaians could see colored names for Staff, another upgrade was being able to move around the area using the (keyboard)arrow keys, and also being able to report rule violators.

During February there was an item update and the unisexing of clothing, all the clothing from the item update was unisex, along with old 2003 clothing such as Flame, Ribbed, Brownie, and Flashy sets. From 2006 to 2010 the Unisex Project still continues (with the release of new items) and has remained constant. An Avatar update in July offered a choice of switching mouth styles (Expressions), with this update, the No Mouth - which was only gotten by registering - was not present. The updated forced a mouth on Gaians if they saved their Avatar (by next year the no mouth option was offered in the feature.

When it came to forum features: Topic Voting had been added in September; this feature gave Gaians the ability to 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' a thread. Threads that are ranked the highest could be viewed on the Community page and a special forum for just top ranked threads. In October there was an improved Gold System, the tweaks to the gold granting system were to give out more gold and bigger bonuses. These bonuses were done when Gaians did something on the site for the first time during their day on Gaia, it would then reset when the next day arrived. In December it there was a tagging system, which would allow a forum to be tagged with 5 tags, as to make it easily found by the search system.

Trivia & External Links

• The date for the release of Donation/Monthly was changed to the 15th.
• In August, there where were new Header images (replacing the beach kids), the header would occasionally rotate to a new image while browsing the site and would also be changed when a Holiday Event arrived.
  • The Beach Kids were not well received, which explains their departure from the header rotation.
• November marks the day that Donation Items (DI) officially became Monthly Collectibles (MC).
• This year started the "3 Items to one Letter" (see below); this was said to have started due to a low sale of November Donation/Monthly items.
• On April 1st on the front page of the Manga update: #12: Gino vs. Labtech X; printed at the bottom was: "This update is dedicated to my Father, Van, the most powerful man in my life" ~ VO
  • During this year (April) VO's father had died of cancer (see) Gaia Journal: Long Vo
  • Gaians showed their sympathies (see) Gaia Thread: WE CARE
• Featured Announcements: Timetravel (2006)

Events in 2006