Hogwarts Live Blog

What you once knew as the Daily Prophet and before that the MoTD has now become the Hogwarts Live Blog.

Please note that the Hogwarts Live Blog is currently in Alpha (meaning it's missing a lot of features it should have) so please be sure to petition any bugs you may find. Edit: We know that the blog keeps popping up, please stop with the petitions. UPDATE: This has been fixed.

If you have any other suggestions or comments please post them below. Yes, you can now comment on individual blog posts!

Here are some bugs you might notice right away:
1. If you click view more books/staff picks it takes you to the same page.
2. You can't change/edit our profile. The link goes nowhere or there's no link to do so.
3. The layout doesn't quite look right in Internet Explorer (MSIE).
4. The bold/highlighted link to the blog doesn't change after you've read it.

Anything that's not on this list please report right away. If you report something potentially hazardous to the site you'll be rewarded with donator points. And even if what you report is not such a big deal I'll probably choose to reward you anyway. The seriousness of the bug will determine the reward.

Please test away!

Over 1 million children have been affected by Typhoon Ketsana, and UNICEF is working around the clock to meet their needs. You can help.

If you'd like to make a donation to this cause I will give you donator points in exchange for doing so. Either make a donation on UNICEF's secure online form by clicking here. Please note you will need to provide me with a receipt of your donation to receive donator points.

Alternatively, you may owl or email me, , your PayPal transaction number after making a donation via the "PayPal Site Admin" button and I'll add your funds to my next donation to UNICEF at the end of the month. Keep in mind this method is not tax deductible as is the case when you use UNICEF's official form.

There are also other ways to support UNICEF aside from donating, please visit: UNICEF's Other Ways to Give Page.

Some of you may have noticed that referrals weren't working properly.

They should function perfectly fine now.

Don't know what referrals are?

Under the --Other-- section in the left-hand navigation click on "Refer a Friend." This will give you a referral link (URL/web address) that looks something like: http://www.hogwartslive.com/r/Username

Give this link to your friends or post it on forums, blogs, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and when people sign up for HL using your referral link they will show up under "Accounts which you referred:" on the "Refer a Friend" page you got the link from.

Once any player you refer reaches level 10 you get 50 free referral/donator points, which can be used inside the Prefect's Lounge to get cool stuff like a custom title.

Awesome right? I thought so, now go get some free points and maybe make some new friends!

So, I'm sure you've noticed the site crashes a lot. Alchemist Edmund has had a solution to this problem for a while now. Guess what? I finally decided to implement it. This solution is likely to cost a lot more than our current setup. Because of this we'll be testing it to see if this price is within reason (i.e. can be covered by our average monthly donations). If so you'll all get to experience a relatively stable (meaning little to no downtime) Hogwarts Live. I know I've promised no downtime before but considering the nature of this solution and its ability to scale it should effectively eliminate prolonged periods of time where you can't access your favorite game! I should warn you though it's possible that we'll be trading speed for stability. With that said I think we'll all prefer a slower HL as long as we can get on whenever we want. ^_^

The podcast of our own session at Azkatraz (Wizarding Physics: Gamp and Beyond) will be up in a few days (I just got my copy of the recording of it), but in the mean time, you can hear the Wizards.FM panel in another podcast recording at Azkatraz which went up last night.

While at Azkatraz all 3 primary members of the Wizards.FM panel, myself, my wife Barbara (SerenityRose) and Mike Johnson (MikeCrim) auditioned for parts in the SpellCast Podcast Play.

I was cast as the role of Hagrid, Barbara was one of the Narrators, and Mike was a Love Sick Dementor... and he was playing the role of... a Love Sick Dementor.

Anyway it was a lot of fun, and I hope you like it.

Check out Summer: Live from Azkatraz on the SpellCast podcast, and if you like fanfiction and radio drama, give SpellCast a listen in general, they do dramatic readings of Harry Potter Fanfiction, and more Podcast Plays, it's a lot of fun, you can find them at SpellcastPodcast.com.

Stay Tuned for Wizards.FM Live from Azkatraz, later this weekend.

As you can see by our Countdown to HP's Birthday, the day is drawing near. In celebration of this, we are having not one, but two raffles!

To enter, simply click on Candy Raffle on the left and use all those Bertie Bott's Beans you've been saving to buy your tickets!

As always, it only takes 1 ticket to win! Good luck!

It's Harry's Birthday, but you get the present, Real Bertie Botts Beans
Beans per Ticket: 5
Trade in your fake Bertie Botts Beans for a chance to win a bag of real Bertie Botts beans! 4 Winners will be announced at 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Harry Potter's Birthday (July 31st)
Raffle Runs From 1969-12-31 to 2009-07-31
There are 4 days, 20 hours, 38 minutes and 39 seconds left to purchase tickets in this raffle.


Ride in Style, a custom mount!
Beans per Ticket: 15
1 Lucky Winner will win a custom mount, don't like the brooms and dragons we have available, always wanted something a little special? Enter this raffle for a one-of-a-kind mount available just to you! Winner will be announced on Harry Potter's Birthday, July 31st at 7 p.m. Pacific Time.
Raffle Runs From 1969-12-31 to 2009-07-31
There are 4 days, 20 hours, 38 minutes and 39 seconds left to purchase tickets in this raffle.

The live new day timer which counts down until the new game day is not working right now. The game days are still set to be 1h 30m and that IS functioning correctly- just the time displayed is off.

Each village has an in-game clock however and so when that reads 12:00am (midnight) the new day will start.

Just a reminder, please don't talk about the new movie in open chat for a week or so, "OMG The Movie was Awesome" is ok, but please don't spoil anything. Yes the book has been available for 4 years, but there are people here who only watch the movies and haven't seen it yet, not to mention there are definite spoilers for the movie that are not in the book or different from the book.

Let's be kind for a week or so and not spoil in open chat.

That said, we'll work up a place you can talk about the movie, perhaps I'll bring back the Quibbler office.

Ok, I've done several MoTDs over the months on this, so you had to expect another. Any of you who are going to Azkatraz in San Francisco this coming weekend, be sure to stop by the HogwartsLive Flock meetup this Saturday night at 7 p.m.

Our meetup will be in the Mission II/Mission III room at the Parc55 Hotel (where the Symposium is)

I look forward to seeing you there. Everyone who comes will get an early access code to get into my Alchemy Lab (yes I'm opening Devon and my Lab up once again for more great prizes)

Also, Me and SerenityRose, along with former HLer MikeCrim will be presenting a panel discussion on "Wizarding Physics: Gamp's Law and Beyond" on Monday.

For those of you who can't come, we will be recording a podcast version of this panel after the conference, and it also will have a way to access my secret lab!

Also, we understand that there have been some requests for our annual Harry's Birthday Raffle, we are working on getting something up and I assure you, there will at least be a donator points raffle, hopefully we can come up with something a little cooler though, we'll see.

Finally, I would like to express my sincere thanks to WitchyWoman for her wonderful MoTD on my anniversary, and for the owls my wife and I received congratulating us on 3 years of Marriage.

I was deeply moved, and I thank you all. I met Barbara (SerenityRose) right here on HogwartsLive almost 5 years ago now, and I'm happy to say that it is thanks to this place that I am happily married. I will always owe HogwartsLive a debt of gratitude for bringing the love of my life to me.

Stop with the joke petitions. They are stupid and take time away from us that could be used to deal with people who have a real problem that needs to be fixed or a question that needs to be answered.