Hogwarts Live Blog

I felt that now would be a good time to remind everyone that just because your computer comes with Internet Explorer, doesn't mean that's the best choice for web browsing.

Internet Explorer is not Standards Compliant, and as such has a tendancy to act weird when it encounters different web technologies.

The Live chat on HL is one of them. I am working on a workaround that will allow the live chat to work better in Internet Explorer, but being able to use our live chat is not the only reason you should consider using a better browser.

Consider Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, or the brand new Google Chrome, all of which are based on standards compliant technologies and work better not just on HogwartsLive, but on Google, and on various other advanced websites waiting for you to explore them.

I strongly recommend either Firefox or Google Chrome on Windows, and Firefox or Safari on Mac. Firefox has a wealth of extensions available that make the web a better place.

The brand new Google Chrome has a super fast and super secure rendering engine, has advancements that makes Google AJAX Services like GMail work better, and has Google Gears built right in (Gears is available as an Extension on Firefox, and has some significant improvements to JavaScript)

If you spend a lot of your time on Social Networking sites, you may also want to consider Flock, Flock is heavily based on Firefox, with several additions that make it even easier to work with Social Networking Sites, but even with those advancements, it still renders web pages just as well as Firefox.

So if you are still on Internet Explorer, come see the better life on one of the browsers I mentioned above.

In Celebration of Halloween, we have brought back a couple of old modules, try your hand at carving a Jack-O-Lantern in Hogwarts, and find the perfect companion for you at the Magical Menagerie in Diagon Alley.

I am, now and always, a Ravenclaw, it's what I am meant to be. My intellect is very important to me, but not all of my Ravenclaws are meant to be one forever, nor is every Hufflepuff meant to be a Hufflepuff forever.

To this end, we have decided to make it possible for people to change their houses once they have been a member of their house for at least 3 months.

If you have been a member of your current house for at least 3 months and want to switch to another hogwarts house, you may do so by going into your Common Room and then clicking on Change House Affiliation

Remember however that once you have changed your house, you will not be able to do it again for three more months.

Also, Prefects are not able to change their house until they have gotten their Head of House to demote them back to Member status.

I hope some of you who have been hoping to change your house enjoy this new feature of the House Cup Championship!

It has come to our attention that personal attacks are getting out of hand lately. This MoTD is a warning to EVERYONE, you will only get one other warning before you get muted for personal attacks. A reminder of what personal attacks are (taken from the Rules):
Taunting opponents is fine as long as it is roleplayed, but personal attacks are not allowed. Keep all teasing site-related. Personal attacks(bringing someones real life into it) and insulting remarks should be kept off the public channels such as the forums and the chats. It is preferable that you keep arguments off the site or ignore players that irritate you.

If you would like someone to leave you alone in owls that are not breaking site rules, go to your Friends List and click Friend Search. From there you type in the name of the player and when its finds the player, click ignore next to their name. If they are breaking site rules, for example: harassing you, do the same thing, but Report the Owls to Admin which can be done when you open the Owl.

LOS ANGELES - The release date for the sixth Harry Potter movie, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," was pushed back on Thursday to July 2009 from its original slot in November 2008, movie studio Warner Bros. said.

Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc, said it had decided to make the change to bolster its release schedule for the lucrative summer moviegoing season -- a period that can account for as much as 40 percent of Hollywood's annual box office receipts.

To read the full article, click here

Beastmaster audrik has won a brand new blue iPod Shuffle. To all of you who entered the Candy Raffle and lost better luck next time!

It was announced today that The Tales of Beedle the Bard will be made available to all Harry Potter fans in December. Here is what J.K. Rowling said about it.

There was understandable disappointment among Harry Potter fans when only one copy of "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" was offered to the public last December. I am therefore delighted to announce that, thanks to the generous support of Bloomsbury, Scholastic and Amazon (who bought the handwritten copy at auction) - and with the blessing of the wonderful people who own the other six original books - "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" will now be widely available to all Harry Potter fans. Royalties will be donated to the Children's High Level Group, to benefit institutionalized children in desperate need of a voice. The new edition will include the Tales themselves, translated from the original runes by Hermione Granger, and with illustrations by me, but also notes by Professor Albus Dumbledore, which appear by generous permission of the Hogwarts Headmasters' Archive.' 'Dumbledore's commentary on the Tales, which was discovered among his papers after his death, includes some historical notes, personal reminiscences, and insights into that most mysterious branch of magic: wandlore. I very much hope that readers coming to these classic wizarding fables for the first time will find his commentary both entertaining and helpful.

Many players have petitioned or commented in chat about Live Chat not updating for them when they post. All of those users had been using Internet Explorer at the time, which is what causes it to not update quickly and post properly. So we suggest that you use Firefox while on here, the chat works fine on it.
Click here to download Firefox!

If any of you are interested in writing articles for donator points please send a writing sample to and I will send you the full details if I like your writing.

Points will only be awarded to well-written original articles that cite sources (Wikipedia is not a valid source).

Any experience with journalism, medicine, or paraphrasing is a plus as the purpose of these articles is to raise awareness for a type of lung cancer.

You have less than 10 days left to enter the raffle to win an iPod on Harry's Birthday. Trade in those beans now.