Hogwarts Live Blog

We will be giving away 5 copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling on New Years. To win a copy just go to the Candy Raffle page for details!

Several players have reported getting stuck in a bad nav in the Dueling Club. I was able to use all of mine with no problem, but until Edmund can get on and do his magic, please be aware that you may get stuck as well. So in other words, USE PVP AT YOUR OWN RISK for the time being.

In the event that you DO get stuck, please use the Petition for Help link. Thanks.

Warner Brothers is releasing the new US Trailer of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince next week in front of the new movie Twilight. But they've given Fan Sites an exclusive jump start on the action.

Here is the new trailer for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for your viewing pleasure:



Hard to see that youtube version? They've released it in several downloadable versions as well, some of them in amazing High Definition

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Thanks to the Leaky Cauldron for being the source of this awesome news.

Just so you can see how agonizingly long of a wait it is, here is Leaky's countdown timer:

Get this and other HP countdowns at LeakyNews.com

we've had a major database crash. We've had to roll back all data 30 hours, as it was the last fully successful back up. All backups after that point have had something wrong with them. Edmund was able to save the user and stats information from a later backup about 14 hours ago. So he has restored that information from that backup so there isn't as much loss to users.

6. Spam/Advertising. We define spam as useless and repetitive posting. We generally we do not mute for this, unless you do it over and over. Players that are RPing and posting what they are doing is NOT spam UNLESS they keep repeating themselves.

-Posting such things as "shsdfgesrhshsryery" or "Hiiiiiiiii!!!!!! are spam. We have a GENERAL guideline of using only 3 of the same letters/numbers/characters or words in a row. Using too many strung together can stretch the page for some players and for those that use a screen reader, it can cause problems. If you continue to post this way after repeated warnings, you can be muted.

-All caps in one or two posts is FINE. Using it every post isn't.

-Do not advertise other websites in chat or in owls. If you want to advertise your website, use the Link Exchange.

-Discussions about other websites is considered advertising and is also prohibited in chat. If you need to discuss something pertaining to ABCWebsite, GO to ABCWebsite and discuss it.

-If you are reported by several players with evidence that you are randomly owling them websites, you will be banned.

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PREFECTS, STAFF and other PLAYERS:

Do NOT warn other players if they use 4 or 5 of something in a row. Only if they post Hiiiii!!!!!!! or something SIMILARLY EXCESSIVE may you warn/dock points/mute for it. Everyone is getting way too into this spam thing and it's getting out of control.

In one month and two days, J.K. Rowling's brand new book, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, will hit bookstore shelves, as well as Amazon.com.

Amazon is offering Guaranteed Release-Date Delivery of both the Standard Edition of the book as well as their exclusive Collectors Edition. Both editions include the stories in the original 7 handwritten copies (one of which was sold at auction for charity to Amazon.com for a whopping $5 million!)

The Collectors Edition includes a copy of J.K. Rowling's original handwritten introduction, and 10 additional illustrations by J.K. Rowling herself. The Collectors edition also comes in a metal clasp bound book, with metalic skull and replica gemstones, and an emerald ribbon, as well as a velvet bag embroidered with J.K. Rowling's signature, and an outer case disguised as a wizarding textbook from the Hogwarts Library. There will only be 100,000 copies of this special collectors edition copies sold, so be sure to order your copy while Amazon still has some left, or at least grab a copy of the Standard Edition, so you have this new and exciting book straight out of the pages of Deathly Hallows to enjoy.

Everyone knows that the FAQ is kind of lacking. So the staff thought it might be a good idea to ask YOU the Players what questions you think should be in the FAQ. If you have a question you see a lot of first year students asking then Petition it to the staff and we will take it under advisement for the FAQ.

Hello everyone, the time is growing near (though it originally the whole movie was supposed to be out next month which would have been very near). Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is coming soon, and now a new trailer is out, and here it is, enjoy everybody!

Players if you are wanting to donate to HL For the points you MUST use the Site Admin button. If you use the Author button you WILL NOT get any points. HL does not receive that money. Soon there will be a new button making this easier to understand but in the mean time be sure to use the Site Admin button or you will not get points.

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.