Hogwarts Live Blog

Some of you have been wondering where the donations go. While this is explained fairly well in the Prefect's Lounge I want to do a week-to-week breakdown of the costs of running Hogwarts Live during the month of July 2011:

Week 1 - $103.20
Week 2 - $167.80
Week 3 - $133.51
Week 4 - $183.37

Subtotal: $587.88

You should all know that there have been many times in the past where I've personally covered all or part of HL's monthly overhead. Because of this I do my best to give donators unique perks as a thank you for their continued support.

Our actual donation goal is an estimate of how much I think it will cost each month to run the site. The breakdown above does not include one-time fees for the physical equipment and hardware upgrades needed to keep HL running smoothly. Nor does it include unexpected expenses due to hardware failure or planned expenses such as prizes for raffles. Our monthly goal is subject to change based on the actual cost of running the site.

If our costs rise significantly so will our donation goal. If our goal is exceeded the money is kept in an HL-only account that accrues interest. These funds will eventually be used to purchase new servers should HL need to support more users. New servers can cost thousands of dollars.



For further information read this bit from the Prefect's Lounge:

All moneys donated to Hogwarts Live are used specifically and only for costs associated with running HL. This includes, but is not necessarily limited to, fees for server equipment (hardware), web hosting, bandwidth overages, and for the domain name. If donations exceed the costs for the current year then any and all unused donations are saved for the next year's expenses.

Donations are not used for any of Headmaster Danilo's personal expenses.

HL has its own money market account where the unused funds earn interest. These funds are kept in case of emergencies such as hardware failure where parts need be replaced or repaired. They are also used for any other necessary expenses that may arise such as purchasing a new server, hardware upgrades, and other equipment used for the development and maintenance of HL.

Sometimes if deemed prudent the interest accrued on the money market account is used to purchase prizes for the Candy Raffle. These kinds of expenses are generally recouped right away.

Hurricane Irene made its way up the East Coast leaving devastation in its path, Irene has claimed over 20 lives so far. In New York State there are towns that are completely gone and will have to start over, many people have lost everything. People may be wondering why this matters, but it personally affected one of our long time player of Hogwarts Live, Tom. He lost his entire house due to the massive flooding in New York State, his entire county was put in a state of emergency because it was completely flooded out, emergency services even had a hard time rescuing people because of the rapidly rising water levels. Luckily him and his family got out safely. This hits close to home for me personally, being Tom and I live so close to each other and attend the same college. I know many players on this game are also good friends with him. I have talked to Danilo about having money from HL donations going to help Tom and his family in their time of need. He said that if players would like part of their donations to go to Tom's family, to owl him(Danilo) after they donate.

You can also donate to other families in need through the Red Cross:
https://american.redcross.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=ntld_main

No one around here expected Irene to do so much damage in the middle of New York State, our area here, the storm kept moving away from and we were in and out of Medium and High zones, while places like NYC were in the Extreme zone and they didn't really get hit much at all. I know other states got hit just as hard, and I hope anyone's families in those states are alright also.

A lot of players have been complaining about bad navs recently- the Click Here page or just a plain white page. We have previously posted some tips here on how to avoid them, but I'd also recommend clearing your browser cache and your DNS cache. Clearing both of these may help prevent the badnavs from happening so much for seemingly no reason (and won't hurt anything even if it doesn't help).

Directions on flushing your DNS cache can be found here.

Directions on clearing your browser cache can be found here .

You just need to look for your specific browser and operating system on each link then follow the instructions.

Please petition if you do get stuck and we'll fix your navs as soon as we can.

Thanks!


IF YOU ALLOW A BANNED PLAYER ON ONE OF YOUR ACCOUNTS, THE ACCOUNT WILL BE BANNED. IF A BANNED PLAYER KNOWS YOUR PASSWORD, I SUGGEST CHANGING IT.

Hi All,

You may have noticed that the site has been a bit slow lately and we even experienced some small outages. Some of our ex-players decided to go script kiddie on us and retaliated their bans via a series of automated attacks that overburdened our server. This made the site inaccessible to all instead of just to those who were banned.

Over the past couple days I have been making a number of security improvements to mitigate the impact of further attacks of this nature. If the safeguards I have put in place should be overcome our data center will block the malicious traffic and notify the proper authorities.

In addition to this I have asked Alchemist Edmund to return to his role of system administrator. This means that if the site should go down again I won't be the only one who can bring it back up.

I appreciate your continued patience and understanding concerning this matter.

Sincerely,
Your Headmaster

The Owl Post is currently down. Although you can write messages and appear to send them, they are not being delivered and all old owls have been deleted.

The Owls should be working again at some point today. I do not know if all old owls will be able to be restored, however.

Please don't petition the problem as we have no way of replying.

Thanks!

UPDATE

The owl post is now working but all old owls have been deleted for database preservation and to help speed things up again. Please be sure to delete old owls from your inboxes to help prevent issues like this in the future.

Sometime over the next 24 hours, Danilo will post an update concerning the recent downtime himself.

Thanks!

Please note I don't expect any downtime but want to make you all aware of the possibility of downtime in advance.

Our hosting provider Peer1 is experiencing a critical situation with their San Antonio datacenter. Half of their computer room air conditioning units (CRAC) are non-functional due to a water main break. Last year Texas had issues with rolling blackouts across the state and while it didn't interrupt service I was worried Peer1's backup generators wouldn't outlast the blackouts.

If temperatures at the San Antonio datacenter threaten to damage equipment Peer1 will have to proactively shut down servers. At this point I'm seriously considering moving to a datacenter in either Toronto, Chicago, or Los Angeles (where I live). Toronto and Chicago seem most likely since they aren't known for their natural disasters.

Again, depending on how Peer1 handles the situation we may not have to move any time soon.

UPDATE: Peer1 has resolved this issue. So no more worries! :)

Back in November, I wrote a blog post on Justia's Law, Technology and Marketing Blog with an overview of the legal and political systems in the Wizarding World.

In celebration of the launch of Pottermore and the release of the final movie in the series, I have written another post to continue where the movie leaves off with a review of what we know about the legal and political system of Harry's world in a Post Voldemort Era. If you are interested, take a look at Wizarding Law in the 21st Century on the Justia Law, Technology and Marketing Blog.

In appreciation of your hard work for reaching God/Goddess status here on HogwartsLive, Danilo has decided to reward your dedication and loyalty by making you Hogwarts Live alumni. What this means for you is that you will never be expelled (i.e. deleted). Once you reach 50 VEs, you do not ever have to worry about losing your account if for some reason you are prevented from logging in regularly.

In addition to the above change, ANYONE who has donated a total of $50 (5000 points) to the site will also be considered Alumni and will never be expelled. As with custom titles (also available with a $50 donation), you may make multiple donations and still be safe, just as long as the TOTAL amount donated is at least $50.

So, to sum up.... Anyone with 50 VEs is now safe from deletion AND anyone who has donated at least $50 is also safe from deletion.

For those with under 50 VEs and who do not meet the donation requirement to be saved from expulsion, the deletion schedule is as follows:

Students that have never shown up for classes (i.e. never logged in) will be expelled after 10 days.

Students that fail to reach second year (i.e. thwart Voldemort) within 30 days will be expelled. Note: This is only if you do not log in for 30 days.

Students that fail to attend classes (i.e. log in) for more than 120 days will be expelled.

As always, thanks for playing here on Hogwarts Live and congrats to all our new alumni!

First, let us say congratulations to our 5 Hogwarts Live T-shirt Winners! They are:

BattleMage Sinful (Ticket 6681)
Supreme Goddess Tyra (Ticket 2277)
Thirdyearboy joserules (Ticket 2874)
Enchantress PhoenixRising (Ticket 7178)
InsideoutSmurf Aisling (Ticket 6832)

Winners: Please OWL the link to the shirt you'd like to DANILO. He will handle getting your prize to you. http://hogwartslive.spreadshirt.com/ is the link to the available shirts.

If you did not win this time, don't be discouraged. We will have more raffles in the coming months and as long as you keep collecting beans, you can have a shot at one of those :)

And now for our SECOND SURPRISE!!! It's gotten off to a late start, but better late than never, right? So, without further ado, in honor of Harry's Birthday, Danilo has made it ...(wait for it)....

One of our dedicated players made up this video for HL players, check it out.