Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator
| Website | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator |
| Owner/Maintainer: | Jeff Guillaume (founder, software developer) |
| Dates: | October 15, 2002-November 2011, returned in 2014 on a limited basis, went down again |
| Type: | a for-profit news aggregator/website |
| Fandom: | Harry Potter |
| URL: | Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator Wayback links to old pages |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator was created in October 2002.
It was a for-profit website for Harry Potter fans. It had a volunteer staff of fans. The site is supported by donations and advertising.
One of its writers was Heidi8. Other staff are listed About HPANA > Meet the People and Community Moderators (unknown date).
It sponsored three projects: a forum, HP Fan Trips [1], and Hogwart's Radio [2].
The site enjoyed a close relationship with the powers that be. J.K. Rowling herself was a commenter at the site. A 2005 ad proclaimed: ""Come see why even the author herself visits." [3]. Rowling gave the site at least one award. HPANA's representatives have been invited to Leavesden Film Studios, the permanent set outside London on which the Warner Bros. movie adaptations are created, as well as the majority of the films' red carpet premieres around the world. The site, however, was not "official." [4]
In 2008, Rowling introduced a companion website to her books, Pottermore. At that time, she worked with HPANA and other fan sites to release clues for fans to discover the name of her new website.
History
It began in October 2002.
In 2003, the site began working with a travel company and offered Harry Potter-themed tours of the United Kingdom. These trips were called HP Fan Trips. The initial trip had over 100 people participate.
In July 2005, HPANA and MuggleNet along with publisher Wizarding World Press held Spellbound! 2005, an event to celebrate the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. This free event took place in Mt. Prospect, Illinois. More than 10,000 people attended, played games, and watched live stage performances while they waited for the debut of the book at midnight.
In November 2011, due to lack of funding, HPANA went offline. Three years later, the site was resurrected in a limited form with access to its news archive. It went offline again shortly after that.
In 2016, the site said it would reopen again that year. [5]
A History With Harry Potter, And The Birth Of An Online Community (September 29, 2017)
A Self-Description (Unknown Date)
There are a multitude of Web sites that post news and rumors about the Harry Potter world. The Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator (HPANA) was created to monitor several of the top news sources on the Web and provide near-instant alerts when new information is published.
This unique service is accomplished using custom, automated scripts that go to each source, capture data in whatever format is provided (text, HTML, or XML), parse the headlines and summaries, and finally index them in a database.
The next step is to organize the data on HPANA's Web site and to create public news feeds that can be used in RSS-compatible programs. Rich Site Summary (RSS) is a broadly supported XML-based technology that makes it possible for Web sites to distribute their content in a standard, summarized format. Desktop programs such as FeedReader external site and Trillian Pro external site (for Windows), and NetNewsWire Lite external site (for Mac) read RSS and display it however the reader chooses. Using these tools, readers are essentially delivered a consolidated view of the information they want, almost as soon as it's posted, while providing credit and links back to the original source. (Click here for a larger list of RSS readers. Thanks to Malikii for the link.)
By indexing the news in a powerful database, many features not previously available become obvious: full-text searching, linking related stories together, and more. These are the services HPANA's Web site tries to provide. [6]
From a 2005 Ad
Printed in the MediaWest*Con program book: "Come see why even the author herself visits."
"With over 1.5 million posts in our forums, you'll be sure to find something to talk about, make new friends, discuss theories, gain points and have fun!"
"An "adults only" section ensures space for mature dialogue and debate."
"Search our news archives of over 20,000 articles at HPSearch.com."
"The Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator was the very first Harry Potter website I ever visited ...A fantastically user-friendly fansite, faster off the mark with Harry Potter news than any other site I know, and with all kinds of brilliantly inventive touches. --JK Rowling, Fan Site Award, Dec. 2004."
"The very latest Harry Potter news."
"Extremely active community with over 30,000 registered members!"
References
- ^ HP Fan Trips
- ^ Hogwart's Radio
- ^ see the 2005 flyer on this page
- ^ "HPANA is in no way affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Books, Bloomsbury Publishing or Warner Bros. Entertainment. All trademarks and copyrighted material are the property of their respective owners." -- HPANA (2003)
- ^ Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator
- ^ Front Page