MuggleNet

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MuggleNet
URL http://www.mugglenet.com
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Harry Potter Fansite
Registration Free, Public
Owner Emerson Spartz
Created by Emerson Spartz & Staff
Launched Fall 1999 [1]
Current status of site Active

MuggleNet is a Harry Potter fansite founded by Emerson Spartz, from LaPorte, Indiana. The site's content is composed of news, editorials, synopses of the Harry Potter books and films, an encyclopedia of the books, a chat room, a discussion forum, and media such as screenshots, theatrical trailers and book covers. There is also a fan fiction section, a weekly caption contest, and other occasional contests and polls.

MuggleNet benefits from good relations with the writer of the Harry Potter books and the producers of the films. J. K. Rowling, the author of the books, has praised MuggleNet on her website by awarding it her "Fan Site Award" [2]. Mugglenet, along with The Leaky Cauldron, scored an interview with J.K. Rowling immediately following the release of her sixth novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Rowling recounts on her website that she occasionally visits the site and sometimes reads the comments left by visitors, while never commenting herself. Rowling also stated that she visited the site's chat room and was snubbed when she anonymously joined in a conversation about Harry Potter theories.[citation needed]

Warner Brothers, the producers of the Harry Potter movies, regularly sends MuggleNet pictures taken from the upcoming movies before they are released, and gave MuggleNet a special preview of the new designs of the Harry Potter official website.

MuggleNet produces a podcast entitled "MuggleCast." The first show was launched just before 1am British Summer Time on August 9, 2005. The show features discussions about the books and films and a voicemail section where listeners can send recorded questions to the panel. After two days online, MuggleCast became the number six most downloaded podcast on the United States iTunes list of most popular podcasts and downloads and, on August 14, it reached the number one position. Transcripts of the podcast are available on the MuggleNet website, usually released three or so days after the episode itself is released.

As of autumn 2005, the MuggleNet network generates a six-figure income through advertisements, [3], a portion of which goes into financing Spartz's college education at the University of Notre Dame. This has resulted in some controversy among Spartz's fans, as Spartz built his community entirely out of Rowling's work and ideas and yet is making a large profit for himself, which he considers as his personal "investment capital." [4] As of November 2006, MuggleNet began selling branded merchandise, including T-shirts, wands, and a collection of unofficial Book 7 predictions through Alivan's, one of its sponsors. [5] Spartz has admitted that he is "not quite the [Harry Potter] fan he used to be." [6] Indeed, most of the site's management and updating is no longer done by Spartz himself, but according to a Washington Post interview, Spartz sees his role as "more of an administrator" overseeing a large team of staff members. [7]

Contents

[edit] Emerson Spartz

Emerson Spartz was born on February 17, 1987, and is the founder of MuggleNet. The site was created in 1999 when he was a homeschooled twelve-year-old, which allowed him plenty of time to work on a website. Spartz is currently a sophomore studying business at the University of Notre Dame.

In July 2005, Rowling invited Spartz and Melissa Anelli of The Leaky Cauldron to Edinburgh, Scotland for an interview at her home on the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.[8] . J.K. Rowling denied permission to release the actual recording; however, Spartz has posted the transcript of the interview on the Mugglenet website: http://www.mugglenet.com/jkrinterview.shtml.

Spartz considers himself as an entrepreneur for founding MuggleNet, and is enjoying a six-figure income from the site. [9]

[edit] Staff members

Due to privacy issues, the staff members are usually addressed by their first names only. Some staff members also may be going under an alias name as well, again, for personal matters. To learn more about the staff of MuggleNet, refer to the "About Us" section. [10]

[edit] MuggleCast podcast

Main article: MuggleCast

[edit] MuggleNet Fan Fiction

Created in 2004, MuggleNet Fan Fiction (MNFF) is a branch of MuggleNet devoted to writing and showcasing stories written by fans that take place in The Potterverse. In 2002, JK Rowling gave her blessing to fan fiction, even saying "I've read some of it. I find it very flattering that people love the characters that much." MNFF currently is home to over 2000 authors, with a team of moderators working hard to screen hundreds of fiction submissions daily. One of the missions of MuggleNet Fan Fiction is to help budding authors improve their writing. A forum exists where authors can share excerpts of their fiction, discuss the Harry Potter characters, or get advice for how to improve if their story is not accepted into the archive at first.

[edit] April Fool's jokes

[edit] 2005

MuggleNet put up a web page explaining that their site was deleted by lawyers, but refreshing brought back the home page with a few tweaks. The Half Blood Prince countdown was replaced by a Pillar of Storgé countdown, with a badly edited banner with an arrow pointing to Ginny Weasley on the back cover of HBP saying "Storgé", and another arrow pointing to a poorly copied and pasted tower saying "pillar". The original idea for the joke came from the Chamber of Secrets Forums and its technical administrator Ali.

[edit] 2006

On April Fool's Day 2006, Harry Potter fansites MuggleNet and The Leaky Cauldron shut down their sites temporarily and redirected all visitors to a new website titled The Leaky Mug, a play on the combination of the two sites' names. The new site's first announcement was the marriage of Mugglenet's webmaster Emerson Spartz to Melissa Anelli, the webmaster of The Leaky Cauldron. The two were shipped by fans of their sites for months. They also announced that they were merging their sites as they had merged their lives. The new site looked similar to Mugglenet in the layout. Along with the story of the marriage ceremony, there was a promise of updating the site to include all the content from both sites. Some of the staff from the sites did a short, seven minute Podcast explaining the merge. Mugglenet's MuggleCast and Leaky's Pottercast had done joint shows before, also called The Leaky Mug.

The Leaky Mug featured a Wall of Shame similar to the original Wall of Shame on MuggleNet. The Leaky Mug's version had some of the funnier e-mails addressed to "Memerson" which concerned fans' outrage or happiness with the merge. The page was updated throughout the day.

In the late evening of April 1st, different staff members began to post, complaining about the new members that they now had to work with. Melissa offered an ultimatum to Emerson, allowing him his "wife" or his right-hand man, Andrew Sims, but not both. Emerson had to choose Andrew, and Melissa "filed" for divorce. Right at midnight, the two separate sites were brought back online. They still won't simply say straight forward that the whole idea was a prank. They say that they "forgot to do something" for April Fool's Day because of the hype over the marriage and divorce.

With both sites now running as normal there are no lasting effects of the prank, though the site is still live. If the merge had really not been a hoax, then the running of MuggleCast and PotterCast would be interrupted, as well as polls, contests, and other functions that both sites had running. But now www.leakymug.com is a real website where The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet have live podcasts. It features a cartoon of the staff members and a quote system where random quotes come out in speech bubbles of the staff members.

[edit] MuggleNet interactive

MuggleNet interactive banner, as seen in the temporary forums.
Enlarge
MuggleNet interactive banner, as seen in the temporary forums.

MuggleNet interactive (the "I" is lowercased), also known to many fans as MNI, is a forums website spin-off of MuggleNet dot com. It is located in the "Fun" section of MuggleNet on the left toolbar, created for fans of the Harry Potter series as well as many fans of the website itself. Ever since its creation, MNI has served as a way to live (in a matter of speaking) in the wizarding world through the internet. MuggleNet interactive is known as a roleplaying community, where young or old Harry Potter fans imagine they are actually living in the wizarding world as wizards or witches. There are many individual forums for such kinds of roleplaying, but it also has a great deal of social forums for people to talk and discuss the Harry Potter books or anything else on their mind.

The site stemmed from a 'Personality Quiz' made around the year 2000, which was later improved and adapted for the full version of the site. It eventually evolved into its 'orange' phase, with sections for Quidditch (including a game), a "Lockhart's Matchmaker" tool and forums. Around 2002, it had a major redesign, becoming blue in colour, with numerous new sections including Diagon Alley, a Duelling game, and Gringotts, where users could access a personal vault containing their galleons collected on the site. There were also numerous 'secrets' hidden on the site, 10 of which were hidden on the main Mugglenet site upon MNI's launch, and an additional 5 made after with galleon rewards. Secrets often consisted of cryptic clues, and were often in various stages. The site became part of Mugglenet in 2002. The original 2000 quiz can be found here.

The site was shut in 2004 when its former webmaster left after disagreements with the staff. While staff members were allowed back onto the site to make sure there were no problems, a hacker attacked. By hacking into the database the hacker was able to acquire any password to any user. He/she then posted these passwords in the staff forums and threatened to destroy the site unless the staff gave into their demands, which the staff outright refused. This caused the entire site to be shut down. Thus, the temporary forums of MuggleNet interactive were created in December 2004.

The site plays itself off of the Harry Potter books, offering Hogwarts classes such as Transfiguration and Defence Against The Dark Arts. Students of each class are awarded galleons from their professors for turning in homework, answering questions, completing quizzes and winning contests. The site also has common rooms for each house, and even a Great Hall for special events, just like in the books.

On April 11, 2005 the second temporary forums of MuggleNet interactive were created. The first temporary forums were taken offline due to the overload of memory on galleons, as well as the amount of students on the forums.

[edit] Facts

  • The temporary forums are administered by the Head Staff, which currently consist of:
  • To date, there are more than 42 active forums in MuggleNet interactive. [11]
  • As of November 25th, 2006 there are more than 14,359 registered users and 313,520 articles produced. [12]

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] MuggleNet

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