The Leaky Cauldron (website)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the location in the Harry Potter books called "The Leaky Cauldron," please see Diagon Alley.

The Leaky Cauldron's Masthead

The Leaky Cauldron, or Leaky as it is often called, is a popular Harry Potter fansite. It features news, a video gallery, image galleries, interviews, reviews, fan graphics, widgets, essays, a chat room, forums, a podcast called "PotterCast," and more. The current webmaster is Melissa Anelli, a journalist for the Staten Island Advance.

It has good relations with the writer of the Harry Potter books and producers of the Harry Potter films, and was the first fan site to gain such access, interview the actors, visit the sets and post information straight from those involved in the production of the franchise. J.K. Rowling, the author of the books, has praised The Leaky Cauldron on her Web site by awarding it her "Fan Site Award." The Leaky Cauldron and MuggleNet were granted an interview with Rowling immediately following the release of her sixth novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Rowling recounts on her Web site that she visits the site and sometimes reads the comments left by visitors, while never commenting herself; she once wished a reader a happy birthday based upon their postings on Leaky 1.

Warner Brothers, the producers of the Harry Potter movies, regularly sends Leaky pictures taken from the upcoming movies before they are released, and gave the site a special preview of the new designs of the Harry Potter official Web site on two occasions: before the release of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and before the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It sent Leaky to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban as the first and sole representative of fans in 2004; in 2005 it visited again for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, with other sites. It also invited Leaky first and exclusively to the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets junket, a practice it opened to other fan sites for the subsequent films.

The Leaky Cauldron produces a podcast called "PotterCast." The first show was launched in August, 2005, and features discussions about the boooks and films, a voicemail section for listeners to send questions, and unlike any other Harry Potter podcast, frequent interviews with those involved in the books and films as well as other entertainment professionals. They have interviewed many actors, directors and crew members, as well as M. Night Shyamalan, and more. Transcripts of the show are available on the PotterCast Web site, and are released shortly after each episode.

1 History
2 Awards
3 Significance
4 Network of sites
5 Charitable initiatives
6 PotterCast podcast
7 References

[edit] History

The Leaky Cauldron (TLC) Web site was started by Kevin C. Murphy on July 5, 2000 as a Geocities Web site managed through Blogger. It moved to its own domain on December 4, 2000. Today the site is also accessible at LeakyNews.com.

B.K. DeLong took control of the site in 2001. Later that year, Melissa Anelli joined as an editor. In 2002, Melissa Anelli became Managing Editor and took full editorial control of the site in 2004.

On January 28, 2005 LeakyLounge.com, Leaky's own forum, was released to the public for fans to discuss Harry Potter. Currently, the forums have well over 40,000 members.

[edit] 2004 April Fools Joke

The 2004 April Fools Day joke featured actor comedian and musician Jim Tavaré, who would appear later that year in the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban film as Tom the Barman. The character in the film runs The Leaky Cauldron, so Jim posted on the site, pretending to oust all the "muggles" from the space and take it over himself. Staff protested throughout the day while Jim managed his reclaiming of the bar.

[edit] 2005 April Fools Joke

The Leaky Cauldron closed down on April Fools Day 2005, posting instead a note that said how tired the Web masters were of dealing with all the stupid questions their readers send them every day. It then opened "Ask Peeves," a spoof on popular Web site Ask Jeeves. The site was a search engine; each search resulted in answers jargonized to match the speech of the mischievous poltergeist from the Harry Potter books. A graphic of Peeves spouted out rude sayings and limericks on the page as well.

[edit] 2006 April Fools Joke

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. They were merging their sites, they said, as they had merged their lives. Both sites were running normally and separately the next day, and soon after, JK Rowling herself discussed the joke on her official website. It should be noted, though, that LeakyMug.com is now a perfectly-functional merged website that runs independently of The Leaky Cauldron and MuggleNet, it's prime function is to house past episodes of TLC and MuggleNet's joint podcast, The Leaky Mug.

[edit] Awards

In 2005, The Leaky Cauldron won the Yahoo! Search Find of the Year People's Choice Award, as well as a Fan Site Award from J.K. Rowling. It has also been awarded a Lovemark [1], a 2002 Bloggie, an a Fan Favorite Award from Movies.com in 2004 and 2005. On May 9, 2006, the site won a 2006 Webby People's Voice Award, becoming the first fan site of any variety to ever win a Webby.

[edit] Significance

In addition to awarding Leaky the "Fan Site Award," J. K. Rowling, the author of the books, also once called the site "my favorite fan site." [2] After the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Rowling invited Anelli (along with Emerson Spartz, the editor of fellow fansite MuggleNet) to her home in Edinburgh, Scotland for an interview. [3] The website receives information from other important sources in the Harry Potter world, including Arthur A. Levine Books, Bloomsbury, and Warner Bros.

Leaky is the only Harry Potter site to consistently interview those involved in the books and films. It has attained exclusive interviews with many film actors and directors/crew, as well as the editors of the books.

[edit] Network of sites

In addition to news and forums, Leaky features interviews, set reports, reviews and other information and amusements. The Leaky Cauldron is a member of the Floo Network, a collection of informative Harry Potter sites. In addition to Leaky, the Floo Network consists of the Harry Potter Lexicon, an online Harry Potter encyclopedia; Accio Quote!, a collection of quotations by J.K. Rowling; The Leaky Galleries, a Harry Potter-related image collection; and The Cauldron Shop, a Harry Potter related merchandise store. Leaky was also responsible for Potter Parties, an online listing of thousands of book release events.

[edit] Charitable initiatives

One of Leaky's most distinguishing characteristics among Harry Potter sites is its charity work. It regularly raises funds to aid world literacy, a project that started in 2002. Leaky holds a charity drive every holiday season and has donated more than $30,000 to charity to date. It started in 2002 when author JK Rowling auctioned off a hand written card with 93 words that related to the plot of the following Harry Potter book, The Order of the Phoenix. They did not acquire the card but donated all the money raised to the charity that would have benefited had they won the auction.