History of Adrienne's Hogwarts

Hogwarts was thought up a little after my 11th birthday. I don't remember the exact reason - I think it might've been the closing of the one Hogwarts I was a part of, and wanting one just as good back on the web for myself and others - but I do remember that one day in late May, 2001, an idea came to mind. I'd create a website for others - and myself, naturally - that was a Hogwarts school, where people could answer trivia to earn House Points and Galleons, could buy stuff for vaults, and could talk to one another.

And that idea stuck. I started work on my third or fourth website, and I was determined to make it the best yet. I first created a system for it (a very complex, but balanced one), then started work on the pages. The very first page was main.htm; I wasn't used to html and internet yet, and thus didn't know an index.htm would make the url shorter.

The second page of it that I made was the grounds index. I wanted every part of the wonderful Harry Potter books to be represented on the site. I then started drawing images and playing around with my html editor for the pages.

The site was uploaded on November 10th, 2001. It took about an hour to upload everything, but when it was done I glowed in the pride of having created a real Hogwarts site.

I seeked all sorts of ways to get people onto my site without spamming others. First thing I did was submit to Google and Yahoo searches (which I only later found out both use the same search, Google search), then I submitted to a bunch more minor ones. I told a bunch of friends from school (the very first person who joined was Hannah, a friend of mine at the time - her screen name was Fluffy00 and she was in [overrated] Gryffindor). Then some more friends joined, including my old friend Rach (Fleur in Hufflepuff), some other people in my high math class (like WhompingFirebolt, Lisa, and Luke Skywalker, who have since been deleted), and my friend Charles (who joined twice, once with his own e-mail and once with his alias, haha... Soronar_Icewake and Ricardo Domingo are his accounts). The first person who joined from the web was LucentioTakashima, who was sorted into Hufflepuff, and then Koshie90, who was deleted in the 'last active in 2002' deletion. Do you recognize the screen name SpinningJ? She joined on February 12th, 2002, and is still probably the most active AH student.

I drew over 300 images for the site, a lot of which never made it onto the site, but a lot of which did. There were a dozen or so shops which contained them, and grew as I drew more. I created the Status page to list everyone and their vital statistics - Galleons they had, their last active date, their house, etc. Originally, the page had a bunch of dots spacing everything out, and everyone was in alphabetical order, not separated by house. Needless to say, it was really hard to find people on. When I learned how to make tables and color in the tables, I separated everyone by house.

Also, the vaults were very different - originally, everyone's purchases were on one page. The page got entirely too long though, and by the time school ended, they were all separated too, and each person had their own vault hosted on Adriennewolter.com, my domain which I had been given for my 12th birthday.

I sent out exams for Y1 in very early May, which were due the last day of school, which I think was June 2nd. Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, after nearly tying (Hufflepuff had five more points than Ravenclaw), both won the House Cup. There was a week's vacation for me, during which I revamped the site somewhat, and gave people the aforementioned vaults. Y2 started on June 9th, and several people joined that day... among them, Divine of Gryffindor, a Y3 Prefect.

I also joined a bunch of TopSiteLists, one of which I am still a part of, in the top 100, Kara's Top 200 HP Sites. Summer of 2002 was the time I got the most joins until then - I got three or four joins every day. That was the same summer that AH got a chat room, a better board host (after somebody impersonated Eloria Felton, one of my best friends that I met through Hogwarts), had an End-of-Summer Ball which more than 20 people attended, and got joins from most of the Prefects that have been appointed for Y3.

Y2 continued, and was AH's most successful year (well, so far... AH is still growing and evolving!). The join cutoff for exams was September 15th. There was a one-year-old birthday chat for AH on November 10th, 2002, which about 10 people attended, and then a Yule Ball, which a dozen or so people came to. I took a week-long break at Christmastime while I went to NJ for Christmas (it was necessary... otherwise, I would've had about 400 e-mails when I got back! x_x). Exams were posted in late January, were due March 7th, 2003. Considerably more people completed them this time as opposed to the first time.

Y2 ended on March 10th, 2003, and Ravenclaw won with over 100,000 points. There was a break for me, and the site returned March 21st, 2003, with about 300 less people - I deleted more than 300 people who were last active in 2002 for space. More than 40 vaults disappeared with them.

Y3 was honestly a great year. Most members of the site are a delight to work with, and make trying new ways to run the site extremely easy. We had a pretty fair turnout for the End-of-Summer Ball and the Yule Ball (which was run during the summer - or winter - break between Y3 and Y4. We started planning a Dueling Club, Triwizard Tournament, and clubs for members in preparation for Y4.

Y3's exams were posted in November (a month later than planned, since I took a really long time and stuff x_x) and a huge number of people completed them, from all four houses. Prefects were chosen (three per house and two Head Girls, one each from Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw) and the year was ended, to stay in break for more than a month. ^^"" There was a Yule Ball and an Obstacle Course to keep students busy, as well as plans for Y4 being in full-swing on the Wazzup Board.

Y4 started in late January, and the exciting new feature was the clubs. The clubs that opened were the Scavenger Hunt Club, maintained by Telyn Timber of Hufflepuff, and the AH-AA (Adrienne's Hogwarts - Adrienne's Army). Over time, I got busier (as the end of Y4 would be the beginning of my high school education, especially), and decided that this would be the final year.