Renovating the Castle

[Prof. Amy Lupin]

Hi everyone,

As we’re nearing the initial launch of HOL 5.0, we’ve put together a more detailed outline of what can be expected.

All HOL accounts will be transferred along with the respective passwords, email addresses and HOL IDs. With regards to your HOL Profile, your About Me section will stay, as will your ‘How I Got into Harry Potter’ story. Your Friends list will remain and you’ll get to keep your pets. Records of your points, awards, quills and classes (ones that you’ve taken as well as taught) will also transfer. You’ll get to keep your beans too (Gringotts will be under construction but all your beans will be made available to you, including any interest accrued at the time of the transfer).

We will be keeping information about your treasures (plants, potion ingredients, silver/gold quills, etc.), wizard card collection and Greenhouse plants, but will only be utilising this in a later update.

We will, however, be discontinuing the Owlery and Discussion Boards. Your Personal Trading Card will not transfer as we are working on revamping this (but everyone will have the opportunity to submit a new Trading Card at a later stage). Logs and messages will not be kept, as we’ll be adopting a new system for both of these. Please be sure to back up any data that will not be transferred and that you might still need.

With the redesign, we’ve made every effort to optimise the user experience (UX) and make the user interface more intuitive. This includes exploring ways to make the website more accessible. The sign up process has been made easier for newcomers. The login process has been made more straightforward too, as you can choose to use your email address or your HOL name to log in. We’ve introduced a new notification system (similar to logs) that you can access from anywhere on the main website. Another new feature is group messaging. You’ll also be able to view your conversation history with a person/group, as we’ve introduced a thread view. We’ve integrated and streamlined the Contacts List and Member Search with the Marauder’s Map, making it easier to find and contact HOL members.

We’ve streamlined class management. Teachers will more easily be able to tell at a glance whether there are any pending memberships for their classes. Instead of having separate pages related to one’s classroom, we’ve consolidated all this into a single modal with show/hide options. We’ve also made it possible to filter the class list based on whether classes are open for sign-up and/or whether they follow accessibility guidelines.

We’ve made bulk points submissions more seamless. When you select your Class under Class Points, a list of all students in your class will load and you’ll be able to input their points (instead of manually having to type/copy each person’s HOL ID). We’ve also made bulk submission for General Points possible.

Your security is important to us, so we’ve taken steps to get SSL certification, which allows you to browse HOL more securely.

The redesign does not stop with the release of HOL 5. We’ll be working tirelessly to revamp Hogsmeade, the Art, Library and Quidditch Departments, the Staff Room, and more. With each new version of HOL 5 (ie. HOL 5.0.1, 5.0.2, etc.), we’ll be making new sections and features live.

Should you have any questions, please post them in this thread.

[Prof. Amy Lupin]

We are pleased to announce that the launch of the new HOL website will happen on 31 July. With this date being the shared birthday of Harry Potter and JK Rowling, we thought this would be a great way to celebrate.

During that day there will be times where the website and/or forum will be temporarily unavailable (the same will be true when we roll out new features further down the line). The website in particular will take a while, as we’ll be transferring the entire HOL database across (and the website needs to be offline during this process). We also need to make absolutely sure everything is working as it should and none of the staircases are leading to bottomless chasms. This means your patience and understanding is essential while we tackle all that: we don’t intend to keep you waiting any longer than is strictly necessary but it is a mammoth task that needs to be done well.

As mentioned in the previous post, logs and messages on the main website will not be kept, so please make sure you copy them elsewhere should you wish to keep a record of them. The same also goes for blog posts and accompanying comments.

We look forward to introducing you to the castle’s new look and layout soon!