Interested in having one of your stories featured on the HPFF homepage or in an upcoming Podcast?

This summer, HPFF has launched two new ways to help our authors get some much coveted (and much deserved) publicity for their stories.

The first is the Monthly Staff Challenge. At the start of each month, a member of staff posts a story challenge/prompt, and all interested authors have exactly one month to complete and post their story response. The staff then reads the entries, selecting a winner from each House and one overall winner, and those stories are featured under the “Featured Stories” section of the homepage. Story prompts and requirement can all be found under the Story Challenges section of the forums. Check out this month’s winners on the homepage now!

The second is the Story Seekers Podcast feature. In an effort to increase the amount of fanfiction talk on the HPFF Podcast series, several staff members have embarked on a mission find some of the best underappreciated stories on HPFF to feature and discuss in upcoming episodes. This is a chance for you to nominate your fellow authors whose awesome work is going unnoticed. All the details for this can be found in the Podcast Info/News section of the forums.

We hope you’ll take the time to participate in these new features. We think they are going to be great!!

While the first official day of summer may still be a week away, the summer festivities here at HPFF are already in full swing.

As I’m sure you know, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is set to be released next month. In honor of this, HPFF has deemed Summer 2009 as “A Princely Summer.” Over the next few months, we’ll be hosting a variety of “Princely” activities in which all members are encouraged to join. There are riddles, writing contests, common room parties, a little good-humored staff humiliation and most importantly, the chance to rack up some major House Cup Points. With the queue closed for the next few weeks, now is a great time to head over to the forums and check it all out. If you aren’t already on the forums, remember that it requires a separate registration from the archives and a few mandatory posts in the new member section, so make sure to check out the forum rules and guidelines.

Here’s to a great summer, everyone. I hope it’s full of lots of reading, writing, reviewing and all around Potter FUN!!

Picture this.

You're minding your own business - whether it's doodling in math class or snoozing at work - when BAM! You get attacked by a ginormous plot bunny! You sit up in your chair, heart racing, pupils dilating, fingers itching for your laptop. You're dying to get home and as soon as you do, you make a beeline for the computer. Slowly, your masterpiece comes to life on the screen. You pop over to TDA and request a snazzy banner. You write a ground-breaking summary filled with angst and mystery. You click the "Submit" button, sit back, and sigh with anticipation. You just can't wait to see your story and your beautiful banner at the top of the Recently Added Stories list!

Fast forward 3 days. You've been checking HPFF obsessively and finally, there it is:

"YOU'VE GOT MAIL! There are 1 unread messages in your inbox."

At last! You click on your inbox, expecting to see those two beautiful words (Successful Validation) gazing up at you from the screen, when your heart drops.

You got a rejection.

Sound familiar at all? Of course it does, because we've all been through this.

You rant. You rave. You throw things. You curse whoever came up with the idea of a queue in the first place. But when you calm down, it begins to dawn on you. Did you double-check your warnings? Did you clean up the formatting of your chapter? And heaven forbid ... did you decide not to read the rules?

Getting validated is a very simple process. All it requires is *care* on your part. Below, you will find a helpful checklist put together by the validating team at HPFF. Pay attention to these things and you are well on your way to making it through the queue.

Attention all Hogwarts students!

The House Cup Competition has now drawn to a close and it is time to announce the champions.
But first, we would like to congratulate everyone who took part in the October 2008 Reviewfest! All participants showed great team spirit and many reviews lost during the crash have been restored. Thank you to everyone who devoted time and energy to helping out your fellow authors and rebuilding feedback. Together, all four Houses brought in a combined 8600 reviews - WOW!!!

Several reviewers stood out among the rest. These three will receive special HPFF prizes to reward their reviewing prowess. They are:

momoe of Gryffindor House
dracoslover1 of Hufflepuff House
Labby of Hufflepuff House

Congratulations to you three and a job well done!

During the Reviewfest, we challenged all four Houses to compete against each other to acquire the greatest number of reviews.

REVIEWFEST RESULTS

FIRST PLACE: GRYFFINDOR
SECOND PLACE: RAVENCLAW
THIRD PLACE: HUFFLEPUFF
FOURTH PLACE: SLYTHERIN

Great job to everyone who participated and thank you for helping to restore some of those vanishing reviews!

We would also like to announce the 2008 HPFF House Cup Champions at this time. After completing a series of dangerous and tricky tasks ranging from composing a Sorting Hat song, traversing dark corridors and hidden passageways on a school-wide scavenger hunt, and an intense Quidditch battle in the skies, this House has come out on top.

The winner of the 2008 HPFF House Cup is: GRYFFINDOR HOUSE!!!

Congrats also go to RAVENCLAW HOUSE who pulled into second place, HUFFLEPUFF HOUSE who earned third place, and SLYTHERIN HOUSE covering fourth place.

Thank you to everyone for making this year's House Cup competition an event to remember!

- HPFF Staff

I don't know about you guys, but I'm really excited for the Review-a-Thon! (Which begins tomorrow, October 8th, btw ... sign up SOON!)

For those of you who don't know, it was thought up by several genius members on the forums who brought it to the staffers' attention. Due to the recent server crash and subsequent loss of thousands of reviews, it seemed like the most appropriate way to end the 2008 House Cup Competition with a bang! Because isn't that what Hogwarts all about? Supporting and encouraging others (and trying to get your House to win *cough*), and fostering compassion and understanding for others (and trying to get your House to win *cough*).

The reviewing extravaganza doesn't end until October 26th, so that's almost three whole weeks to get your game face on! I don't know what everyone's plans are, but I'm definitely checking out my Favorites List as a good place to start. Not only will I help my favorite authors regain some feedback, I'll get a chance to re-read some awesome stories AND maybe help nudge my House towards the Cup! The requests threads on the forums would be my next stop - added bonus: you can pick what you want to read based on rating!

I've been reviewing for a long time now (I guess a year and two months counts as long for me) so I guess my advice would be to pace yourselves. Don't go crazy trying to leave 200 reviews in the first day (don't go blind either). You have almost a month, so stretch it out. Start with a goal for each day or week, and go from there.

And I can't stress this enough - DO NOT SPAM. There's a no-tolerance policy in effect for cheaters, who will get disqualified ... no questions asked. It's hurtful and a waste of time and not in the spirit of the competition, which is to help your fellow authors.

Good luck to everyone and I hope you guys will enjoy your reading and racking up the reviews!

Anyone have any reviewing strategies or tips they want to share?

HPFF is stable and (finally!) up and running once again. Unfortunately, some newer accounts, reviews and the like were lost in the process. We retained as much as we possibly could but some things just didn't make it through the ordeal and now its time to get to work solving the individual issues of our loyal, faithful members.

Please read through this thoroughly before starting a thread, sending a trouble ticket, etc

My account is gone
It doesn't recognize my email address
First, check to make sure your account is still there by using the search function rather than just attempted to log in. Reminder: if you are a member and not an author (meaning you have not posted a story at the archive) you cannot use the search function to look for your account. You will have to use the alphabetical list. This includes persons whose first story was awaiting validation at the time of the server crash. If it is not there you will need to re-register for an account. If it is there you are having a password issue and not an account issue, please read below.

A very rare if: if your story is in the archive but your name is not showing attached to, notify the staff by posting here

My password doesn't workFirst, search for your penname at the archive. If your penname is there:, try your current password again. If you have changed your password this summer, try the old password. If that doesn't work, request a new password. If that doesn't work, notify staff by posting here

If your penname is NOT there: you aren't having a password problem, you are having an account problem. Go read the section above.


My favorites count is off
The number of people who “favorited me is off
My review responses are missing
My reviews are missing
The reviews I left are missing
Unfortunately, they are gone. We will be starting a reviewing spree here in the forum in the coming days to help everyone try and get some of their reviews back but, sadly, we can't retrieve the ones that are no longer there.


My Trusted Author Status is Gone
Notify staff by posting here. Although we will attempt to correct this, we will be checking every account prior to moving someone to trusted so if you've broken the rules since receiving your TA status, don't count on getting it back.


My story is missing
My chapter is missing
Check your account area first. If your chapter is showing waiting” that means it’s still sitting in the queue. If your chapter shows rejected”: it was rejected and will need to be resubmitted as usual. If your chapter is not there: You will need to submit it. Unfortunately, if the story or chapter is no longer in your account we can not retrieve it.


My chapters are out of order
I have duplicate chapters showing
Go to your account area. Under your controls, you can delete and rearrange your chapters as needed. A note on this: even if you don't have this problem NOW it may occur as we start validating. If a duplicate chapter happens to appear in your account one day it is likely because we validated your chapter and then the backup occurred and a duplicate of your chapter was submitted to the queue. We can't control that (or check every story to see if it is a duplicate) and will merely go ahead and validate/reject it. If that happens, just simply go to your account and delete the duplicate. There is no need to report it to staff.

As I'm sure most of you gathered, we are having continued issues with the backup. While an original backup took place over the weekend it was out of date (which caused many of you to be missing reviews/favorites, etc.). To try and eliminate those errors, we are attempting to put a newer, more recent back up into play. However, this is taking more time than expecting.

During this we have kept member accounts open. However, this is causing some problems of its own so we are now going to restrict all access to all accounts for the immediate future. This will give us the opportunity to work through kinks and glitches before putting the site back into all of your hands. Hopefully, that will help ease some of the stress of the server.

I know it has been a difficult week and I want to say thank you to all of you who have stepped up and helped out answering questions and the like around the forum. It's been amazingly helpful to us to have you doing that so we can concentrate on getting the site back up and running. Thank you so much and, as always, we'll continue to update you as things progress.