HPANA

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator, or HPANA as it is better known, is a Harry Potter fansite created in 2002 to monitor news about J. K. Rowling's series on the Internet. It was one of the first such sites to employ RSS^{[citation needed]}, a technology that automatically notifies readers of updates and allows content to be accessed in a variety of ways.

While the site originally aggregated news articles from various online sources, it has become a source itself through which moviemaker Warner Bros., publisher Scholastic, Inc., videogame company Electronic Arts and other companies provide updates, pictures and videos about their respective Harry Potter properties. For instance, Warner Bros. gave HPANA an exclusive preview of the official HarryPotter.com site before its release, which incorporated images and themes in advance of the fourth film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.^[1]

Rowling, in giving HPANA her "Fan Site Award" in December 2004, said it was the first Harry Potter fan site she ever visited.^[2] "A fantastically user-friendly fansite," Rowling remarked, "faster off the mark with Harry Potter news than any other site I know, and with all kinds of brilliantly inventive touches."

Beyond its core mission of providing news, the site features an active forum community numbering in the tens of thousands.

Tony Goldmark performing at Spellbound! 2005

HP Fan Trips aboard the "Hogwarts Express"

The site began working with a travel company in 2003 to offer tours of the United Kingdom with a Harry Potter focus, dubbed HP Fan Trips. Over 100 people joined its initial trip in 2004, and more than 200 in 2005. A staple of these trips is a ride on steam locomotive #5972 Olton Hall, the very train used in the Harry Potter films as the Hogwarts Express. The group has been mentioned in the New York Times,^[3] Frommers,^[4] Fodor's^[5] and CNN.^[6]

In July 2005, HPANA and MuggleNet along with [Wizarding World Press] held Spellbound! 2005, an event to celebrate the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in Mt. Prospect, Illinois.^[7] More than 10,000 people played games and watched live stage performances] while they waited for the midnight book debut. The free event attracted international press coverage, including radio interviews as far away as Australia.^{[citation needed]}

HPANA is operated by a volunteer staff of adults and teenagers who monitor and post news items, attend events in order to cover them for the site, and moderate the forums. It is donation- and advertiser-supported and runs on three physical servers in a Michigan datacenter.