As the above should make amply clear, I have zero interest in consuming anything Harry Potter-related. The growing buzz around the upcoming TV show has made me somewhat nostalgic for my early days on the Internet, though, so I’d like to take a moment to reflect back on that time and how it directly contributed to my interest in web design.
I uploaded my first webpage to GeoCities back in the late 90s; it was for an online Hogwarts role playing game, where I had signed up for the role of “Astronomy Professor.” I was twelve years old. The teenage “Headmistress” who ran the RPG required all “Professors” to design and upload their own class page with lessons for students to take, which she linked to from the RPG’s main page.
I had no idea how to write HTML on my own steam back then (again, I was twelve), so I used Microsoft FrontPage to put my “classroom” together. I distinctly remember that the page’s background looked something like this, and that I used that exact same cyan colour for my font (which was Comic Sans, naturally). My lessons were loosely paraphrased from various astronomy-related entries on Microsoft Encarta ‘95. At the bottom of the page, I plonked a gif of a rotating telescope and an “Under Construction” gif (the latter of which I assumed was a necessity, because every GeoCities page had one).
I can still remember how excited I was to email my link to the Headmistress, and how proud I was to see my classroom listed amongst all the others. I wasn’t content, though, with just being some “Astronomy Professor” on someone else’s Harry Potter website; I wanted to be the Headmistress of my own Hogwarts RPG.
By the time I was sixteen, I’d achieved that goal – on a custom domain name and all. I was still using FrontPage at that time for table positioning (remember how we used tables for everything layout-related during the early 2000s?), but I’d become more comfortable with writing and editing the rest of my HTML on my own.
My crowning achievement was learning enough about MySQL and phpMyAdmin to leave ProBoards and get a phpBB forum up and running for the other teens who played my RPG. Not too shabby for a self-taught kid!
I wasn’t the only Millennial HP fan who fell in love with building websites at a young age, of course. There were hundreds, possibly even thousands of nerdy teens out there who, just like me, cut their webweaving teeth on Harry Potter fansites and RPGs.
MuggleNet
The biggest Harry Potter website that immediately jumps to mind is MuggleNet. It was at one time the go-to place on the web for Harry Potter news, rumours, and discussions. The website still exists today, and is unfortunately a rather boring, generic-looking site with zero identity. Back in the day, though … it was such a joy to browse!
MuggleNet, as I remember it.
Emerson, the guy who originally ran MuggleNet, was just fifteen at what was arguably the height of the site’s popularity. Marc, only twelve, bragged on the staff page: “I know lots of HTML,and I’m really good at making graphics and stuff!” There was even a nine-year-old on the team who professed to be “skilled in programming, graphic design, sword duels, and trash-talking during sword duels.”
Again, I need to emphasize that this was the biggest Harry Potter fansite on the Internet at the time, and it was designed, written, and maintained by a team that wasn’t legally old enough to drive.
Veritaserum
Another HP fansite I vividly remember was Veritaserum. It was never as big as MuggleNet, but it was affiliated with MuggleNet (in case you’ve forgotten or weren’t using the Internet back then, a website’s “affiliates” list was kind of like a blogroll).
A design that was quite obviously inspired by MuggleNet.
With the exception of one lone staff member in her thirties, Veritaserum was managed entirely by teenagers aged 14-19. According to this snapshot, they were averaging “around 10,000 daily visitors and 80,000 page views” back then.
Hogwarts Extreme
Better known as HEX, Hogwarts Extreme was one of the earliest popular Harry Potter RPGs I can remember (besides that aforementioned GeoCities site I joined in the late 90s).
That poll...
Every staff member was a teenager, the ramifications of which become immediately apparent when you read through the news archive, haha:
“I know I have been inactive lately, and that is because of school. It is getting really hard, and I can’t risk any grades here, so in hopes of one day returning to this site. I also have a job now, so times will be changing.”
I had to make many apologies like that to my own members around final exams…
Looking back at these websites and thinking about my own reminds me how much fun we had on the early Internet, and how much we learned from one another – all without any (or barely any) parental supervision.1 We built massively popular and successful communities of our own accord, simply because it was something enjoyable and interesting to do.
It was a pretty special time to be a teenager, and I’m so glad we were part of it. Had we not been part of it, so many subsequent websites would have never been built. I know this one certainly wouldn’t have been.
I’ll leave you with this Reddit exchange:
All is not lost, though! Some of us still remember HTML!
Footnotes
-
And when our parents did become involved, it was mainly just to pay the hosting bills. 😂 ↩