Well, my first year lions, did you log onto HOL this morning and have a mini heart-attack because the Message of Doom was posted instead of the Entrance Hall? 
For those of you who haven't yet it looks like this: 

Oh noes! Yep. Older students know this sign very well. It must be sign-up season after all. It's a miracle we made it this far through August.... you're all thinking. However, the new students are freaking out. Where did HOL go?? Oh no! Why isn't it working? *Shakes computer*

So I thought I'd come here and do a little bit of explaining. 
I'll start with this is perfectly normal. No, really. It happens this time every year. And you know how you're freaking out? We freaked out the same way our first years at HOL too. But you get used to it. And everything will be okay. :) 
For those of you wondering what this means (or why it happens), it's pretty easy to explain. Just look at the sign above! "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded." 
Bandwidth=the amount of page views our site's allowed to have in one month. 
Due to sign-ups and a lot of new students, we always crash this time of the month. ALWAYS. It's because we're refreshing the page a million times because we're waiting for a prefect to message us back. Or we want to see if our Art Department project has been accepted. No matter what the reason, we tend to visit HOL a lot more than normal in this month. 
So yes, I'm getting at HOL's going to be down. For the rest of the month.  Until September 1st.

But..... I have good news to go with that bad! Professor Bynny, knowing this was going to happen, went through several days ago and listed all the class links on Gryff. (<-- clicky here for the thread) So now you can continue to do your homework early and see announcements for your class without HOL! Can I get a round of applause for Miette being amazing like that? 
While HOL is down, this would be a GREAT time to get to know Gryffindor better! We're going to start getting things rolling for the semester soon. There is a brand new RPG forum, there are clubs to join, and there are many topics to choose to talk about. Have you signed up yet? Find us here! gryff.net/CR