reported by Dawn L. Hall, FictionFanatic.com

The Leaky Cauldron, www.leakynews.com, a top destination for Harry Potter fans worldwide, has become the first fan site to ever win a Webby Award. Today it was named the Best Celebrity/Fan Web site of 2006 in the annual People?s Voice voting. People?s Voice Winners will be honored at The Tenth Annual Webby Awards in New York City on June 12th.

In a category packed with official sites for known celebrities including Prince and the Grateful Dead, an unofficial, enthusiasm- and volunteer-driven Harry Potter fan site has become the people?s choice.

?The best part about this honor is that it comes from our readers, from our community. Leaky has always been about celebrating this magical book series with a faction of loving, enthusiastic and warm-spirited fans,? said Melissa Anelli, the site?s Webmistress. ?It has never been anyone?s ?day job? to create or maintain this site, and we?ve never had much more than a shoestring budget on which to do it. To receive this kind of recognition, among such heavyweights, is overwhelming.?

LeakyNews.com has been honored by J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, with her coveted Fan Site Award; she has also publicly called the site, ?my favorite fan site, and granted it a rare interview on the publication of the sixth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The site?s current design was conceptualized and designed by Creative Director John Noe and put into functional practice by Head Programmer Nick Poulden. The site uses AJAX techniques (incorporating XHTML and CSS) to organize hundreds of categories of news and make its content attractive, easy to load, and functional. It runs on several servers, with a CentOS Linux/Lighttpd back end, and using PHP 5.1, MySQL 5, and Movable Type for data entry and retrieval. It has a mobile site and a text-only page in which to maximize accessibility for users.

Hailed as the ?online Oscars? by Time Magazine, The Webby Awards are determined by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, a global organization with a membership that includes musician David Bowie, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, The Body Shop president Anita Roddick, ?Simpsons? creator Matt Groening, Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser, and fashion designer Max Azria.

?The Webby Awards honors the outstanding web sites that are setting the standards for the internet,? said Tiffany Shlain, founder and ambassador of The Webby Awards. ?LeakyNews.com?s Webby Award nomination is a testament to the skill, ingenuity, and vision of its creators.?

The Tenth Annual Webby Awards received a record number of entries from over 40 countries and all 50 states.