StarWars.com

Founded in November of 1996, StarWars.com is the official website for Star Wars run by Lucas Online, the online entertainment arm of Lucasfilm Ltd. Evolving considerably in its almost ten-year history, the site has undergone frequent redesigns that are often motivated by the current Star Wars movie in production. Its latest iteration began in 2003.

The site is subdivided into a number of specific sections, including areas dedicated to each film, the expanded universe, and a special section that is only accessible to paid members, known as Hyperspace. One popular segment of the site is the Databank.

History
StarWars.com was launched in 1996 to help market the upcoming 1997 release of the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition. It was the first official movie website to post video documentaries in anticipation of a theatrical release, with the multi-part "Anatomy of a Dewback" series. Following the release of the Special Edition Trilogy, StarWars.com focused its attention on Episode I, providing news updates, behind-the-scenes features and the popular web documentary ("webdoc") series, Making Episode I, which was also known as "Lynne's Diaries" as they were often introduced by Lucasfilm's Head of Public Relations, Lynne Hale. StarWars.com became a web destination in 1998, when it first hosted the Episode I teaser trailer, breaking download records and becoming one of a major milestones of Internet events.

After the release of Episode I, StarWars.com diversified its content to include coverage of Expanded Universe and community activities. It adopted its multi-section model in the build-up to Episode II. During Episode II, StarWars.com posted weekly videos hosted by Ahmed Best from the set of production, entitled "on location." It also posted a photo or image hand-picked by George Lucas every week as a "George Lucas Select." It was during this period that StarWars.com supplemented its online covering with a biweekly newsletter, the Homing Beacon.

Right before Episode III started principal photography, StarWars.com introduced a pay-service component to its coverage. For an annual subscription rate of $19.99, subscribers would have access to exclusive coverage, including daily Set Diaries from Australia, a live webcam broadcasting from the set, online chats, and exclusive archival content, such as the deleted Episode II scene, "Jedi Attack on the Control Ship" and classic reprints of the original Bantha Tracks newsletter.

In 2004, with the transfer of the Star Wars Insider license from Paizo Publishing to IDG Entertainment, the Official Fan Club ceased to be a licensed property and returned in-house to Lucasfilm, where it became part of StarWars.com Hyperspace. The online subscriber service was renamed Hyperspace: The Official Star Wars Fan Club. Also that same year, Lucasfilm entered the direct retail business for the first time with the opening of StarWarsShop.com.

Ask the Jedi Council
"Ask the Jedi Council" was a section in the official Star Wars website where selected members of the production crew answered questions raised by fans. The section is now inaccessible and appears to have been removed, while the official site claims it will be restored at some point in the future.

Databank
The StarWars.com Databank is considered the official online Star Wars databank. Its content is divided into Characters, Locations, Species, Creatures, Technology, Vehicles and Starships, and also categorized by Episode appearance. Many Wookiepedia articles were helped with the database. It even has hundreds of EU articles explaining characters that were in the movies and their adventures along with EU planets and technology.

Star Wars Hyperspace
Hyperspace began in 2003 as a pay service on starwars.com, and in 2004 became the official Star Wars fan club and is only located on StarWars.com. It has member-exclusive webstrips, behind-the-scenes features and other exclusive material. By becoming a member of Hyperspace, a subscriber becomes a Fan Club member and receives a subscription to Star Wars Insider magazine -- at least in the U.S. Internationally, where territories are serviced by locally produced magazines, it is possible to subscribe just to the online component of Hyperspace, and not receive the magazine.

DVD-ROM Exclusive Content
Owners of the Star Wars DVDs have access to an exclusive section of the site that provides "Behind the Scenes" commentary for all six films.

News and Other Features
StarWars.com has updated news about many different Star Wars topics like the Expanded Universe, Episode III and Star Wars general. It updates every weekday, around 5 to 6 p.m. Pacific time, as the content team is situatated in San Francisco, California at the Lucasfilm headquarters at the Presidio. Other notable sections include The Clone Wars, StarWarsKids and Community. Its news headlines are distributed via an RSS feed that many fan sites have incorporated into their front page designs, including TheForce.net.

Staff
Currently overseen by Paul Ens, the content development team includes Pablo Hidalgo, Bonnie Burton and Pete Vilmur. The content production team includes Nicole Love, Dennis VonGalle, Christopher Inclenrock, Scott Barrett.