Namepros has a thing for April Fool’s Day

Each year, many tech companies and websites do something special for April Fools’ Day, and Google has done some of the best. They spend weeks and sometimes months preparing elaborate April Fools’ Day jokes, pranks, and/or features – all in good fun. NamePros has been participating each year for the past four years to bring a small piece of this to the domain industry, and we’re looking forward to continuing this tradition for years to come.

Although these projects involve investing company resources to create fun projects that will only last for a single day, we think it’s worth it since a lot of visitors really enjoy it and have fun with it. The way we do it is we have a mini-hackathon the day before, brainstorm ideas, build some of them, and then pick our favorite to share with everyone on April 1st each year. It’s become an exciting annual staple of ours, and we’d love to share it with more people and possibly inspire others to join the fun in the future.

In the spirit of having a little April Fools’ Day fun and playing lighthearted pranks each year, we often utilize the fact that a lot of visitors use the logo of a website to navigate to its home page. With that in mind, many of our pranks revolve around our logo. That tends to lead to the best reaction when users forget it’s April Fools’ Day and they don’t expect what happens next.

Here’s a little history of our April Fools’ Day fun:

2015 – Upside down

• Prank: The logo was turned upside down for the day, and when users clicked on the logo, the entire website flipped upside down with a message on how to flip it back upright.
• Discussion thread

2016 – Anyone there?

• Prank: Small chat bubbles appeared as if they were coming out of the “Chat” navbar with messages saying things like, “Hey! Anyone there?” and “I think I’m trapped.” Once “=^.^=” was clicked within the chatroom, Mr. Rabbit was freed.
• Discussion thread
• Today: The prank was such a hit that we transitioned it into an Easter Egg of the Domain Chatroom that can be activated by clicking “=^.^=” under the “Chat” navbar, reading the messages, and then clicking on “=^.^=” one final time.

2017 – Confetti party

• Fun: A bunny peeked out from the side of the page near our logo, and once the bunny was clicked, confetti fell all over the page with an image of Mr. Rabbit in the middle of the page – bunny party!
• Discussion thread
• Archive: Visit to experience firsthand.

2018 – On the move

• Prank: When a visitor moved their cursor over our logo (usually with the intention of navigating to the home page), the logo moved to a random position on their screen. After a few attempts to hover over the logo, an “April Fools!” message appeared and the logo returned to its original position where it could be used normally.
• Discussion thread
• Archive: Visit to experience firsthand.

As you’ll notice, bunnies are sort of an ongoing theme of ours because our CTO had a pet bunny named Snowflake, which unfortunately passed away in January 2018. However, Snowflake will live on forever on NamePros! 🐰

What are some of the best April Fools pranks you’ve seen by websites?

Share in the comments.