From Domain Names to Website Features, How ‘The Office’ Brought WUPHF.com To Life

By Nicole Gallucci @nicolemichele5
Published Oct. 19, 2022, 9:30 a.m. ET

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Do you WUPHF? Whenever. Wherever.

On the October 19 episode of Office Ladies, Stitcher’s The Office rewatch podcast, hosts Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey chatted all about the Season 7 episode, “WUPHF.com,” and what it took (and cost) the show to create Ryan’s fictional business venture. For those who need a refresher, WUPHF.com — pronounced “woof,” and actually invented by Kelly Kapoor — is like the social media service from hell. With WUPHF, rather than simply getting a text or call, the service sends a messaging blast to your home phone, cell phone, email, Facebook, Twitter, and home screen all at the same time. WUPHF even sends an alert to your printer. An ambitious nightmare!

During the episode, Michael tries to get people to invest in the venture, but Ryan ultimately sells his domain to Washington University Public Health Fund, who’s only interested in buying it because WUPHF stands for Washington University Public Health Fund. While Ryan’s dream for WUPHF technically died, the fictional invention lives on through fans as one of the most memorable Office references.

Wondering who legally owns the rights to WUPHF? If anyone’s able to make money off of the invention? And how much effort and money went into creating WUPHF.com for the show? Fischer and Kinsey have answers.

“Here’s what I was able to find out: I believe [WUPHF] is owned by the whole network. It is not the property of the writer who came up with it. It is the intellectual property of NBCUniversal,” Fischer explained. “Here’s the other thing I learned. Whenever any website is mentioned on a television show, it has to be fictitious. It cannot be a real dot com. So way back on ‘Nepotism,’ when this idea first came up, they had to go through the process of purchasing the domain names WUPHF.com, WUPHF.net, and WUPHF.org. They did it through GoDaddy, and the whole thing cost under $100. Randy [Cordray, line producer] said that we were required to register the names for two years. There used to actually be a WUPHF website. Like, they they had it go live.”

“Yes! I reached out to Joya Balfour, who was working at NBC.com at this time, and she shared with me some of the digital media they built for this episode. First of all, she thought it was really fun that Ryan set up a beta site first where he just gathered information, and that would have been set up after ‘Nepotism,'” Kinsey shared. “And the idea was that Ryan was collecting as much data as he could on everyone before launching his official website a few months later.”

Kinsey explained that through the website you could also build your own WUPHF dog avatar. “So here are your choices: You can be a pit bull, a terrier, or a golden retriever. Your fur color can be black, brown, white, or tan. Your tail length can be long, medium, or short. Your ear style can be floppy or pointy. And the collar type can be leather or nylon.”

According to Balfour, fans of The Office actually visited WUPHF’s website and tried to sign themselves up, but NBC allegedly didn’t save any of the data “because it was too much for the NBC privacy team to deal with.” Kinsey explained that when people entered their personal information they just got the WUPHF sound and it vanished.

“On the website, it’s got several different features. When you click on them, they make noise — like the shop button, the bio button. They’re all different forms of Ryan thanking you and trying to sound cool. I’m sorry. Ry. Ry thanking you,” Kinsey added. “Joya went on to share that Ryan Howard also had a Twitter account that they created, along with Kelly Kapoor, and Erin Hannon. And the three of them interacted for years…All of these Twitter accounts were written by The Office writing staff, and the characters had full blown conversations between 2009 and 2012. Ryan, of course, tweeted about WUPHF.com.”

Per The Office fansite, OfficeTally.com, here are The Office‘s old character Twitter pages, which were run by the writing staff:

Be sure to listen to the full episode of Office Ladies to hear more behind-the-scenes stories about “WUPHF.com.”