The official Harry Potter website Pottermore finally opened up to the public this morning. It happened without warning, announced with a brief announcement on its blog. However, new users might be in for a wait, it said:
We're expecting to be really busy to start with and plan to activate new registrations in a steady stream. This means that you may not get access to Pottermore immediately after you sign up but we will get you exploring the site as quickly possible.
The site's insider updates blog confirms this, writing at 1200 BST:
"[W]e’ve had an incredible number of people sign up to Pottermore.com over the past few hours. To ensure everyone exploring Pottermore.com has the best experience possible, we are currently limiting the number of users who can sign in to the site. We’ll be steadily increasing this limit throughout the day, so more and more people will be able sign in at once."
The site, which was previously only open to selected beta testers, contains exclusive Potter-related content, including behind-the-scenes information about the books from J.K. Rowling, as well as interactive games that allocate house points and spells to its users, whose online adventure begins with being sorted by the Sorting Hat into one of the four Hogwarts houses. Click here to read a review of the site written by a user during its closed testing phase.
The site is free, but Pottermore users can also buy e-book editions of the Harry Potter books from within the site, which is available in English, German, Spanish, Italian and French.
The bonus online content is currently limited only to the first Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (known in the UK as "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"), with no release dates yet announced for the following books in the series.
It's been a busy week for J.K. Rowling, with her own website launched on the same day as the announcement of details about her first book for adults.
Will you be signing up? Have you signed up already? What do you think?