"It all starts with your registration. You fill out some information to begin, and the next page will tell you if you are indeed magical. It will then let you choose from 5 different usernames. They don’t allow you to make up your own username for child safety reasons. You then get sorted into your house by some dirty old hat. There is a large pool of questions that Rowling, herself, wrote, that will determine your house. Once you are sorted into either Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or Slytherin, you will get a good page or two of brand new information about the history of your house.
Your homepage branches out into the seven books and includes décor befitting of your house. When you begin a book, it shows each chapter as a dot on that branch. While you are reading the book, there are interactive illustrations and animations that go along with the story. Each illustration was painstakingly designed directly from the books with every detail ever mentioned in them. They then had to be approved by Rowling and touched up until they were just how she had imagined them.
As you read, you “discover” new content. We got a sneak-peek at the history of Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. The page that we saw explained how they were named, and also how they met and fell in love, etc. We also saw a bit of background on Professor McGonagall, which involved a somewhat tragic childhood and a muggle…
Going through the books in this way, you can also turn on lights, collect items and objects, and you also have money. You have a virtual bank account in Gringotts. You need this money because you will need to buy all of your schoolbooks and supplies from Diagon Alley. You can buy your own pet to take to school, but the first thing to get is of course, your wand. In Ollivander’s, you will be chosen by one of a possible 33,000 different wand combinations, after all, “the wand chooses the wizard.”
You then arrive at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry. In your menu you will find your Favorites, Friends, Illustrations, Spells, Potions and Trunk. Your house common room is a sort of chat room, and also has your points for wizard dueling among a few other things. The Great Hall is nearly the same as the common rooms, but it also includes all of the house points and updates from everyone. While you can invite friends to share this experience with you, POTTERMORE is not trying to be [the censored social site], and I don’t think it will ever be near as obnoxious.
For the first time, you will be able to purchase e-books and the digital audio book versions of the series. It looks like the e-books are styled after the new Bloomsbury Signature collection of Harry Potter.
There will be no fan-fiction on this site.
“It is not an encyclopedia, although much of the content is encyclopedic in nature,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.. It will be launched in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish, with Japanese soon to come. It will begin a beta phase on July 31st to a lucky one million, and the official launch will be in October. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone will be the only book available in October, with Chamber of Secrets to come early 2012. You can enter your email on
www.pottermore.com to receive updates and learn how to qualify for beta testing.
J.K. Rowling wants the readers to know that she will be updating and contributing to her newest baby, POTTERMORE, for as long as she has breath, more or less. Most importantly, POTTERMORE will be FREE forever."
