The overall reaction to the

The overall reaction to the new and improved Official Harry Potter Web site from readers, other fan sites and discussions on Web boards has been quite subdued. The site, while displaying excellent graphical arts and sounds, is completely lacking in any new content or interactivity. The Daily Prophet section contains old news from last year and is missing the one picture from the set it had displayed earlier this year. The only thing the Hogwarts section has is a sorting hat questionnaire even though the previous site claimed you could “enroll” in Hogwarts. The Bertie Botts’ section has a cute flash animation that let’s you put your mouse over each bean to see what they are while Flourish & Blotts contains downloadable “colouring pages” and book marks and The Owl Post let’s you send electronic owl messages and howlers to your friends.

Their message board system is extremely difficult to use and is tied into AOL – a result of the Time Warner/AOL merger. It is very difficult to read threads, and respond as you cannot see more than 10 or so messages on a screen at once.

It’s the content, stupid! I’ve seen about 5 or 6 fan sites that have much more interesting content be it games, postcards, news or even animation. I think this is one case with content and information takes precedence over flashiness – let’s hope this isn’t how the site will stay.