I’ve spent the past 11 days on the isle of Crete, so I had to make sure I wasn’t still in a vacation daze this morning when I noticed that France.fr was available online, after being down for an entire month or so.
After rubbing my eyes for 2 minutes and slamming my head against the wall a couple of times, I looked again, and sure enough there’s a live website when you visit that URL.
The static site boasts numerous features, like a menu at the top of the homepage you can use to navigate your way around, photographs and maps of France as well as weather reports.
On the very top of the page, there’s even a handy time stamp, so you’ll never forget what day it is. If the mouse-over menus in the top navigation confuse you in any way, there’s even a box you can type keywords in and search the site from there.
Soon, the site says, you’ll even be able to create your own personal space, sign up for newsletters, save your favorites and provide feedback. For now, what you – finally – see is what you get, in five different languages no less (including French).
The general response to the news of the reemergence of France.fr on Twitter was quite amusing, by the way. One user expressed it thusly: “France.fr is available again, one month after its initial launch. We preferred the version of the site we got when it was down.”
All kidding aside, we’re glad the website is up so we can finally leave the subject alone, albeit regretfully. Just do us one favor and don’t go visiting the site en masse straight away – give it at least a full day of uptime, s’il vous plaît.