'POTTER' WEAVES SPELL ON THE NET.

Byline: Greg Hernandez Staff Writer

``Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'' isn't just red-hot at the nation's box offices - the official Web site dedicated to the 11-year-old boy wizard and his friends is also burning up the Internet.

The site, HarryPotter.com, has been averaging 8.5 million hits per day domestically with an additional 2 million daily hits internationally, Warner Bros. officials said Tuesday.

``This is completely off the charts,'' said Jim Noonan, senior vice president and general manager of Warner Bros. Online. ``We've never had anything else even close. We believe this is the most popular movie Web site ever.''

The Web site was launched in February and had attracted a total of about 25 million visitors, averaging about 2 million visitors a week. Those numbers were quickly dwarfed after the film's Nov. 16 debut in the United States and its London premiere earlier in the month.

``It's got a very passionate community of people who are huge, huge fans of the books,'' Noonan said. ``They want to chat about every little nuance of the story.''

The movie, based on the popular book by British author J.K. Rowling, has been setting numerous domestic box office records including a record $90.2 million in ticket sales during its first three days of release. As of Monday, it had earned $189.5 million and seems virtually certain to cross the $200 million mark before the weekend.

Activity in the HarryPotter.com's chat rooms has also spiked to unprecedented levels in recent weeks, so much so that Santa Monica-based PeopleLink, which manages the site's chat rooms for Warner Bros., has had to more than triple the usual number of staff members who monitor content on a site to at least a half-dozen for the ``Potter'' site. Most sites normally have one or two people monitoring on a part-time basis.

``These kinds of numbers are unheard of,'' said Caprice Young, managing director of PeopleLink. ``It has just gone through the roof with kids talking about the movie. We're seeing a lot of speculation right now about how good the sequels are going to be.''

The heaviest traffic comes between the hours of 3 p.m. and 1 a.m., which is when the monitoring is beefed up considerably.

``Warner Bros. takes extra care to make sure that people are kept safe if they are on the site,'' said Young, whose company also monitors Web sites for MTV and Comedy Central, among others. ``You are talking about kids 9, 10 and 11 years old and you want to make sure they are safe from Internet predators.''

In addition to the chat rooms, the Web site gives fans access to movie trailers, newsletters, Harry Potter e-cards, the Magical Creature Maker and interactive experiences at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It also featured a live Webcast of the film's world premiere in London.

Noonan said Warner Bros. wants to keep content of the Web site fresh in anticipation of a sequel to the first film, ``Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.'' The second movie began filming in Great Britain earlier this month and will be released a year from now. In between, the DVD version of the first film will hit stores.

``In the meantime, we will try and continue to maintain a level of momentum on this site throughout the year,'' he said.