“Frogans”- it’s a kind of…
- …cool mini-site that comes in all kinds of neat shapes;
- …cool mini-site that you can make in all kinds of neat shapes;
- …Internet addressing for cool mini-sites;
- …free software for browsing cool mini-sites on you computer, phone or tablet.
For online content creators, it’s an opportunity to publish engaging interactive content in a simple format, without having to worry about how it’s going to look on different devices.
End-users browse Frogans sites using Frogans Player, a free, multi-platform software for computers and touchscreen devices. Once Frogans Player is installed, a user has access to every Frogans site on the Internet.
Frogans addresses
Frogans addresses allow Frogans sites to be browsed on the Internet. Frogans addresses are composed of two segments, with an asterisk (*) between them. They look like this:
Network-name*Site-name
“Network-name” refers to a superset of Frogans addresses that you can register. “Site-name” is the name of any individual site in the network. In a sense, a network-name is like a top-level domain (TLD), whereas a site-name is like a domain name. If you register a network-name, like “Hoopla,” then you will be the holder of all site-names registered in the “Hoopla” network, for instance,
Hoopla*Guitars
Hoopla*Dogs-n-Cats
Hoopla*breakfastthismorning
Frogans addresses are registered in the Frogans Core Registry (FCR). To register a Frogans network and/or a Frogans address (i.e., a site-name in a Frogans network), you have to first set up an account as an FCR Account Administrator, or register through someone who already has done this. At any rate, it is free and simple to set up an account.
Note on pricing:
You can register a Frogans site-name in a “Public Frogans Network” at the FCR for 6€. In a Public Frogans Network, the network-name is “frogans” (or any of its none trancriptions, like 福更斯, фроганс or ฟรอกแกนส์). So you might register an address like “frogans*cat” or “福更斯*谢谢” if it’s not already taken.
The FCR fee for registering a Frogans network is 1,500€. With a Frogans network registration, you choose your own network-name. Yearly renewals are also 1,500€. Your price might vary if you pass through an intermediary. That looks pretty costly, but you have to figure that each Network-name is totally unique, like a TLD (which is exponentially more expensive to create an run, by the way).
Individual Site-name registration and yearly renewal fees are both 6€ at the FCR.
Frogans Player
Frogans Player is an application destined for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux computers and for Windows Phone, iOS and Android mobile devices. It’s the only software that browses Frogans sites. For the moment, there is only an alpha version available so that authors/developers can test Frogans sites locally.
Check out this post about installing and using the Frogans Player alpha for developers.