Various posts have said from devs and the such that the website and forum going live would be a very short precursor to the beta.
It's a hybrid closed/open beta. It's open in the sense that anyone can get in, it's closed in the sense that there will be a character wipe before the actual open beta starts and the game officially launches. The first beta won't be hyped much and will focus mostly on translation, finding spelling/grammer errors and the such. Open beta will be hyped (so they say) and will be the usual stress tests and the like.