
How the BBC News website has changed over the past 20 years - dberhane
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41890165
======
andy_ppp
How wonderful to see the BBC General Election site from 2010. Me and one other
guy built the whole output because the World Cup was on and all the main staff
were working on that. The other engineer even had to make the results service
work on Ceefax [1]!

We had over a billion hits in 24 hours to the statically published JSON file
that updated the results every 15 seconds and we could even control the client
poll rate from that file just in case.

Over a weekend we built the first version of the BBCs live page amongst other
things. It was terrifying watching constituencies declare for the first time;
about as close to a live performance of web development as you can get.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax)

[2]
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/)
(slightly broken now...)

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cup-of-tea
One thing I've always appreciated about the BBC website is that the old
articles are still in the old style of the time. For example:
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3559050.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3559050.stm)
or
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/574132.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/574132.stm)
(there might be a way to reliably find more examples, I'm not sure).

I'm not sure whether this is by design or if the content was too tightly
coupled to the style to migrate, but I like it. I think in the relevant RFCs
it says that a URL should always point to the same thing, so it's good that
they don't try to update them.

~~~
wldlyinaccurate
I wouldn't say it's by design - more of a fun consequence of the way the BBC's
web platforms have been retired so far. Most of the retired platforms
generated static content (some XML, some HTML) so when the platform needed to
be switched off it was relatively trivial to archive all of the content. In
about 2013 the website was transferred piece by piece to a dynamic platform,
which it (mostly) still runs on.

The current platform is already slated for decommission some time in the next
couple of years and there's still no cohesive plan for how pages on that
platform will be archived. My guess is that they will be rendered on the new
platform(s) indefinitely, since everything is driven by a CMS API now. I think
it's kind of a shame - there's something nice about being able to look back in
time without the pages being distorted through the lens of the wayback
machine.

~~~
vanderZwan
I really hope they will archive statically rendered pages. It matters that you
are able to see old websites in their original form.

EDIT: does anyone know whom we might contact at the BBC to encourage them to
do this when they make the transition?

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dotBen
I was a web producer (front end developer) and then web developer (CMS
template developer) for BBC News online 2000-2004. It was my first job in tech
at 18 and arguably still my fondest time in the industry. I led some of the
redesign from single column to the more modern design we see today.

I'm now startup founder and a VC - v far from the non-profit public service
nature of the BBC.

Happy to AMA if anyone had any questions.

~~~
dotBen
An interesting part about BBC News's tech stack, which was touched on in
another comment here, is that we didn't have the budget to serve dynamic pages
and so everything SPG'd (statically page generated) as we called it so it
could be served statically from the production web servers.

It meant an incredibly novel use of Apple WebObjects - which was set up to
render all of the versions of the story (flavours, I think we called them) via
the WOA and then FTP them to production. We used this system to produce not
only web versions but content for interactive TV output and I believe even
Ceefax at one point.

Another curious fact now: most of the BBC News website was coded in Objective
C in the early 2000's, to much chagrin as it meant us developers having to
learn this 'dead' language when really we wanted to use the Java version of
WebObjects instead. Many of the devs went on to have leading roles in the UK
iPhone development industry when apps were enabled for iPhone given the amount
of experienced we all unknowingly had received in what suddenly became a much-
sought after language.

~~~
mercer
I wish I had a specific question to ask, but honestly I'd love it if you just
told more stories about this period in your life!

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interfixus
Hardwired widths, inaccesibility on small screens etc. were always annoying,
but in many respects, I'm retrograde enough to actually prefer the clunkier
designs and layouts of the paleolithic web-era. No-nonsense, unambiguous,
clearly delineated sections, and a healthy emphasis on content over form.

~~~
ryandrake
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always understood that if you write basic, un-
styled HTML, you get flexible widths and small screen support for free. You
have to deliberately decide to make it worse by hardwiring widths and element
sizes. Is this not true?

~~~
interfixus
Oh, absolutely. And all kinds of horror were perpetrated against html in the
nineties.

My point was that _even so_ , I found - and find - lots to like in the
websites of yore.

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anton_tarasenko
Wayback Machine allows browsing website history by year. Press year, instead
of arrows:

— The New York Times:
[http://web.archive.org/web/19961112181513/http://www.nytimes...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961112181513/http://www.nytimes.com:80/)

— WaPo:
[http://web.archive.org/web/19961220172326/http://www.washing...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961220172326/http://www.washingtonpost.com:80/)

— Financial Times:
[http://web.archive.org/web/19970607125328/http://www.ft.com:...](http://web.archive.org/web/19970607125328/http://www.ft.com:80/)

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ajb
Interesting, although I wish they'd shown the whole of the historical pages.
I'd like to work out when the front page dropped below 50% actual news stories
(as opposed to 'The X that Y', 'Must See' and other buzzfeed type stuff). It's
clear that in 2003 it was still nearly 100% news, but the later ones are
cropped so you can't tell.

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SoulMan
I am surprised how professional the site design looks even in 1997, also with
rich media link like audio and video.

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jv22222
I interviewed to work as a web dev for the bbc back in tye very early 2000’s.
In the interview I said I was better at going away and thinking about things
rather than making decisions off the top of my head. I think that’s why I
didn’t get the job.

As far as I know, it’s the only tech interview I didn’t get offered the job.

Tough crowd!

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that_lurker
And still no https

~~~
DRW_
With a site like BBC News integrating with lots of different internal
services, it can be more difficult than it seems on the face it to enable
HTTPs, but I'm sure it's coming soon, other BBC sites have enabled HTTPs.

~~~
wldlyinaccurate
There's actually not much to stop the rollout of HTTPS on the BBC News site
now. In fact, the major hurdles were overcome nearly a year ago. The final
hurdle is convincing the product and editorial teams that enabling HTTPS is
more important than whatever features they want to build.

~~~
DRW_
Ah - fair enough. I made some assumptions based on some of the hurdles seen by
some of the more recent moves to HTTPs on smaller BBC sites, not of any real
knowledge of the current situation.

(FWIW, your article from Dec 2016 played a part in me joining the BBC recently
as a developer, and I know of at least one other developer currently at the
BBC who also was motivated to apply after your article :))

~~~
wldlyinaccurate
There are hurdles for sure. I guess I'm just publicly venting my frustration
at having HTTPS on one of the world's biggest news websites be under-
prioritised for years and years :)

I'm really glad to hear that btw. I wish I could have stuck around for longer!

