91Èȱ¬ Online's top level directories
Post categories: accountability
| 12:59 UK time, Monday, 29 March 2010
The thrust of our recent strategy submission to the Trust on 91Èȱ¬ Online is that we need to do fewer things better. We know that the parts of 91Èȱ¬ Online that our users really value are significant, coherent, regularly updated and provide a great marriage of content and technology. Products like , C91Èȱ¬ and iPlayer all have these characteristics; we want much more of the site to have them in future.
A symptom of our previous, less focussed, approach is the number of top level directories - we have on 91Èȱ¬ Online, some 400 (this does not include the many re-directs we set up to make it easy to promote sites in our broadcasts). A number of people have asked us to publish the list and anyone who is interested can access it at the end of the extended entry of this post or as a .txt file here.
I know some have questioned the importance of this number, among them . However, tackling the symptom of a problem does provide a real incentive to change, and in meeting the tld challenge we are reviewing the entire site from top to bottom. As a result, we willl be making some tough decisions about what we want to commit to in future, and what not.
The review will, of course, go beyond top level directories and cover all parts of 91Èȱ¬ Online. We'll look at every major section of the site and ask three questions: does it meet our public purposes; does it fit one of the 91Èȱ¬'s five editorial priorities; how does it perform in terms of reach, quality, impact and value for money? The Trust is currently consulting on the proposed strategy for the 91Èȱ¬, which includes proposals about how 91Èȱ¬ Online should develop in the future. Once the Trust has set the overall strategy for the 91Èȱ¬ we will begin to make major changes to 91Èȱ¬ Online in line with this.
Then there is the question of what to do with sites to which we no longer wish to commit resources. For some time now we have been mothballing older sites like bbc.co.uk/testthenation so that users understand that we are not keeping them up to date. That is fine for now, but the user experience on these sites will inevitably degrade over time, especially as we upgrade the infrastructure which powers 91Èȱ¬ Online - due over the course of the next year. So for sites that we don't want to modernise or simply delete, there is a question about the best way to archive them for future generations and we are looking at the options now. If anyone has a solution to this, we'd be pleased to hear from them.
Erik Huggers is Director, 91Èȱ¬ Future Media & Technology.
91Èȱ¬ Online's top level directories (re-directs have not been included):
/ahistoryoftheworld/explorerflash/
Comment number 1.
At 29th Mar 2010, Mo McRoberts wrote:You probably want to remove from that list…
A lot of those directories relate to specific programmes. Redirects into would make a lot of sense for those.
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Comment number 2.
At 29th Mar 2010, Jon Jacob wrote:Please ensure that /journalism remains in place. Anyone hitting the delete button erroneously or deliberately will have my mother to deal with.
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Comment number 3.
At 29th Mar 2010, Nick P wrote:RE; archiving/maintenance of older pages....Couldn't you use the Internet Archive/Way Back Machine ( to archive your old pages and for a short while on those sites you want to remove, just redirect visitors there, via a suitable information page?
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Comment number 4.
At 29th Mar 2010, peterdragon wrote:Don't forget /ukchina/simp, /zhongwen/simp, /zhongwen/trad.
Here's a more compact and stylish set of TLDs for /programmes:
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Comment number 5.
At 29th Mar 2010, Paul Rutter wrote:I just had to look at the /zombies directory!
I must have missed that documentary.
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Comment number 6.
At 29th Mar 2010, andrewdotcom wrote:It would be great if you could link to the original shows in iPlayer.
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Comment number 7.
At 29th Mar 2010, Ross wrote:There are a number of others that live on the news.bbc.co.uk domain, such as the following:
/cbbcnews
/democracylive
/local
/newsbeat
/onthisday
/sport
+ more.
The 91Èȱ¬ News Website has lived under since launch, but we have always used www.bbc.co.uk/news as the promotional URL.
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Comment number 8.
At 29th Mar 2010, dukeofearl wrote:It must be a nightmare with big sites like the 91Èȱ¬ deciding what to do with old pages. I remember poking around the site a few years ago and still finding a page hierarchy from a general election during the very early days of the 91Èȱ¬ web site - simple hand written HTML etc!
Surely, though, it's possible to come up with a defined standard for some form of shell or header that would show an old page from the modern era (if that's not an oxymoron!) to be in an "archive" condition. The problem then is what to do with all the external links which might no longer exist either.
Is it not possible to use a 91Èȱ¬ web crawler (a la Google) to keep an eye on these links and substitute a dead link placeholder when they disappear?
That would seem to take care of most things...
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Comment number 9.
At 29th Mar 2010, Briantist wrote:What's the problem with having an archive.bbc.co.uk/ server where old sites can go when they die?
This would be a very clear signal that the site is no longer active, without the need to remove a very, very useful archive.
Would make redirects very simple.
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Comment number 10.
At 29th Mar 2010, KizzyKazaer wrote:As someone who doesn't always understand the jargon, I'd like to seek some clarification as to one of the 'top level directories' listed above - the Ouch! site. Does this mean the messageboard is closing as well?
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Comment number 11.
At 29th Mar 2010, Ed Lyons wrote:KizzyKazaer: No, this is just a complete list of all the sites that are www.bbc.co.uk/something and I think provides an idea of the scope of what the 91Èȱ¬ is involved in. As far as I'm aware, nothing has been decided about what's not of 'public value', but you can be pretty sure Ouch! is safe. It caters to an important and commercially unrepresented minority - most likely one the rest of the media industry has little interest in providing content for.
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Comment number 12.
At 29th Mar 2010, Seurat wrote:Ah, good old /dannywallace/. Now there was a waste of taxpayer's money that the Daily Mail would have loved to have got their teeth into.
/bonekickers/ too :-) another one of the skeletons in the closet (no pun intended) that the beeb should breathe a sigh of relief over getting rid of... and burying in a dark hole never to be seen again... marked only with a pile of its rotting (rotten) scripts... laid in the shape of a sword.
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Comment number 13.
At 29th Mar 2010, Keith wrote:It's worth noting that regional news websites are already in the process of moving to /programmes, for instance /lookeast now redirects to /programmes/b006mj5w
I think with some of the old programmes which have long been axed it may be best to create a page or two in the /programmes database, with the top level directory redirecting to this location, particularly for 'non-factual' programmes. For old other sites the hosting them on an archive sub-domain as suggested by Briantist would work fairly well.
It would be nice when programme sites do get revamped if a bit of time could be spent on also updating the older content so that there is some continuity and preferably less duplicate content. For instance with the recently revamped Doctor Who website /doctorwho/dw (which uses/trials the new layout) there is still /doctorwho/s4/ for the previous series, and also /doctorwho/index.shtml for the first three series (which has since been recreated on the series 4 site). An example of three different page layouts with content duplication.
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Comment number 14.
At 30th Mar 2010, lucas42 wrote:I agree that programme based directories should redirect into .
I also think that it makes sense for tv & radio station directories to be under . Surely the url /programmes/schedules/radio4/fm would be far more intuitive than /radio4/programmes/schedules/fm?
It would also be nice to have a bit of consistency when picking what language urls are in. Why are the directories for Scots Gaelic and Welsh to be found at /alba and /cymru (urls in Scots Gaelic and Welsh respectively), when the directory for Irish is at /irish (url in English)?
You should decide whether to use English urls or the language of directory consistently (and redirect from the other).
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Comment number 15.
At 30th Mar 2010, Jon Jacob wrote:Having read over a lot of the comments I'm actually feeling rather embarrassed about the sites I *used* to work on. I put quite a lot of effort into them ... ;) hey ho.
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Comment number 16.
At 31st Mar 2010, cping500 wrote:Just to say that archiving strategy needs to be strategic as the 91Èȱ¬ has discovered before on audio vision and and paper. The experts in so far as there are any are of course in The Archives. The point is the 91Èȱ¬ is part of 'history' as well as being a WPB and filing cabinet. My view is this not a Management issue but a Trust issue.
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Comment number 17.
At 1st Apr 2010, Russ wrote:Seems to me that one of the biggest growth areas of 91Èȱ¬ Online is the number of blogs. I count approximately 215 current ones. It will be interesting to see how the sequence of the three lenses (public purposes, editorial priorities, RQIV) will be applied to them.
Somehow I can't help thinking there needs to be a fourth lens: connection and relevance to 91Èȱ¬ programmes and content.
Russ
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Comment number 18.
At 2nd Apr 2010, linlin wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 19.
At 2nd Apr 2010, Martin wrote:I rather like how bbc.co.uk has some dusty, untouched corners. They cost nothing to run, and it's fairly obvious that they're not being updated, but are of interest all the same. Sites like /election97 are an artifact of how the campaign was run, and if you know where to look you can find Radio 1's Glastonbury 99 pages.
I rather like Briantist's idea of an archive.bbc.co.uk site - perhaps a creaky old server that's not taking up quite so many resources, where old pages can degrade gracefully.
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Comment number 20.
At 30th Apr 2010, talat wrote:All this user's posts have been removed.Why?
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Comment number 21.
At 12th May 2010, U14460911 wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 22.
At 12th May 2010, U14460911 wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 23.
At 20th May 2010, talat wrote:All this user's posts have been removed.Why?
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Comment number 24.
At 24th May 2010, hd2010 wrote:All this user's posts have been removed.Why?
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Comment number 25.
At 17th Sep 2010, Russ wrote:In response to the 91Èȱ¬ Trust's response (pages 39 to 42 refer), has the 91Èȱ¬ Executive now submitted its final proposals for re-shaping 91Èȱ¬ Online?
Russ
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Comment number 26.
At 18th Sep 2010, Nick Reynolds wrote:Russ - you may find this post from Erik Huggers in August of interest.
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Comment number 27.
At 18th Sep 2010, Russ wrote:Thanks, Nick, I had read that one, but I can't say I was much enlightened by its message. In fact, I was confused, and I await news of how the online product of 'Radio+Music' is to be further articulated. Eric Huggers notes that radio and music online remain highly fragmented, whereas the commenters on that blog seem to be of the view that any lack of coherence is a natural and perhaps desirable reflection of the online world and the way it works.
I found Eric Huggers' comment about the audience not moving between websites (external or internal) as much as the 91Èȱ¬ would like interesting, if only because I find it contrary to my personal behaviour. How does the 91Èȱ¬ go about quantifying how much we 'move around'?
Russ
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Comment number 28.
At 11th Feb 2011, Greg wrote:There are a number of alternative options available to you, including:
* creating an archive and storing them in there (eg bbc.co.uk/archive)
* leaving them alone as it is unlikely that they cause any real issues just being there.
The 91Èȱ¬ is claiming that this is a cost cutting exercise however it must be noted that the sites themselves take a little under 2 gigabytes, which in hard drive terms would cost a one off payment not much more than around 12p to retain forever (assuming a server has a 1 terabyte (1000 gigabytes) drive which can readily be purchased for around £60 then that would work out at 6 pence per gigabyte of storage).
The 91Èȱ¬ already has servers for its existing web pages, so in actual monetary terms there would be no charge at all to keep the archives on an existing drive.
I have some 20 years previous experience with internet servers myself and find that the 91Èȱ¬ is placing itself in an untenable position when the actual facts are clearly understood.
The 91Èȱ¬ claiming this is a cost cutting exercise is disingenuous in the extreme as it would actually cost more to get one of their team to do the removal work than it would cost to store it forever.
As a final note, please see for a visual guide of the 91Èȱ¬ and their costcutting - they systematically deleted a large number of tapes containing early Doctor Who episodes which are now unfortunately lost forever, again in the name of costcutting.
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Comment number 29.
At 11th Feb 2011, Greg wrote:I wish to ask that the 91Èȱ¬ do not discard the websites.
There are a number of alternative options available to them, including:
* creating an archive and storing them in there (eg bbc.co.uk/archive)
* leaving them alone as it is unlikely that they cause any real issues just being there.
The 91Èȱ¬ is claiming that this is a cost cutting exercise however it must be noted that the sites themselves take a little under 2 gigabytes, which in hard drive terms would cost a one off payment not much more than around 12p to retain forever (assuming a server has a 1 terabyte (1000 gigabytes) drive which can readily be purchased for around £60 then that would work out at 6 pence per gigabyte of storage).
The 91Èȱ¬ already has servers for its existing web pages, so in actual monetary terms there would be no charge at all to keep the archives on an existing drive.
I have some 20 years previous experience with internet servers myself and find that the 91Èȱ¬ is placing itself in an untenable position when the actual facts are clearly understood.
The 91Èȱ¬ claiming this is a cost cutting exercise is disingenuous in the extreme as it would actually cost more to get one of their team to do the removal work than it would cost to store it forever.
As a final note, please consider another episode of the 91Èȱ¬ and their costcutting - they systematically deleted a large number of tapes containing early Doctor Who episodes which are now unfortunately lost forever, again in the name of costcutting.
Complain about this comment (Comment number 29)
Comment number 30.
At 11th Feb 2011, Greg wrote:I wish to ask that the 91Èȱ¬ do not discard the websites.
There are a number of alternative options available to them, including:
* creating an archive and storing them in there (eg /archive)
* leaving them alone as it is unlikely that they cause any real issues just being there.
The 91Èȱ¬ is claiming that this is a cost cutting exercise however it must be noted that the sites themselves take a little under 2 gigabytes, which in hard drive terms would cost a one off payment not much more than around 12p to retain forever (assuming a server has a 1 terabyte (1000 gigabytes) drive which can readily be purchased for around £60 then that would work out at 6 pence per gigabyte of storage).
The 91Èȱ¬ already has servers for its existing web pages, so in actual monetary terms there would be no charge at all to keep the archives on an existing drive.
I have some 20 years previous experience with internet servers myself and find that the 91Èȱ¬ is placing itself in an untenable position when the actual facts are clearly understood.
The 91Èȱ¬ claiming this is a cost cutting exercise is disingenuous in the extreme as it would actually cost more to get one of their team to do the removal work than it would cost to store it forever.
As a final note, please consider another episode of the 91Èȱ¬ and their costcutting - they systematically deleted a large number of tapes containing early Doctor Who episodes which are now unfortunately lost forever, again in the name of costcutting.
Complain about this comment (Comment number 30)