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]!<p>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.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax</a><p>[2] <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/" rel="nofollow">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/</a> (slightly broken now...)
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: <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3559050.stm" rel="nofollow">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3559050.stm</a> or <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/574132.stm" rel="nofollow">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/574132.stm</a> (there might be a way to reliably find more examples, I'm not sure).<p>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.
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.<p>I'm now startup founder and a VC - v far from the non-profit public service nature of the BBC.<p>Happy to AMA if anyone had any questions.
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.
Wayback Machine allows browsing website history by year. Press year, instead of arrows:<p>— The New York Times: <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/19961112181513/http://www.nytimes.com:80/" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/19961112181513/http://www.nytimes...</a><p>— WaPo: <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/19961220172326/http://www.washingtonpost.com:80/" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/19961220172326/http://www.washing...</a><p>— Financial Times: <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/19970607125328/http://www.ft.com:80/" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/19970607125328/http://www.ft.com:...</a>
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.
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.<p>As far as I know, it’s the only tech interview I didn’t get offered the job.<p>Tough crowd!