Reboot bbc.co.uk

Understanding the current BBC homepage

Martin Belam

Over the next couple of weeks I'll be looking at some of the ways that the current BBC homepage works. I thought I'd start by just breaking down the page into the component parts, with a brief description of what each bit is, and what it is called. That way, later on if I start using rather obscure phrases like "the Wonderland footer" or "the Today bar", you'll hopefully know what I'm talking about.

Toolbar
At the top of the page is the site-wide toolbar. I've written before on the web about how it serves the purpose of providing navigational 'glue' across the BBC site.

Banner
The banner area contains the BBC branding, links through to the text only version of the page and the BBC's Accessibility help site, as well as the switch to move users between the UK and International editions of the page.

Search
The search box contains radio buttons to select the type of search to perform, the search box itself, and a list of three recent popular searches across the site. There is also a link through to the BBC's "zeitgeist" page - Popular and New.

Promo
The promo area usually contains an image and a series of links to BBC content, and sometimes links to external websites as well. It is produced by an editorial team specifically for this page.

Browse
The browse section contains links through to various sections of the BBC's site, divided into 12 top level categories. The links contained in it are relatively static, although they do occasionally change as services and sections are closed, or new services appear.

Today
The today bar achieves two things. Visually it acts as a focal point to divide the page into "the upper tier" and "the rest". It also makes the page render left-to-right, so that the promo area loads before the lower sections of the page.

News
The news box carries two or three of the top headlines from the UK edition of the BBC News homepage. The heading link 'News' is the single most frequently clicked link on the BBC homepage.

Sport
The sport box carries two or three of the top headlines from the UK edition of the BBC Sport homepage.

TV
The TV panel is used to promote upcoming programmes on BBC television. The editorial choice of what to promote is made by the same team who produce the UK edition of the bbc.co.uk/tv homepage, though they do not necessarily feature the same content.

Radio
The radio panel links through to all of the BBC's main radio networks. Unlike the TV panel the content is usually static.

Children's
The Children's panel contains the logo "bugs" for the BBC's two UK children's television services CBBC and CBeebies.

Where I Live
This panel contains a weather forecast - which can be personalised by entering your postcode into the BBC site. Based on that postcode the page also displays localised links to Action Network and the user's nearest local BBC site, as well as localised events listings for cinema and music. There are also links through to the BBC's national site's for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as the Welsh language Cymru'r Byd site, and the Gaelic language Alba site. This section used to have additional links to more regionalised content, specifically more general events listings - but the BBC's central /whatson portal was closed down after the publication of the Graf report.

A/V banner
This strip acts to balance up the columns on the right-hand side of the page, and contains links to information on how to get the plug-ins required to view or listen to the a/v content available from the homepage.

Wonderland footer
This footer is named after the "World Wide Wonderland" marketing campaign for bbc.co.uk that ran in May 2004. Originally each panel linked through to a campaign specific microsite at bbc.co.uk/wonderland. Now the panel features a rotating selection of marketing promos which take the user through to varied BBC online sites and services.

Corporate footer
This strip contains links through to corporate information about the BBC. It is home to links through to the Press Office, and the BBC Jobs site, as well as having links through to contacting and complaining to the BBC

Footer
The footer contains links through to things like the BBC's Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

That covers just about everything on the regular page - but there are a couple of other bits of terminology I'm sure you will hear mentioned on the reboot:bbc.co.uk blog from time to time - "the Semi-Permanent Panel" or "SPP", the "Rotorvator", and the "Jumbo Promo".

Semi-Permanent Panel or SPP
This is a small panel containing either static links, or sometimes dynamic headlines generated via RSS, which is inserted into the page either above or below the Today bar. It gives the editorial team a way of retaining some editorial content about big events like Glastonbury, or news coverage like the aftermath of the July 7th London bombings, whilst being able to either use the "main" promo space more visually, or to use it for something else altogether.

Rotorvator
The Rotorvator is a version of the normal promo area of the page, but instead of one static image, JavaScript is used to rotate through a series of images.

Jumbo Promo
The Jumbo Promo is a version of the page where the "promo" section expands to fill the place where the search box usually is. The search box is then dropped down into the top of the browse section.

Hopefully, I've covered everything there, but I am sure to have forgotten something.

• 25 Apr 2006 14:00