The site is delivered by a number of systems, but the majority of content is delivered through a custom content management system (the Content Production system CPS). It's a complex system. The CPS runs on an Oracle Database and also produces the Sport site and other sites like Newsbeat, foreign language sites and so on. There are millions of text items across the BBC sites managed by the system. Things like related links use the content production system - the Journalist using the CPS will select the links most relevant and these are then pulled in when published. Other elements pull in components and references to SSIs. The CPS can pull in elements not built using the CPS by referencing the SSIs or links to components it needs. The majority of the system is built using Java with a .NET client used by the Journalists. There are separate tools for building and managing templates and applying these to specific pages or areas of the site. Real time Sports results and other live data may come through systems focussed on processing this data at high speed with no manual intervention. We are in the process of changing the way the CPS system publishes content to produce cleaner XHTML and use CSS more substantially. Hopefully this gives you a feel for the systems in place. Cheers,
::: John O'Donovan ::: Chief Architect, BBC FM&T Journalism ::: BBC Broadcast Centre ::: 201 Wood Lane, London W12 7TS ::: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ::: http://www.bbc.co.uk <http://www.bbc.co.uk/> ________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Aleem B Sent: 04 November 2008 09:01 To: backstage-developer@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage-developer] Technical details for the news.bbc.co.uk Thanks, that's partially what I was looking for. On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 1:27 PM, Brian Butterworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Aleem, 2008/11/4 Aleem B <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Thanks Kevin, that's the first link I googled and ultimately led me to this mailing list. I was hoping for more details such as what kind of database do you use in the backend and how much of text data you have. Also I read bbc uses SSI, however, I don't quite get how you get for example, related posts to an article through SSI because the text of the article is not immediately available and with SSI you can't pass the text of the article to a function called RelatedPosts (or can you?) Any technical insight would be welcome. I'm also interested to learn about any design principles behind the website. The website is design for 1024x768 which means the roughly 8% or so of 800x600 don't get an optimal view. Was that a concern? Please see http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/newmedia/desed/visual_lang_1_0_6.pdf for details on this bit. Also, what is the publishing workflow? Answers to any of those questions would be helpful. "It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves" -- Sir Edmund Hillary (1919 - 2008) On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 5:16 AM, Kevin Hinde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >-----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Aleem B >Sent: 03 November 2008 18:46 >To: backstage-developer@lists.bbc.co.uk >Subject: [backstage-developer] Technical details for the news.bbc.co.uk > >Hello, I am a first time poster. I have searched for >information regarding the backend infrastructure for >news.bbc.co.uk but was unable to find much. FWIW, >http://support.bbc.co.uk/support/ has a lot of broken links. > I wrote this article about it in 2005. It doesn't go into very much detail, but there may be something useful in there: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4606719.stm John has posted more recently http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/john_odonovan/ K. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk developer discussion group. To unsubscribe, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe backstage-developer [your email] as the message. -- Brian Butterworth follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
