From “the UK's favourite website”
to “Welcome to BBC.com”

The December 1996 capture is the oldest homepage in this story. The page color is set to #001042, a dark navy, and everything on it is a picture: the BBC logo, a button that says About the BBC and one that says Programmes. Behind the second button, in faint letters, the words radio and tv repeat like a pattern on wallpaper.

The address itself was older than the page. BBC Internet Services' own history says the BBC registered bbc.co.uk in October 1991, and that the form had to be signed by a director so nobody could spoof the domain.^[1] The signature came from the BBC's Director of Engineering. The same history dates the first www.bbc.co.uk to about April 1994, mostly regional pages and some studio information.^[1]

The transcript service with the FBI bureaus among its accounts ran from the BBC's Caversham site and sent them daily updates from 12 feeds.^[1] Two years later, the front door to the BBC's web still had two buttons.

By June 1997 the tab says The BBC Online and the page is black. It is built from two frames: a narrow strip of menu buttons on the left, 130 pixels wide in the code, and the main page beside it. The buttons run from UK TELEVISION and UK RADIO down to JOB OPPORTUNITIES and CONTACT. The fallback for browsers without frames keeps a note from whoever looked after the page: 97/06/06 last edited by gcj. The capture is from June 16, ten days later.

Ceefax, the BBC's teletext, fed the web that spring. For the May 1997 general election the BBC built approx 8000 pages automatically from live Ceefax and election feeds, one for each constituency and candidate.^[1] An Oracle publishing system turned those feeds into HTML, so teletext data became web pages.

In August, after Diana died, the team organized a webcast of her funeral with several internet providers. The history says the BBC's news managers then realized it's big and have to do something about a site soon.^[1]

BBC News went online in November 1997, and BBC Online had its full launch in December.^[1] The July 1998 capture shows the result. A blue bar reads BBC ONLINE, and under it the page explains itself in one line: Your gateway to over 200 sites and 25,000 pages. Below come TODAY ON THE WEB, CHOICES, SERVICES and TELEVISION & RADIO, the last with what is ON NOW on BBC1, BBC2 and five radio stations.

The address bbc.co.uk did not hold this page itself. The archived root file is a redirect to /home/today/index.shtml, and it carries a version stamp in its code: 15_12_97. That is December 15, 1997, the month of the full launch.

The January 1999 page is the same design with new stories. TODAY ON THE WEB has Radio 1 on the Prodigy, and a weather box shows Belfast at 7°C. Near the bottom, a small graphic asks Make the BBC my homepage? and answers Here's how.

In June 2000 the banner says BBC ONLINE HOMEPAGE and the line under it is a boast in pale blue: Welcome to the UK's favourite website. Under an orange-on-yellow CATEGORIES heading, blue links run down the left from News to World Service. The middle column has three promos written as puns: Listen to this, What a racket! for Wimbledon and Poetic licence.

The code has its own small print. At the start of the middle column a comment explains a table that exists only to fix a layout problem: THIS TABLE CRUSHES FORM SPACE IN NN. NN is Netscape Navigator, the other big browser of the time.

A year later the design is the same. The June 2001 page has Make the BBC my Homepage and my BBC near the top, and Like this page? Send it to a friend! at the bottom of the left column. The June 2001 promos are a science playground with Teksta the robot dog to win and a desktop theremin, and a Father's Day e-card.

The June 2002 capture has a new name in its browser tab: BBC - BBCi - the UK's number one digital destination. A gray bar of sections runs along the top, from CATEGORIES to SEARCH. The page opens on World Cup - Day 4, with Italy v Ecuador, Brazil v Turkey and Croatia v Mexico. Underneath is a directory of categories, from Business to Weather, the way a web portal had them.

In November 2001 the BBC had renamed its online, interactive TV and mobile services BBCi, and the Guardian wrote that the redesign made the site look more like the Yahoo! and MSN portals (reported).^[3]

In June 2003 the BBCi logo sits on a green page, and the first box is a web search. Under it the page reports Popular searches right now are: iran, india and news. A comment in the code, left for BBC staff, points to an address on the BBC's intranet: do not copy, see http://intracat/ssi/ for usage.

BBCi is gone from the June 2004 capture. The logo is now a small bbc.co.uk above the BBC blocks, followed by a large light-blue word, home. Light-blue panels fill the page: a search box that promises More than 2 million amazing BBC pages, a Browse directory, a Today column with News, Sport, Television and Radio, and Where I Live, set to London, Central.

The search box has a habit that makes each capture a time capsule. Under it, a line reads Other people are searching for: and lists three searches. In June 2004 they were buffy, brum and westlife.

The June 2005 page keeps the layout and adds a Mobile edition link under Text only. The big promo is a colorful banner, AFRICA LIVES ON THE BBC. People were searching for pollen count, exchange rates and dragons den.

The June 2006 capture shows a choice at the top of the page, next to the BBC logo: two radio buttons, UK version and International version, and a link, About the versions. In this capture the second one is ticked, and the page shows it. The Browse list starts with News from Africa, Americas and Asia-Pacific, the TV box lists The BBC's international TV Channels, and the top story is Zarqawi death sparks US crackdown.

This is the first of many captures in which the crawler sees the BBC for readers outside Britain. The BBC had bought bbc.com in 1999 from Boston Business Computing, a Massachusetts company, for $375,000 (reported).^[2]

In June 2007 the same radio buttons have UK version selected, and the page is the British one again: a Get Cooking promo, local weather for London, Central and links to England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

In December 2007 the BBC's Richard Titus announced a new homepage. He wanted to get away from the tired and monotonous blue base colour of the original page, and said the widgetization adopted by Facebook, iGoogle and netvibes had shaped the team's thinking.^[4] Visitors could add, remove and rearrange the boxes; football fans could put up to eight football stories in the sport box.^[4]

The June 2008 capture has all of it. Under a deep blue masthead are Customise your homepage, Set your location and Reset homepage, and the News, Sport and Weather boxes carry Edit buttons. On the right of the masthead is a white analogue clock. Titus called it a BBC 1 analogue clock, added as a bit of fun; users found it bizarrely reassuring.^[4] This 2008 page is the international one, with Advertisement labels.

The clock had a flaw. In its April 2010 version it took the time from each visitor's own computer, not from a BBC time source, so it was only as accurate as that machine. In April 2013 the BBC Trust upheld a complaint about it.^[5]

In June 2009 the button says Add more to this page, and Business & Money shows market data from the Dow Jones to the Cac 40, dated MON, 15 JUNE 2009 17:04:35 BST. The October 2010 capture swaps the blue for red: a red masthead, red heading text on pale bars, and a red TOP NEWS STORY tab on the lead. The boxes keep their Edit buttons, and NEWS IN 32 LANGUAGES marks the page as international again.

On 30 November 2011 the BBC replaced its British homepage, the page of boxes you could rearrange, with one built around a color-coded carousel. The same day it admitted that some beta users didn't like losing the more detailed customisation of the old page, and said the team was working on ways to introduce customisation back.^[8] The homepage had nine million or so users a week by the BBC's count.^[8]

The carousel had been tried before. The Guardian reported a homepage beta in March 2010 with a moving carousel of stories and a Topic Tracker, and noted that customised pages had to be set up again (reported).^[6]

The archive's June 2011 capture is from before that switch, and it is the international page, with a Marketwatch ticker under Business. It already opens on Top News story »: one big photo with a dark text panel and arrows to the next story. The boxes have lost their Edit buttons; only Weather keeps Edit my location.

The 2012, 2013 and 2014 captures keep the carousel, then News, Business and Sport. By June 2013 the right column has BBC Culture: Talking Books. In June 2014 a World Cup 2014 panel beside the carousel asks Who will win the World Cup? The movable boxes of 2008 do not come back in any of them.

In June 2015 the page opens on a date, TUESDAY, 16 JUNE, a large photo of Jeb Bush and the headline Bush launches 'optimistic' campaign. On the right are two schedule boxes for the BBC's own channels abroad: BBC AMERICA, where Family Guy sings Cyndi Lauper, and BBC WORLD NEWS.

A BBC work plan for 2015/16 promised to roll out a responsive homepage that fits tablets and phones.^[9] Already in September 2011 the homepage team said 15–25% of its traffic came from handsets.^[7]

From June 2016 the page says what it is in its first line: Welcome to BBC.com, with the date on the right, Thursday, 16 June. Under it is a grid of photo tiles with white headlines, a big one on the left and four smaller ones beside it, each with a section label: WORLD, EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST. Below are rows marked by color: red for News, yellow for Sport, blue for Editor's Picks.

The address in the archive is still http://www.bbc.co.uk/. The greeting is for BBC.com, the international site, and that is the one the crawler was given.

February 2017 has the same greeting and grid. The lead tile is Trump picks Neil Gorsuch for high court, and its label is US & CANADA.

The June 2018 capture has a different greeting: Welcome to the BBC. This is the British page. Its menu has iPlayer, TV, Radio and CBBC, and in the top right corner a line invites the visitor to Sign in, or Register to see Weather, Local News and more.

Under the greeting is a gear icon and Customise your Homepage. In November 2011 the BBC said its team was working on ways to bring customisation back. In 2018 there is a link for it. The lead story is May 'disappointed' at upskirting law block, labeled UK POLITICS.

The March 2019 and February 2020 captures keep Welcome to the BBC, but most of their image areas render as gray boxes. The 2020 capture was made at 00:52 GMT on February 1. Its lead story has no photo, only the headline: UK leaves the European Union.

From 2021 the crawler gets BBC.com again. The June 2021, February 2022 and January 31, 2023 captures all open with Welcome to BBC.com and the 2016 grid of tiles, now with a REEL row of short videos further down. The 2021 lead tile is Israel strikes in Gaza after arson balloon launched.

The 2022 lead is Failure of leadership over No 10 parties - Sue Gray, a British story on the international page. The 2023 page, dated Wednesday, 1 February on screen, leads with Saudi executions, and its News row opens on George Santos to step down from House committees.

In June 2024 the greeting is gone. The page is white, the BBC blocks sit in the middle of the top bar, and a row of sections runs under them, from Home, News and Sport to Live. On the right are Watch Live, a black Register button and Sign In. The browser tab reads BBC Home - Breaking News, World News, US News, Sports, Business, Innovation, Climate, Culture, Travel, Video & Audio.

The February 2025 and February 2026 captures keep that layout, with an empty band above the header. One button changes. In 2025 it says Register. In 2026 it is blue and says Subscribe.

Between those two captures, on 26 June 2025, BBC.com launched its first website paywall, for users in the US: $8.99 a month or $49.99 a year.^[10]

Our oldest capture, from December 1996, shows two buttons, About the BBC and Programmes. Thirty years later the archive's visitor finds a row of sections from Home to Documentaries and a blue button that asks it to subscribe.