From “Guardian Unlimited”
back to “The Guardian”

The December 22, 1996 page sits in a narrow column on white. At the top is a navy box with an italic The and a bold Guardian. Each button below it has a short caption: a free online job-finding service for RecruitNet, journalism by and for students for On Campus, the readers' column of questions & answers for Notes & Queries.

One button just says online. Its alt text is more precise, Go2 OnLine, and its caption calls it the weekly science and technology section. Go2 had launched in November 1995 as the website of the paper’s OnLine supplement.^[1]

The code is labelled by hand, row by row: LINE ONE ITEM ONE, LINE ONE ITEM TWO, down to OTHER LINKS AT THE BOTTOM and COPYRIGHT STUFF. The copyright line reads © Guardian Media Group plc 1996, and under it, in tiny type, Designed by nml. Ian Katz, who worked on the early sites, later remembered the team as the New Media Lab.^[2]

The 1997 and 1998 replays we tried show incomplete navigation and missing pictures, so the story jumps to 1999.

The name came from a little clothing store in Liverpool. Ian Katz told the story in 2009: after some really bad ideas, the team found one slightly less bad, when Simon Waldman shouted that his father once had a shop called Fabrix Unlimited!^[2] By April 27, 1999 the top of the page says Guardian Unlimited, in bold black and thin grey letters.

Before the network launched in January 1999,^[1] the small team tried almost anything. Ian Katz remembered three moments from 1997.^[2]

On this page its sites line up as pictures with alt text: News Unlimited, Football Unlimited, Cricket Unlimited, Film Unlimited, Work Unlimited, Jobs Unlimited. The lead tile reads Latest on the Jill Dando murder investigation. In the left column a note warns: Please note that you have to register for our sites once you go past the homepage. It promises permanent, free access.

The code calls the grid of picture tiles a brodyblock, padded with brody spacer gifs. Alan Rusbridger wrote in 2021 that the paper went to the designer Neville Brody for the look of Guardian Unlimited.^[3] Further down, a programmer left a note: Dropped-in widget here :-)

In August 2000 the wordmark grows a small extra word, network, set vertically after Unlimited. The menu under it reads Latest, The Guardian, Our sites, Talk, Jobs, Webguides and Information. Near the top, the page awards itself a line: Online News Service of the Year - 2000, British Press Awards. The Network guide drop-down in its code lists The weblog between Today's issues and The wrap.

The June 2001 page packs a photograph beside a dense list of news and section links. By May 2002 a red news heading sits over small portrait-led stories, and further down a box points to the talkboards, Britain's liveliest. Four of its questions: Should regional museums get more cash?, Should Roy Keane have been sent home from the World Cup?, Was punk rubbish? and Should Britain suspend arms sales to Pakistan and India?

The footer of 2002, read from the page’s code, names the company as Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002. Keep that line in mind; it changes in 2007.

The pages from 2003 to 2006 barely change shape. The June 2003 capture has a large portrait as the lead and section links down the left. In June 2004 a colorful block for Euro 2004 sits beside the news columns; its alt text says Catch up with all the latest news from Portugal. The menu still has a plain Weblog link, as it did in 2002.

By June 2006 a search box sits above the wordmark, and beside it the page describes itself in one line: Best daily newspaper on the world wide web. The Go to menu in its code now includes Comment is free blog and Newsblog. Comment is Free had launched that year as an open-ended space for debate, dispute, argument and agreement.^[1]

It is World Cup month. A tile for the World Cup blog carries an alt text with an opinion in it: Cut out the samba hogwash - I'm sick of this Brazil worship. And an advertising address in the saved HTML contains country=usa.

The June 15, 2007 page is wider, and the lead photograph takes up much more of it. On May 10 the Guardian had announced that the homepage takes on a new look, with wider pages, greater use of pictures and the flexibility of our new design.^[4] The vertical network has gone from the wordmark.

A grey strip across the top offers Sign in, Register and two buttons for the reader’s eyes: Text larger and smaller. Under the wordmark the page says when it last changed: June 15 2007 | Last updated less than one minute ago.

The code has a list of keyboard shortcuts for screen readers. Active ones include Jump to content [s], Jump to search [4]. Others are commented out, among them Jump to accessibility statement [0] and Jump to contact us [9].

The footer in the saved HTML, below our still, has a new company name: Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007. It is our last capture with Guardian Unlimited in the masthead.

In June 2008 the wordmark reads guardian.co.uk, with guardian in dark blue serif letters and .co.uk in a lighter blue. The site was renamed after its address that year, as part of a rebuild that moved half a million pages into a new format.^[5][6] The browser title is a list of everything on offer: Latest news, sport, business, comment and reviews from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk.

The next capture was saved early on April 1, 2009. Its second column carries a headline, Guardian to swap paper for Twitter, and a summary: Plans unveiled to become first newspaper published exclusively via Twitter, after 188 years of ink. The story behind it promised to rewrite the archive, back to 1821, as tweets of 140 characters.^[7] It was an April Fools’ joke.

The rest of the page is a normal Wednesday: Obama flies in to face G20 summit challenge, Last updated three minutes ago, and a weather box for London, 15°C and 5°C, its icon’s alt text reading Mostly sunny. Keep an eye on that weather box: in later captures its city changes from London to New York and San Francisco.

The June 15, 2010 page puts its prize first: Consumer website of the year | 15 June 2010 | Last updated eight minutes ago. It is World Cup month again, and this time the tournament has its own tab in the top menu, between News and Comment. The weather box shows London at 19°C and 7°C; its icon’s alt text reads Sunny intervals.

The grey strip at the very top now begins with Mobile site. It is still the guardian.co.uk page of 2008, with the same blue serif name, the same red News tab and the same Text larger · smaller buttons.

June 2011 looks much the same, with a broad photograph beside the story list and multimedia down the right-hand column. It is our last capture with guardian.co.uk in the masthead; the next one shows the US edition.

We asked the archive for guardian.co.uk in June 2012 and it served a page from another address. The browser title reads Latest US news, world news, sport and comment from the Guardian | guardiannews.com | The Guardian. The top bar says Edition: US, and the weather box has switched to Fahrenheit: New York, 78°F and 60°F. The Guardian had opened a US office in 2011, along with a US homepage.^[8]

The wordmark has changed too. The .co.uk is gone, and a pale blue the sits in front of guardian, written as one word.

The June 8, 2013 capture is the same US page, with Website of the year back above the wordmark. Two days earlier the Guardian had reported that the NSA was collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers under a secret court order.^[9] Here the report is linked under the main story: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily. Beside it, a box headed NSA, Prism and Verizon has a link that asks What does the Prism logo mean?

Click that link and the report opens on guardian.co.uk. The byline reads Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian, Wednesday 5 June 2013, and the link under it says Jump to comments (2511). The column beside it, On the Guardian today, already leads with the next story, over a slide titled PRISM Collection Details: NSA taps in to internet giants' systems to mine user data, secret files reveal.

On July 20 a Guardian editor and a computer expert destroyed the hard drives holding the files with angle grinders, in a basement at King’s Cross, while GCHQ technicians watched; other copies existed outside the country.^[10] Ten days later the site moved to one address for every edition: theguardian.com.^[8]

The September 2, 2014 page is the UK edition at the new address, and it is back in London: 21°C and 12°C. The line above the wordmark has grown again: Newspaper and website of the year | Winner of the Pulitzer prize | 2 September 2014 | Last updated one minute ago.

The grey bar at the top lists the editions, UK, US and AU, and then a small cyan button that says Beta. In the code its name is Switch to beta. It switched the reader to the next Guardian website, then still being tested in public. From early 2014 a prototype went to 5% of desktop readers around the world, and by launch readers had sent more than 130,000 pieces of detailed feedback.^[11]

Everything else on this page is the old design: the white background, the blue serif theguardian, the red News tab, the right-hand column with Online dating and Join Guardian Soulmates. It is the last capture in this story with the blue serif name.

By September 2015 the beta is the homepage. The header is a deep blue bar with theguardian in white on the right, and the stories come in boxes with colored labels: GM embryos, Migration crisis, Labour leadership. The Guardian called these building blocks containers.^[11] The switch went out in stages, to the US in October 2014, Australia in November, and everyone else on January 28, 2015.^[1][12]

Not everyone liked it. Five days after the launch the readers’ editor counted Nearly 4,400 comments under the announcement, left by more than 1,400 site users, including one commenter who posted around 200 of them. The same column noted that there had been no dip in visitors so far.^[13]

This page is labelled US edition, has soccer in its menu and gives the weather for San Francisco, 69°F. Its edition menu offers a way out: switch to the International beta.

The March 2016 and March 2017 pages keep the blue bar, over the refugee crisis and then Article 50. In our 2016 capture the lead image area is blank grey.

The Verizon report moved into the blue design too, with one addition under the masthead in July 2015: Winner of the Pulitzer prize 2014. The Guardian and the Washington Post had shared that year’s Pulitzer prize for public service for stories on NSA surveillance.^[17] The section label now says US national security, the date has gained a time, Thursday 6 June 2013 06.05 EDT, and the counter beside it still reads 2,511 comments.

In May 2018 the blue bar is gone. The name is The Guardian again, in heavy black letters stacked on two lines at the right, and the menu is five words in five colors: News, Opinion, Sport, Culture, Lifestyle. The new masthead had replaced the blue and white masthead in use since 2005.^[14] It arrived on January 15, together with the tabloid print edition, and with it a typeface called Guardian Headline, made with Commercial Type.^[15]

The top-left corner holds a black circle with three words, Make a contribution, next to Subscribe, Find a job and Sign in. It is the first capture in this story that asks for a contribution. Six months later the editor, Katharine Viner, announced support from more than a million readers over three years.^[16]

The browser title says News, sport and opinion from the Guardian's UK edition. The edition menu in the page’s code says current edition: US edition. The same capture carries both.

By September 2019 the stacked name is white on navy, and the request has moved to the top left in big serif letters: Support The Guardian, then Available for everyone, funded by readers, and two yellow buttons, Contribute and Subscribe. The menu under News starts with US and Elections 2020, and the weather box beside the headlines is set to New York, 72°F.

The Verizon report wears the same header in July 2019, Support The Guardian included. Above its headline is something new, a yellow label: This article is more than 6 years old. Its counters read 1,454 shares and 2,504 comments, seven fewer than in 2013 and 2015.

A year later, in September 2020, the header is the same and the weather has moved west again, to San Francisco, 64°F. The lead story is about A-levels: Williamson told about flaws in A-level model two weeks before results. Its image area is blank grey in this capture.

The first six boxes are the weather cities on those captures; the last two are the regional topic labels under the sections.

The September 2021 masthead has an extra line under the name: For 200 years. The paper was founded in Manchester in 1821.^[1] That May, in an essay for the anniversary, Alan Rusbridger looked back on the move online and recalled going to Neville Brody.^[3] The strapline is gone by the next capture.

In this capture several image areas are blank grey. The headlines are there: Afghanistan / Foreign Office report warned in July of rapid Taliban takeover, and further down the menu offers Newsletters and Green light.

From 2022 to 2024 the navy header changes height from capture to capture. The stacked white name stays at the right, the five sections stay in their places, and the first story gets a large photograph.

The September 2025 page opens with a strip of columns and features above the masthead and a line at the top left: Support the Guardian, Fund the free press with $5 per month. Beside the name a small menu says Edition. In the code it lists five: Australia edition, UK edition, US edition, Europe edition and International edition.

This time the crawler got the Australian one. The row of topics under the sections starts Australia, World, AU politics, and includes Indigenous Australia, above a lead story about Keir Starmer’s No 10 shake-up.

By September 1, 2026 the same row reads US news, US politics, Midterms 2026. The top bar has Print subscriptions, Newsletters and Sign in, and the name sits in the same place as in 2018, white, on two lines.

The Verizon report, captured on June 29, 2026, now says This article is more than 13 years old. Its time reads 12.05 CEST, where 2015 and 2019 had 06.05 EDT. The counter still says 2,504, and under the Share button a new link asks: Prefer the Guardian on Google. The thumbnails in its Most viewed column are blank grey circles in this capture.

1999 · Unlimited2026 · The Guardian

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The 1996 logo’s alt text is two words, the Guardian. The 2026 masthead says the same two words. In between, the captures in this story carry three other names: Guardian Unlimited in nine of them, guardian.co.uk in four and theguardian in six. In 1996 the page was called The Guardian and lived at guardian.co.uk; since 2018 the name at the top and the address in the browser say the same thing.