Designing a URL structure for BBC programmes
1–10 of 29 posts
Re: Designing a URL structure for BBC programmes
#2The BBC is flat out a pioneer in media management and distribution. I had the opportunity to use the iPlayer some during the London Olympics, and the level of automation, and the completeness of coverage, really opened my eyes to how media technology in the US is solely at the mercy of licensing and advertising. PBS is somewhat interesting, but only in a "look we know what the internet playing a video is" sort of way. It was a better experience than YouTube, Netflix, Prime, Roku, etc. BBC's model is the future, today.
Re: Designing a URL structure for BBC programmes
#3Interesting read. Amazing how much thought goes into something as simple as a URL. I'll never look at the beeb's website in the same way now!
Re: Designing a URL structure for BBC programmes
#4The BBC is flat out a pioneer in media management and distribution. I had the opportunity to use the iPlayer some during the London Olympics, and the level of automation, and the completeness of coverage, really opened my eyes to how media technology in the US is solely at the mercy of licensing and advertising. PBS is somewhat interesting, but only in a "look we know what the internet playing a video is" sort of way…
Completely agreed. And, to be honest, I'm consistently surprised at the sheer quality of output the BBC manages, not just in terms of content but technologically too. I know they have a lot of smart people working for them, but I'm still surprised bureaucracy and infighting and budget constraints and all the other things that usually hinder progress haven't taken over.
Re: Designing a URL structure for BBC programmes
#5Interesting read. Amazing how much thought goes into something as simple as a URL. I'll never look at the beeb's website in the same way now!
It is definitely something I forget to think about and when seen at the scale of the BBC it's an amazing thing. Might have to start thinking about URL structure a little more now and this is a great resource to get me going!
Re: Designing a URL structure for BBC programmes
#6To anyone who remembers the original post made by Tom Coates over here: http://plasticbag.org/archives/2004/06/developing_a_url_stru...
This new post is a substantial expansion on the reasoning, the implementation, and the depth of the thinking reflected in the URL structure that the BBC uses.
I was contracting at Red Bee Media for a portion of this time, and the project work to support a lot of this moved at an incredible pace (once the BBC had fed the requirements over), worth noting that RBM ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bee_Media ) themselves were spun out of the BBC around this time. So you had substantial organisation change at the same time as these fast moving technical changes.
Re: Designing a URL structure for BBC programmes
#7Probably the most interesting part of this article (and the linked article on developing a URL structure for broadcast radio) is the argument in favor of not making human-readable URLs. A part of me really likes the idea of URLs which can be read and understood by a layman without deep understanding of the system. But technically that's challenging to maintain, and as the article points out, challenging to keep consistent automatically. And arguably it's better to offer users something which you know won't ever break than something more convenient which quite likely will.
Re: Designing a URL structure for BBC programmes
#8I've only just started reading it, but does anyone know what they mean by "In the circumstances it might be more of a eulogy than a birth announcement"?
Re: Designing a URL structure for BBC programmes
#9Linking the structure of your site to the organization of your URLs is a terrible idea. Nobody particularly cares what the URL looks like, but for one key feature: do not fucking break links.
So design your URL such that you won't ever break them. Everything else is rather secondary.
Re: Designing a URL structure for BBC programmes
#10I've only just started reading it, but does anyone know what they mean by "In the circumstances it might be more of a eulogy than a birth announcement"?
Perhaps he's referring to something along the lines of URLs potentially being hidden in upcoming browser updates:
>"So [for the] love of god Google, if only to save me from another meeting conversation about this[,] please hide the URL behind a click in Chrome. And hope the marketeers start to think that covering the world in URLs makes as much sense as covering it in ISBNs or catalogue numbers or Amazon product IDs." //