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BBC News Under The Bonnet

Posted by Zonk on from the that'd-be-hood-in-the-us dept.

diodesign writes "BBC News has revealed that Linux and Apache power its popular news website, along with a modified DNS server and machine farms in New York and London. At peak times, the site serves over 4 million users and 50 million page impressions a day. It's a pretty well explained guide to producing a regularly updated content based website that scales well." From the article: "The technology which serves the site is designed to be as simple as possible. The simpler the site, the cheaper it is to run. There are fewer elements which can malfunction on big days; and there are fewer parts which can be compromised by someone trying to gain unauthorised access."

6 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Cool. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Now perhaps the CBC will learn from this.

  2. Hardly news by claes · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Apache is the most common web server around. But Apache on its own does not deliver content. Apache + Linus is not news any more. Apache and web servers in general are commodities today. On top of Apache a content management system runs for sure. It would be more intresting to read how this system works, if it is proprietary or free, etc.

    1. Re:Hardly news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The CMS used by the BBC is custom-developed on top of Apple's WebObjects (http://www.apple.com/webobjects/) technology. The CMS "renders" the dynamic content to static HTML whenever anything changes, which is then shipped out via Apache+mod_include, as indicated.

  3. Re:BBC a favorite target by awhelan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Come on mods, flamebait? This comment is very off topic, but I really doubt it's intended to start a flame war. I'm a libertarian from Boston (Boston= quite liberal) and when I mention watching the BBC I do occasionally get responses suggesting I am anti-Bush/USA/whatever. The parent isn't saying that the BBC is anti-American propaganda, just that when he tries to watch it, other Americans tell him that it is.

  4. Re:Server side includes? by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    they use SSI (Server Side Includes) to put their sidebar items into each story. Seems like a bit of an antiquated method for these days, no?

    If the wheel is still round, why re-invent it?

    BBC's site is not ad-driven, and content changes are infrequent enough that redeploying from their backend CMS is good enough. Their edge servers don't require a great deal of dynamicism, and SSI seems to meet their needs, so why not.

  5. Re:but how does it compare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    The public are anti-EU, so a neutral stance would appear to the public as pro-EU to some degree. The only bias is from the public.

    As an exercise, I looked at some of the photos on the BBC news articles during the referendum on the constitution in France. The photos of the 'YES' campaign usually showed smiling, often young, people, whilst the photos of the 'NO' campaign generally showed either no people or angry-looking people.

    I do find it curious that you think the BBC should ignore what you call public bias. Certainly the BBC should reflect the views of the public, which is true impartiality. This follows from the same principle as the practice of giving more attention to Labour or the Tories than to fringe parties.