BBC News Under The Bonnet

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."

Comments

whoops

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone else read that as "BBC under the botnet" ?

Re:whoops

[evilmonkey_666]

Bonnet means hood for all you Americans.

Re:whoops

[smittyoneeach]

The BBC is staffed with Amish women?

Re:whoops

[evilmonkey_666]

You can never be too careful, when I was in school in california I once asked the teacher for a rubber (eraser). She thought I wanted a condom.

Re:whoops

[rjshields]

An american woman in the pub was talking about her sore fanny (bottom). Everyone thought she was talking about her vagina.

9th most popular web site

[Malc]

According to Netcraft, they're the 9th most popular site on the web. That's after several variations of Google, and toolbar.netcraft.com... so take with heaps of NaCl.

Re:9th most popular web site

[Neil Blender]

how is microsoft.com in 3rd place?

Massive downloading of security fixes, I assume.

Re:9th most popular web site

[zootm]

Interesting stats. I wonder how microsoft.com is ahead of msn.com? Or for that matter, how is microsoft.com in 3rd place?

Try typing a URL without the : on a windows box, for example http//google.com (you'll need to paste that into a new window).

I'm not impressed

[awhelan]

Yeah, that looks pretty good, but just in case... here's a mirror

BBC a favorite target

[bobalu]

Ah, if I could only watch BBC news at my local bar without someone asking why I hate America!

Re:BBC a favorite target

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, if I could only watch BBC news at my local bar without someone asking why I hate America!

Why do you hate America?

Re:BBC a favorite target

[awhelan]

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.

server locations?

[jabella]

maybe it's just me, but i'm never putting physical addresses on ANY network map with any company i work for, especially maps that will be posted publicly.

Re:server locations?

[ruud]

What's wrong with it? The addresses are all major data centers / carrier hotels, so it's not really a surprise that they are located there. It's not like you can just walk into any of these and get access to the servers.

So I guess that means..

[Weaselmancer]

...British rappers are from da Bonnet?

Re:A good reason to leave pop-ups on

[doppe1]

Yes i would much rather have companies paying that money to tell me what to buy, or the government paying the newscasters to tell us what to think.

Hardly news

[claes]

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.

Re:Hardly news

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Revealed?

[lukewarmfusion]

That's funny... my Apache servers return a Windows NT 4 message. And my Windows servers return an Apache message.

Just to screw with the kiddies.

Re:A good reason to leave pop-ups on

[aslate]

Yeah, you know, I really wish the US government would take our money ($10 BILLION per year) against our will to fund an organization to tell us what to think.

Oh yes, that propaganda machine known as the BBC... Funny how all three political parties say that it's biased. Surely that means that it's as unbiased as you can possibly get in political terms?

I say that it's worth it, we get decent programming, they're actually not allowed to produce a Big-Brother equivalent, ad-free TV and a large array of other services. And the BBC is not run by the government, the BBC collects the licence fee itself.

I do love those 'Content Based' websites

[spun]

Thanks to this article, now I can make a content based website, too! Maybe now people will come to my site. All I had before were blank pages.

Re:A good reason to leave pop-ups on

[domanova]

Well, I look at my licence and see I'm paying some $20 a month for the beeb. Actually, so my kid can watch TV. Radio and web (which I use much more) do not require a licence. Add it up in (let us say) 20M households and you get to about $5 billion a year, I don't know where the 10 comes from - wikipedia quotes 2.6 billion quid in 2003. Anyway, I'd happily pay twice that not to watch Fox

Re:9th most popular GIRL ON THE WEB

[Thud457]

Safe for Work, just NSFL (Not Safe for your Lunch). Actually, nothing horrific, just a very unflattering picture of a not too pretty person.

Re:Server side includes?

[poot_rootbeer]

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.

Re:but how does it compare

[Daniel_Staal]

See the comment directly above you: BBC is the world's 9th busiest site, /. is the 32nd.

Re:Cool.

[Dimpled Chad]

At least CBC offers an ogg stream. It's a lot more reliable than the real audio stream that NPR/WBUR gives. Got to give them some credit for that.

Beeb text site

[Skiron]

I have always used the text site as it loads almost instantly - any interesting story that requires pictures I then head over to the 'graphic' site.

BBC text news

The next step is to get them to report the news unbiasedly (during the last Iraq war, BBC was known here in the UK as the 'Baghdad broadcasting Corp.'); and we all know what their technical expertise is like explaining computer issues.

Re:A good reason to leave pop-ups on

[Insipid Trunculance]

I wish i wouldnt rise to obvious trolls.But i cant resist and yet i havent anything better to say than this Guy

Now you know why we love the Aunty.