BBC Unveils New Homepage

The BBC is getting personal with its new customisable homepage.

Launched last week in beta, the page is a fairly radical departure from the current one with extensive widgetisation to allow users to edit and adapt the page to suit their needs.

Among the key features is a news widget which enables visitors to input their own location to keep updated with the latest headlines from their area.

There are also options for people to customise national news, sport and entertainment articles and a useful blog feed to read the latest entries from high-profile news names such as Mark Mardell and Evan Davies.

“We wanted to build the foundation and DNA of the new site in line with the ongoing trend and evolution of the Internet towards dynamically generated and syndicable content through technologies like RSS, atom and xml,” writes Richard Titus, acting head of user experience and design at the BBC and the main man behind the changes.

Titus continues on the BBC Internet Blog: “This version is called a ‘lick of paint’ because it hasn’t massively changed the content of the homepage.

“But it reflects, I hope, how the BBC is changing: it helps to empower the user to find, play and share more of what they want, when they want.

“This page is the beginning of a conversation between the BBC and you about the page; I hope that you’ll join us, as all conversations are better with an honest open dialogue.”

At present, customised versions of the beta homepage are saved in cookies and the corporation hopes to be able to include them in unique user profiles from January.

If you want to take a look at users’ reactions to the changes, take a look at the comments posted to the Internet Blog.