Doctor Who website

For the purposes of this wiki, the Doctor Who website is deemed to be the main site operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation at http://bbc.co.uk/doctorwho. There are are other official Doctor Who websites operated by national broadcasters, but the definitive Doctor Who website is the one operated by BBC Online on behalf of the various BBC One Two and Three transmissions.

Since the re-launch of Doctor Who in 2005, the site has promoted the programme through a significant amount of original material, like:
 * behind-the-scenes interviews, such as those posted to the Doctor Who Video Explorer available during series 5
 * online games
 * craft activities like the Comic Maker
 * the annual Adventure Calendar put out for the Christmas special

Generally, the website has changed its theme weekly during the transmission of the programme on BBC One. Indeed, most of the material has been geared towards promoting the next upcoming episode. However, during the off-season, the site has reverted to a more general promotion of Doctor Who.

Original form
Prior to the advent of the BBC Wales series, it was founded at http://bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho, where it organised information about the show as a more-or-less "concluded" show that had run from 1963 to 1989, with a brief return in 1996. That address still points to the "classic" section of the modern website.

RTD era
Beginning with Rose, the cult page was de-emphasised, and the main Doctor Who website address became http://bbc.co.uk/doctorwho. During the RTD, BBC Online worked extensively with the Doctor Who production office to deliver a considerable amount of content for the show, particularly when it was actively in season. Each episode got its own home page, and each of these home pages had extensive content, ranging from interviews to Doctor Who Confidential snippets, to flash video games.

The website got a fairly extensive facelift in 2008 for the Donna Noble season, and it stayed with this "series 4" design until David Tennant left the programme.

At this point the site was split into the following sections:
 * Home
 * News (renamed Features in 2009)
 * Episodes (split into the following categories - Series Four, Series Three, Series Two, Series One and Specials)
 * Characters (split into the following categories - The Doctor, Companions, Friends & Allies, Monsters/Villians and Ships & Gadgets)
 * Games (split into the following categories - Action Games, Strategy Games, Jigsaws and Other Games)
 * Videos
 * Images (split into the following categories - Wallpapers and Screensavers)
 * Audio
 * Create
 * Confidential
 * Archive
 * Classic
 * Blog (added to document the making of Dreamland in 2009)

In very general terms, webpages developed for the site during this period were characterised by a red colour palate.

Doctor Who website title card
For the fourth series of Doctor Who, the BBC published title cards for each character; in the same style as the ones for each episode; on the official Doctor Who website.

Moffat era
In 2010, the Doctor Who website underwent radical simplification, with all parts of the BBC website being made to follow a more modular, unified design. Though still active, the volume of new material flowing into the Doctor Who website radically decreased.

In the spring of 2012, the BBC website underwent further simplification, with the standard template modified to add more integration with social media and iPlayer, and remove all flash animated content.

Broadly speaking, webpages during this time were readily identifiable by their blue colour palate.