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 and Trailer 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.

2005
Beginning on 8 March 2005 in the run-up to Rose, the new series content on the cult page was moved to a new website, with the address http://bbc.co.uk/doctorwho. The design was based on various sizes of hexagonal graphics and the home page featured a countdown clock, counting down to the broadcast of Rose. The site was designed by Lee Binding & Clayton Hickman.

The new site was split into the following sections:
 * DOCTOR WHO
 * Video Clips and Trailers (various new & classic series clips in RealPlayer format)
 * Downloads (featuring screensavers, .mp3 and .wav audio files and the officially licensed Doctor Who theme ringtone)
 * Desktop Wallpaper (quickly renamed Pictures; featuring pictures in the following sizes for mobile phones and PCs - 128px, 176px, 288px, 800px & 1024px)
 * Meet the Doctor & Meet Rose (both linked to the Characters page, which was then renamed The TARDIS Crew after Jack joined)
 * The Making of Doctor Who (featuring WhoSpy, Video Diaries, Photo Stories and TARDIS 360° Views)
 * The Classic Series (linking back to the old cult page)
 * Series Info

Once the series started more sections were added:
 * Confidential
 * Episode Guide
 * News
 * Dalek Game

Episode web page images
For the first series each episode web page had simple strip image at the top of the page. The Confidential page would change its strip image each week to go along with each episode of it.

Website background images
The web pages at this point were fairly primitive with a single background image and with plain text on top, using a mixture of the Helvetica, Arial & Verdana fonts. These images were used on every page of the website including character pages.

2005-08
On 18 November 2005 the website had a small refresh to coincide with the start of David Tennant's tenure as The Doctor. The site made more use of the circular Gallifreyan text motifs and animated gifs.

During the RTD era, 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.

2008-10
The website got a fairly extensive facelift on 2 April 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 on 20 August 2009)
 * Episodes (split into the following categories - Series Four, Series Three, Series Two, Series One and Specials - with features like Fact File and Fear Forecast.
 * 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 (contained Comic Maker & Trailer Maker)
 * Confidential
 * Archive (link to the old series 1-3 site)
 * Classic
 * Blog (added to document the making of Dreamland on 20 August 2009 )

After transmission of The End of Time the RTD era logo was replaced with the new Series 5 one.

In very general terms, webpages developed for the site during this period were characterised by a red colour palate and use of the Deviant Strain and Trebuchet MS fonts.

Character web page images
For the fourth series of Doctor Who, the BBC published title cards on the website for each character, in the same style as those made for each episode.

Moffat era
In April 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 and use of the Gazz font.

BBC Studios website
In 2013, BBC Studios opened a second website at http://doctorwho.tv to celebrate Doctor Who's 50th anniversary. , this website has more content and activity than the programme website at bbc.co.uk.

Along with games, and short articles on the Doctor's friends and enemies, this website is used frequently to report on the latest news in the wider Doctor Who franchise — on television, comics, novels and audio stories.

Chibnall era
to be added