Website Addresses on UK TV ads (90s/00s)

[Steve in Pudsey]

by that point IIRC the whole bbcnc.org.uk thing has been dropped in favour of bbc.co.uk (there is a screenshot of bbcnc.org.uk from 1994 on the Wikipedia page for BBC Online) - they'd had bbc.co.uk for a while but the networking club (that's what the nc stood for, think Facebook of its time) came first.

I'd say AOL was a more apt comparison - bbcnc provided a dial up internet service, so it was arguably more of an ISP with some walled garden content that included discussion boards and the like.

[BBC TV Centre]

I remember the BBC went through a phase in the early noughties of putting their bbc.co.uk on the idents or DOG on screen.

[Cassia Tuna]

I remember the BBC went through a phase in the early noughties of putting their bbc.co.uk on the idents or DOG on screen.

Examples here:

[Mike]

The links don't work because the archive's followed the links to a 1999 copy, and by that point IIRC the whole bbcnc.org.uk thing has been dropped in favour of bbc.co.uk (there is a screenshot of bbcnc.org.uk from 1994 on the Wikipedia page for BBC Online) - they'd had bbc.co.uk for a while but the networking club (that's what the nc stood for, think Facebook of its time) came first.

https://web.archive.org/web/199612212032...bbc.co.uk/ will show you the same page as that you've found for bbcnc.org.uk which does redirect to working pages, albeit 1997 date stamp but of course at that time it wouldn't have been a priority to have what we have now, but more of a "this is the BBC and this is what we do" sort of presence.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01xz2d9

https://www.flickr.com/photos/eyedropper/139647993 (read some of the comments)

[Johnr]

noels.house.party@bbc.co.uk - although back then it would have probably been cheaper to phone or even better use the Freepost address!

I remember going through about 20 different ISPs during the 56K modem days, the most curious of which was BigBlueSky which you made a one off payment and then basically got unlimited 0800 Internet access (although I think only 'off peak' e.g. after 6pm), it didn't end up lasting very long of course!

Then we got 512KB Telewest broadband installed in 2001, which felt like the future back then! Now they're offering gigabit broadband...

[Steve in Pudsey]

I remember one of the Saturday morning shows on ITV, probably Whats Up Doc, using one of those archaic looking Compuserve email address with a bunch of numbers as the first part before the @.

Interesting anecdote here about Points of View being the first BBC programme to get an email address

http://www.offthetelly.co.uk/oldott/www....age_id=482

[ElMarko]

At what point did we start asking people to search for something, probably boosted by SEO, rather than entering a URL. Seems like it was a few years ago.

[James Martin]

Ah, the Dot Com boom. If you didn't stick .com or similar at the end of your company name, you were the boy without a Game Boy.

[AllWillBeWell]

I got a BT Cellnet Trium Geo-@ phone in 2000 when the company's slogan was "Surf the net...surf the BT Cellnet" and I was very much underwhelmed by th

No reason AFAIK for them to be there, much like "small print" just has to legible, doesn't have to be at the bottom, even though it quite often is.

The cynical argument could be to avoid channel DOGs on those channels that don't remove them during ad breaks.
And of course News 24 spawned one top right as well, pity they didn't find something for bottom right for a full house.

Could you imagine this as an onscreen URL?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM_ruBwYGtg

Wow it's like a telephone number! I guess at the time it really was just a bit of fun, no real serious need to get people to remember or visit, unlike today.

@AaronLancs As a side note I'd recommend you update your system, your OS is very old!

[Neil Jones]

Could you imagine this as an onscreen URL?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM_ruBwYGtg

Wow it's like a telephone number! I guess at the time it really was just a bit of fun, no real serious need to get people to remember or visit, unlike today.

Actually it was a by product of the way the system worked. You needed to specify you were using http/web traffic. You couldn't just type in bbcnc.org.uk as the computer/browser wouldn't know what to do with it. The default later came to be to default to that (and later https).

Incidentally the whole www thing isn't and never has been required. Technically www.tvliveforum.com and tvliveforum.com can be two different websites, though if you set the web server configuration up you can send one to the other.

[AllWillBeWell]

Could you imagine this as an onscreen URL?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM_ruBwYGtg

Wow it's like a telephone number! I guess at the time it really was just a bit of fun, no real serious need to get people to remember or visit, unlike today.

Actually it was a by product of the way the system worked. You needed to specify you were using http/web traffic. You couldn't just type in bbcnc.org.uk as the computer/browser wouldn't know what to do with it. The default later came to be to default to that (and later https).

Incidentally the whole www thing isn't and never has been required. Technically www.tvliveforum.com and tvliveforum.com can be two different websites, though if you set the web server configuration up you can send one to the other.

Can't remember the last time I typed "www." and have never typed "http://" accept when a browser refuses to load the "https://" by default and having to add the "s".

Was the UK supposed to get .GB (instead of ".co.uk") back in the 90s but there was some issue? I remember somewhere reading that.

[Neil Jones]

I know we've gone off on a tangent here but .gb was indeed meant for the UK, but somebody created .uk and we stuck with it. I think .gb was used in the early days for government purposes but it fell out of favour.

Incidentally .uk is our domain. .co.uk was intended for commercial entities and purposes, though these days any Tom, Dick or Harry can get one for any purpose they like. There is a big list of the various .uk things on Wiki.

[Inspector Sands]

Actually it was a by product of the way the system worked. You needed to specify you were using http/web traffic. You couldn't just type in bbcnc.org.uk as the computer/browser wouldn't know what to do with it. The default later came to be to default to that (and later https).

Yes, because it could have been other protocols like ftp:// and I seem to remember gopher://?

Incidentally the whole www thing isn't and never has been required. Technically www.tvliveforum.com and tvliveforum.com can be two different websites, though if you set the web server configuration up you can send one to the other.

That was the case with the BBC website for a long while - bbc.co.uk and www.bbc.co.uk were different.

If you went to www.bbc.co.uk/ it went to the pages related to that programme, if you missed off the www it went to the homepage.

This was something overlooked when BBC London launched in 2001 - their logo included the address bbc.co.uk/london but a few weeks in they changed to one that included www when they realised that it didn't work.

[TheMightyTRex]

Bit OT but at its height - 1/2 of all CDs pressed worldwide were AOL CD's

[Neil Jones]

Bit OT but at its height - 1/2 of all CDs pressed worldwide were AOL CD's

And people collect them as well:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/kwxngw/i...ecting-511

Gives new meaning to one man's trash is another man's treasure. Remember binning no end of AOL CDs since the marketing for it was quite aggressive and you could not open a computer magazine without an AOL CD falling out promising so many "free" hours. Never used any of them but now there is a market for them in collector's circles I always whether I had a rare one or not. Probably not but I'll never know so...

Actually it was a by product of the way the system worked. You needed to specify you were using http/web traffic. You couldn't just type in bbcnc.org.uk as the computer/browser wouldn't know what to do with it. The default later came to be to default to that (and later https).

Yes, because it could have been other protocols like ftp:// and I seem to remember gopher://?

Gopher was the "alternative" version to http, but fell out of favour, primarily because the creators wanted to charge for it and there was no charge for http. In that scenario it was obvious what was going to win. But it was more structured, it was kind of like being in a library and you'd have all the books on a certain topic together, that was what Gopher was like - a menu based system (remember when that was a thing on Yahoo Search? Was even an "instructional" video slapped together in whatever year it was where you saw them find things by going through categories, it was referenced on one of the React videos, think it was Teenagers React?)

Potted history on Gopher (no, not Gordon ): https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/0...-protocol/