Build the BBC homepage
The BBC’s brilliant homepage redesign has created quite a stir in the web community
The BBC’s brilliant homepage redesign has created quite a stir in the web community. Now See how it was done!
The BBC’s homepage is a stunning example of first-class Web 2.0 design. As well as presenting an elegant look and feel, it allows users to customise their experience in a genuinely useful way. You can change the content to reflect your interests, the layout to suit your behaviour online and even the colour scheme to please your taste.
It looks complicated, but it’s actually quite easy to do. In this tutorial, we’ll show you exactly how to re-create the BBC’s homepage, using XML feeds from the BBC to provide content. Like the BBC, we will use the jQuery library and its many plug-ins to build a rich interface that allows users to customise the content. We’ll use cookies to remember the settings and layout so that when you return, everything’s where you left it. By the end of this tutorial you’ll know exactly how one of the most talked-about redesigns was done – and have a BBC-style homepage of your very own. Download the project assets here
01 Site definition
Define a new site in Dreamweaver with PHP MySQL enabled – this site requires PHP so the computer/server you build it on must have it available. Copy across the files from the starting_files directory on the CD to your home directory. Open the index.php and the CSS>styles.css files.
02 BBC feeds
We will use XML feeds from the BBC website to add content, added as draggable divs, with rollover images and links at the top and text feeds underneath. We need to create two XSLT documents to format these. Select File>New>XSLT (fragment) and save as ‘image_feeds.xsl’.
03 Image feeds
Select Attach a remote file on the internet, and enter the URL of the BBC News’s XML file: http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/front_page/rss.xml. In Design view, follow rss>channel>item and drag ‘link’, ‘title’ and ‘thumbnail’ onto the canvas from the bindings pane.
04 Repeating images
We want to display multiple images in our panel, so we need to add an XSLT repeat region. In Design view, highlight all of the fields you just dragged onto the page. Then under the XSLT tab, select Repeat Region. Under Select node to repeat under, select item and click OK.
05 List of images
We need to format this data as a list of images. In Code view, enter ul tags outside of the xsl:for-each loop, and inside, add <li> tags with <img> and <a> tags inside them. Set the attributes of these to the values from the XML feed – see Helper Files>image_feeds_step_5.xsl on the CD.
06 First three images
In Code view, click inside <xsl:for-each select=”rss>channel>item”>, and select XSLT>Conditional Region. In the Property Inspector, select the lightning bolt and then Build filter. Click the plus button and enter position() in the where field, <= as the operator and three as the value.
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Very cool and useful tutorial. Thanks a lot.
Did anyone come to success on getting this to work?
Thanks for a challanging experiment idea. Lovely website.
Good that the original creator got the credit too. But without Mark Billen I would not have seen this.
Thanks a million.
Could not get this to work properly! populated with to many errors!
Notice: Undefined index: sport in C:\wamp\www\includes\feed_output.php on line 5
Deprecated: Function set_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated in C:\wamp\www\includes\MM_XSLTransform\MM_XSLTransform.class.php on line 172
Deprecated: Function set_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated in C:\wamp\www\includes\MM_XSLTransform\MM_XSLTransform.class.php on line 187
Deprecated: Function set_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated in C:\wamp\www\includes\MM_XSLTransform\MM_XSLTransform.class.php on line 208
Deprecated: Function set_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated in C:\wamp\www\includes\MM_XSLTransform\MM_XSLTransform.class.php on line 215
Deprecated: Function set_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated in C:\wamp\www\includes\MM_XSLTransform\MM_XSLTransform.class.php on line 298
Deprecated: Function set_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated in C:\wamp\www\includes\MM_XSLTransform\MM_XSLTransform.class.php on line 306
Deprecated: Function set_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated in C:\wamp\www\includes\MM_XSLTransform\MM_XSLTransform.class.php on line 298
Deprecated: Function set_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated in C:\wamp\www\includes\MM_XSLTransform\MM_XSLTransform.class.php on line 306
Deprecated: Function set_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated in C:\wamp\www\includes\MM_XSLTransform\MM_XSLTransform.class.php on line 388
Deprecated: Function set_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated in C:\wamp\www\includes\MM_XSLTransform\MM_XSLTransform.class.php on
NO DREAMWEAVER, NO LIFE.
Got it working but without images. Any please help!!!!!
Interesting idea.
I’ve found that IE8 causes a few funnies unless you run in compatibility mode … so a slight rejig to use the latest versions of jQuery & jQuery UI is required.
… that said, the premise still works a treat and the rework is educational in itself
Excellent tutorial.
Nice tutorial and BBC did a fantastic job with the redesign! Keep up the good work!
The download seems to be invalid – gives me message saying zip is empty:(
Very good work! Looks like a challenge for sure. I think I’ll give it a shot; looks like a lot can be learned from this!!
The BBC site is great and think the site will show the first leaps in adopting new ways in the future on web design, web technology and website useability.
http://www.courtesycouriers.co.uk/index.php
having an issue with the following:
MM_XSLTransform error.
Transformation Error.
variable ‘limit’ not found in file includes/text_feeds.xsl
<!DOCTYPE xsl:stylesheet [
]>
Please help as i want to use your template.
@Richard
The issue is within your text_feeds.xsl page.
There is an error in the code. Where it reads:
display:none
You need to remove the $ from the $limit variable. So it reads:
display:none
This fixed the error on mine. Good luck
PS
Great walkthrough, thanks guys.
@ Richard
Hmmmm comments page doesnt seem to want to display code. Basically just remove the $ sign so that it just says “position() > limit”
I too had everything working except the images… As I hadn’t used feeds or transformation it took quite a while to work out what was wrong…. In the end I found it….
image_feeds.xsl
Line 13
Add a ‘/’ after http://search.yahoo.com/mrss so the line reads…
Apparently it’s the reference to Yahoo that enables the media:thumbnail part of to work…
Hope this helps
J
Ooops! Where’s my code gone? Lets try again… The line should read…
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/">
please I need a template for this tutorial.I really want to customize it for my project
To get started with this , have a look at the JQuery site , at http://www.jquery.com. Then look for the Sortable plugin. This has a a whole set of pre-written components that you need to download, as well as core JQuery and the example. The key one is Widgets, and after you set up all the JQuery code and JQuery CSS links, then your skeleton HTML “portlet” file will
come alive as the “portlet” s are styled and drag/drop and sorting events
kick in. Then you can add more exotic content and even add in ASP.NET controls inside the content to extend it.
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