Today we’ve relaunched the BBC Writersroom website with a vibrant new look and also taken the opportunity to make the content on the site more accessible and hopefully easier to find.
Firstly a bit of background to why we’ve made these changes:
The BBC website consists mainly of 10 ‘Products’ which are connected to different areas of the BBC’s output – News, Sport, Radio, TV etc. (you can find out more about them on this blog by the BBC’s Director of Future Media, Ralph Rivera.)
The BBC Writersroom sits in an unofficial eleventh Product, which is known as ‘Corporate’, alongside areas like Careers, About the BBC, the Media Centre and the BBC Academy. All of the BBC Corporate websites are being moved to a single online platform, using the same content management system, called iSite 2, which is used by the rest of the BBC (you can find out more about that here.)
As far as we’re concerned at the BBC Writersroom this is great news for both us and you. It means technical support for our website is brought inside the BBC rather than relying on external developers. The system for updating our website and blog are now the same and the two are properly integrated with a clear navigation between them. And most importantly it means our website now works correctly on mobile and tablet. This is due to the BBC’s responsive websites, which automatically recognise what device you are using and show the version of the site which is suitable for that device. Having a proper mobile website is crucial for us considering the proportion of internet browsing which is now done on mobile, and to make sure new, emerging, talented writers can find us and write for us.
We’ve also rejigged the content on the site and introduced some new features. These include an area called the Writer’s Lab (following the model of Online Writing Labs), which collects together our resources to help and support your writing. You can watch video interviews we’ve made over the last few years with writers and other industry professionals sharing their advice in our Be Inspired section, in Scriptwriting Essentials you can watch a series of ten videos covering the essentials of writing a successful script and we’ve gathered together collections of resources according to genre in a series of Toolkits. In this area you can also find examples of Script Formats
There is also a new area of the site called Successes to showcase some of the many schemes, competitions, events and commissions that have resulted from the work of the BBC Writersroom. You can watch the resulting content from schemes including Cineast and Writersroom 10/The Parade and we’ll soon be adding a series of Comedy videos that have been produced following Room to Write, which we ran with BBC Scotland's Comedy department last year.
Other popular areas of the website remain unchanged, including Send a Script (with details of our open Script Room system) writing Opportunities from across the industry and our online Script Library.
There may be a few glitches or broken links in the first few days following the relaunch which we’ll be working to fix as soon as possible. Please add any feedback or suggestions in the comments below. And remember to keep up to date with events at the BBC Writersroom on our Blog, by following us on Twitter and by subscribing to our email Newsletter.
