Page Not Found

Published on 28 October 2003 in Internet, Web Development, Work, BBC, bbc.co.uk, web development

One of my last tasks as a Client Side Developer at the BBC has now snook online – unloved and unnoticed by many. However I am proud to say right here, right now, that I, yes me, Andrew Paul Bowden, did design and code the BBC’s 404 page. You can see it now by simply going to a page that doesn’t exist. www.bbc.co.uk/andrewisfantastic will (sadly) work.

As a task it was torturous. I had the remit of doing whatever I felt appropriate to reduce the original size of the page from something silly like 25k to under 10k.

The results were spectacular. Code went down to 7.5k or something, and I didn’t even have to get rid of the “Page Not Found” title.

As a legacy I feel it’s an appropriate one. The page that no one should ever see, was coded by none other than… me.

Sums up my entire career at the BBC really.