Making history

From the basic text-driven staff-only content website
in 1996, gulfnews.com has grown into the most widely read uae-based news site providing the latest in news and views

September 1, 1996, was a milestone for Gulf News because it was the day it became one of the first newspapers in the Middle East to go online.

The launch came two months after Hotmail started providing free e-mail to everyone; barely a year after Etisalat hosted the first internet service in the UAE and five years after Tim Berners-Lee invented the web software.

Over the past 12 years, gulfnews.com has gone through constant transformations and identity changes.

It started as a very basic, text-driven and staff-only content website, with a single home page picture, either linked to a story or just as a stand-alone. It featured stories on the UAE, the Gulf and the world. It also had special sections on business, sports and opinion.

Origin of gulfnews.com

It all started one afternoon on July 29, 1996 when my boss, then Administrative Editor Nicholas Coates, asked me to attend a seminar sponsored by Gulf News management.

I was told that I was one of two employees from the library department who would be trained on how to access the internet. My primary focus was to learn how to receive and send e-mails since the plan was for us to take charge of the Gulf News editorial e-mails.

Though I had already read about it a few months before, I only saw what internet pages looked like one week before our training when our engineers installed two personal computers exclusively for web access in the editorial newsroom.

There was so much hype about the internet in the office - I was very keen to know more. During our training period, I even stayed back at the office till early morning for a week just to study HTML writing.

I was surprised and pleased when our internet consultant taught me more about website management as by that point I had been asked to maintain the fledgling website.

Although very basic at the time of launch, gulfnews.com was nevertheless considered ‘advanced' bearing in mind the technology available then. In fact, the site won the Snap! Online's ‘Best of the Web' award in 1997 for its original content.

Barely a couple of years after its successful launch, the website had great potential to be recognised in its own right. However, it was still treated as an extension of the newspaper.

Back then, stories were not published on the internet first, because the online version should never ‘scoop' the print edition. The site also offered few interactive opportunities for online visitors, apart from the occasional online poll that started in August 1999.

As a librarian, maintaining gulfnews.com then was only a part-time job for me. Together with a colleague (also from the library) I would upload an average of 45 stories in the morning and then leave it at that until the next day. On Fridays, the site would not get updated at all. The articles were combined by section in a single page.

A new look

On September 1, 1997, the site was redesigned. It had more pictures and an expanded navigation menu that linked stories with different sections. The coverage was more extensive, noticeably with the introduction of a ‘previous editions' search facility.

The site also included sections on shipping log, Forex, gold and silver prices in the Gulf, weather as well as a UAE diary consisting of prayer timings, late-night pharmacies and cinema guides.

In May 1999, Gulf News management wanted another design for the online edition to keep pace with the fast-growing internet technology. This time it was done in-house.

The site employed a drop-down menu design using Java Scripts and colourful navigation buttons. Additional features were included, such as a magazine photo feature section, astrology columns, recipes, and columns on view point and letters. For the first time the phrase ‘Gulf News online' was used.

Before then the site had always been referred to as the ‘Gulf News web edition'. However, the new site proved unpopular due to limited access to the then new technology of Java Script within the country. After listening to the feedback from its readers, gulfnews.com removed the new menus and went back to basics in July 1999.

A redesigned and comprehensive site was launched in October 2000. It featured a search facility for the first time, giving online readers a chance to look for previous stories.

Another redesign of the site in 2004 began to resemble the current version with a similar colour scheme and look. It was at this point that the site began to grow organically into the user-focused, breaking news site that we see today.

Now the website is immediately updated with breaking news. The site has become a reliable source of the latest news - both local and international coverage - not only for the people in the UAE and worldwide but also for the Gulf News editorial team. There is far more interactivity with readers having many ways to air their views, take part in polls and even contribute photos.

The future is wide open and I am sure, whatever innovations happen in the online world, gulfnews.com will try its best to be at the forefront.