Media UK

Media UK

Media UK is the UK's free, independent, media directory.

It was started in November 1994 by its owner, James Cridland, while he was working at The Pulse of West Yorkshire. Designed to be a directory of email addresses for media, it had two entries, and was published in a CompuServe forum as a Windows Write file.

In 1995, it was published online, using webspace kindly given by the Manchester Computing Centre, with the snappy URL of www.mcc.ac.uk/~jcridlan/ukmedia/

A chance meeting with Carol Dukes, then working for Emap Online, allowed the website to be hosted on an Emap server, using www.whatson.com/ukmedia - but it was soon recognised that a hostname would be a golly good plan.

Old Media UK logo from 1997

ukmedia.com had, by this stage, gone; so a website was formed in around 1997, using the now familiar mediauk.com address, on a machine in the ISP 'Cerbernet', which was based in a very hot room in London's Denmark Street. (The heat was generated by the PCs, sitting on a set of wooden shelves running down the office). And here's where Media UK stayed for a while - using a server based on Unix, and some Perl scripts. Technically, the website was created using Microsoft Access, updated every week or so from emails sent in, and then manually regenerated and every single page uploaded.

In early 2000, a software company called Felspar, based just a few minutes' walk away from Cerbernet in St Martin's Lane, expressed interest in Media UK. 'MediaUK.com Ltd' was formed, and, while hosting continued at Cerbernet, a new Windows server was added to put the entire website in a 'proper' database. Running a proprietary piece of software called TeamViews, the website was given a professional makeover, a new logo (which Media UK uses to this day), and a complete rebuild of the database information. During this time, Media UK's forums were created, and were instantly successful.

Felspar went into liquidation in 2001 - and with it, MediaUK.com Ltd. For a while, the forums, at least, were hosted on a laptop, at the end of an ADSL line. This probably wasn't the best bet - and the website went back to professional hosting - first with a company run by Jon Salman, then Digital Spy.

The directory was rebuilt - the radio section manually (hence the ID numbers beginning with '1'), and the other sections from the TeamViews system. Tools were given for others to keep the website updated, including an email handling system. In 2002, after consistent abuse, the Media UK forums were closed, and the 'discussions' system, using new software and a strictly-enforced real-name policy, were opened a few months later.

In 2004, Media UK moved to Linom Hosting, a private company based on the Isle of Wight.

Media UK's collaboratively-edited wiki, "The Knowledge", was added in April 2005.