Today I heard about a new weblog set up for the BBC. http://blogs.bbc.co.uk/ takes to you to "Nick Robinson's Newslog". My first impression when I saw this page was: I've seen this before... I headed over to StopDesign, by Douglas Bowman, and I'm sure you can see the striking similarities.

Below are two screenshot compilations (of homepage and post pages combined), from both sites.

Screenshot of the BBC Blogs website

Screenshot of StopDesign.com

As you can see the comments icons are exactly the same, and the permalink icons are pretty similar. Their placement range-left, after a horizontal rule and separated by a pipe are common on many blogs, but the similarities in detail are obvious.

The icons are not the only similarities between these website. Another section which caught my attention was the comments area. The coloured, margined containers, the left padding within the container, the icon, numbering type and post information are pretty identical between the sites.

After looking around the BBC website a little more, I noticed other obvious similarities. Most notably the main content and side bar widths and partitions, the dark-coloured box on the top right of the sidebar column and the "Latest" heading on the homepages.

StopDesign is using MovableType for it's publishing system, and the BBC blog mentions Six Apart Ltd (the team that created Movabletype) below the comments area. So, they're using the same content management system, however, they should not look this similar...hmmm