Outpost Gallifrey

Outpost Gallifrey Outpost Gallifrey front page on 23 August 2006
URL http://www.gallifreyone.com
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Fan site
Registration Free
Owner Shaun Lyon
Created by Shaun Lyon

Outpost Gallifrey was a popular fan website for the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was active as a complete fan site from 1995 until 2007, and now exists as a portal to the still-active parts of the site, including its news page and forums (rebranded as The Doctor Who Forum and The Doctor Who News Page, but still part of the original site architecture). It still exists as a heavily travelled fan site and is still updated to a certain extent.

Main site
Launched on December 11, 1995, the site was created and administered by Shaun Lyon. The site was based in the United States, and associated with the annual Los Angeles Doctor Who convention Gallifrey One. In March 2006, the Los Angeles Times referred to Outpost Gallifrey as "the premier Doctor Who website" in America. In November 2006, an interviewer for bbc.co.uk recommended Outpost Gallifrey as a "terrific fan site", along with the BBC's official Doctor Who website. The site's news page was known in the Doctor Who fan community for being a generally reliable source of news for the programme. Its front page claimed that the website received over 25,000 readers every day, rising to up to 50,000 at times of peak interest in the show such as a series premiere or finale.

The site had numerous sections such as an episode guide (giving cast and crew details and story outlines), feature articles and a reviews section. Reader and member submissions were accepted by Lyon.

On October 9, 2006, Lyon announced that he would no longer be updating the news pages due to the fact that his "heart was no longer in [the constant news collection and editing] anymore." The initial plan was that most of the website would be archived, with only the forum and pages related to the annual Gallifrey One convention continuing to be updated regularly. However, on November 2, 2006, Lyon announced that the site's news page would be returning in a new form, with Lyon as editor-in-chief and a committee of reporters from the US, UK and beyond. The news page was relaunched on 1 December, along with the newly-incorporated Web Guide to Doctor Who, a manually maintained listing of Doctor Who websites. Previously this web guide had been a separate site, edited by Paul Harman over ten years.

On January 21, 2007, the website became affiliated with the popular Doctor Who podcast Doctor Who: Podshock.

On August 27, 2007, Lyon announced that "Outpost Gallifrey as you know it has come to an end." The active parts of the site would be split into four separate websites, with the rest of the site to be archived. Specifically, the Outpost Gallifrey News Page would be relaunched as the Doctor Who News Page (at www.doctorwhonews.com); the Outpost Gallifrey forum would become the Doctor Who Forum (at www.doctorwhoforum.com); the address www.gallifreyone.com would be retained for the Gallifrey One convention in Los Angeles; and the Web Guide to Doctor Who would continue at www.doctorwhowebguide.com. However, it was not until December 1, 2007 that those changes came about, when the front page became a single links page to the various new sites, and Outpost Gallifrey was formally closed as a one-stop site. It exists now as a portal to the subsites.

As of 2008, the component sites of the former Outpost Gallifrey are still referred to by the site's old name.