Who built the Skillfair site?

Our website had been around for quite a while, having gone live originally in 2002 - at that time most e-commerce sites were hand built, although standard shopping carts were coming in and Microsofts' ASP .NET technology was starting to gain some acceptance. People were still arguing about issues such as the use of flash and frames and worrying about whether users on dial-up modems would be able to access sites.

Things have changed a lot since then and one of the key reasons for a re-write was to move to newer technology so we can provide a richer and more flexible interface and make it easier for our team and our members to add new content to the site. The roadmap for future developments is on the Skillfair blog and we're always interested in suggestions for new features and functionality.

The site is quite heavily used as an information source so our challenge was to upgrade and refresh the site without changing the interface too much or disrupting people's access to the information and projects they need. We had to take into account the thousands of links that exist on search engines to our site, links from partner organisations and our email alert system as well as worrying about the site looks to new visitors and making it appealing to clients.

In the end I think we've arrived at a new site that is fresh and easy to use - but still has a professional and quality driven approach to what is a fairly sophisticated audience. Our thanks are due in no particular order to;

Tony Hibbs of Quaike - conceptual and graphic design

Matt Howeson & Daniel Orchard of 3internet  - web design, .NET development and content management system

Nick Wilding and the team at PerfectArc for our Google Map of Consultants

and last, but by no means least, the Skillfair team who put in untold hours of testing, editing content and taking calls about problems once we went live.