Tim & Matt join forces as Prater Raines Partners with a shared vision to build an affordable online presence for liberal council groups, politicians and campaigners.
BlackBerry releases its first smartphone — Basic web content available on mobile thanks to WAP — eBay acquires PayPal — Amazon Web Services launches with focus on building apps for the company’s e-commerce platform — Pop-up and ad blocking added to new Firefox browser
Our Foci website platform launches to eight Liberal Democrat clients in January. By the end of the year there are 45 sites and it goes on to be used by more than 350 organisations in Britain, Northern Ireland, and Europe.
Bespoke website developments include the New Politics Network, the campaign for Votes at 16, and the Parliamentary Candidates Association.
Safari replaces Internet Explorer for Mac — Opera allows rerendering content without page refresh — Open-source blogging platform WordPress launches — iTunes digital music store opens — UK’s first 3G network offers faster downloads — AOL disbands Netscape division
Our service now includes hosted email, redirection, and email marketing.
The Lib Dem platform reaches 175 customers and we build campaign websites for political reformers Elect The Lords and council tax campaigners Axe The Tax.
O’Reilly hosts Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco — Gmail offers large free online inboxes — Flickr provides high-res image sharing — PHP improves object-oriented support and database access — Launch of Ubuntu simplifies running Linux servers — TheyWorkForYou publishes every word spoken in Parliament
Our first e-commerce site launches for Lib Dem Image, official party supplier of branded campaign materials. The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland chooses us for their rebrand.
Google Reader aggregates news from across the web — First video uploaded to YouTube — Opera dynamically resizes websites to fit screen size — Symfony framework speeds up PHP web app development — WordPress adds rich editing and image uploading — Better traffic tracking thanks to Google Analytics
We move from renting servers to colocating our own equipment in a UK data centre, providing increased redundancy, performance, and resilience to our growing client base. This begins a so far uninterrupted trend for naming servers after Liberal leaders.
Internet Explorer last major browser to introduce tabbed browsing — Facebook, Twitter and Reddit open access to general public — Government accepts online petitions — Google Docs pioneers collaborative editing — jQuery simplifies cross-browser code — Debugging made easier with launch of Firebug
We incorporate as Prater Raines Ltd following sustained growth and provide technical consultancy in addition to developing and hosting web sites, working with magazine publisher IPC Media on the rebuild of their content management system.
Website launches include the National Benevolent Fund for the Aged.
iPhone shuns physical buttons for large multi-touch screen — Safari stakes claim as world’s fastest browser to date — Kindle brings e-books into the mainstream — Netflix launches streaming video — Change.org founded — reCAPTCHA attempts to put an end to spam
Prater Raines becomes a Nominet Registrar to help us offer affordable, reliable domain name registration to all our clients.
We’re delighted to work with Joanna Lumley on the Gurkha Justice Campaign. Our online petition receives over 200,000 signatures and successfully changes the law to give ex-Gurkha’s the right to settle in the UK.
Internet Explorer popularizes private browsing — Samsung builds first Android mobile — Minimalist browser Chrome offers speed, stability — Programming Q&A site Stack Overflow launches — Amazon and Microsoft provide cloud computing — Birth of responsive web design — Accessibility improves with launch of ARIA
Our refurbished office opens in a historic building on Sandgate High Street near Folkestone on Kent’s coast.
We build a bespoke logistics platform for Seymour Transport to plan, load, deliver and invoice for goods including steel for the London Olympics.
New search engine Bing suggests related searches as you type — Safari adds previews of favourite sites while Chrome boasts HTML5 audio and video — Apple introduces push notification API — Stripe simplifies taking e-commerce payments — Cloudflare launches DDoS mitigation and content delivery network
Our next generation Foci 2 website platform for Liberal Democrats opens with new designs and a ground-up rewrite of the code using Symfony.
Apple releases first iPad and new high-res iPhone — Safari adds distraction-free reader view and Chrome bundles built-in PDF viewer — Ordnance Survey releases royalty-free data — WordPress gains multi-site support — Elasticsearch delivers quality full text search to websites
Community interest company Radical Middle Way‘s large library of audio, image and video content gives us the opportunity to create a dynamic and highly interactive website with strong built-in search on the client’s own hosting.
EU demands explicit consent for cookie tracking — Internet Explorer first to support online fonts while Chrome syncs passwords across devices — GoCardless pioneers online direct debits — WooCommerce adds shopping to WordPress — BrowserStack simplifies cross-platform testing — Smartphone sales overtake PCs
Much loved customer support manager Gary joins the team.
We provide development, hosting and fixed price support to a flurry of new clients including the Chartered Institute of Public Relations as well as legal firm Stone Rowe Brewer‘s secure and searchable document storage application.
Internet Explorer controversially enables Do Not Track by default — Safari syncs open tabs across devices — UK Government amalgamates all public service information at gov.uk
FIM Capital (then IOMA FIM) chooses us to take over support of their fully featured investment management system. We offer additional support around busy quarter end dates and a fully featured helpdesk for problem reporting.
With the CIPR we focus on improvements to their members’ only Continuous Professional Development portal, Ladder.
Chrome introduces fullscreen website display on phones and tablets — Performance enhancements to MySQL — Microsoft Office switches to subscription pricing model — Faster 4G mobile services begin operating in the UK
We continue to expand our portfolio of websites for charities and campaigning organisations as well as business websites and online applications.
We work together with FIM Capital to build significant improvements to the system’s automated processes, internal reports and PDF documents sent to customers.
Android adds web page shortcuts on the home screen — Let’s Encrypt disrupts SSL market with goal of securing the whole web
We work with the Association of Palliative Day Services on rebranding and build a new website, forum, and member management system using Drupal and build the Parliamentary Press Gallery‘s new WordPress site.
The CIPR looks to us again to build their curated hub of public relations content Influence and synchronise web data with their OpenEngage (then Integra) CRM software.
Edge replaces Internet Explorer as the default Windows browser — Release of HTTP/2 and rebuild of PHP’s Zend Engine increase web application performance — Google downgrades websites that don’t perform well on mobile — Specifications for accelerated mobile pages and progressive web applications released
We begin working with a number of PR agencies on easily deployed microsites which can be prepared in advance of public announcements and put live at short notice.
All of our customer websites now run over an end-to-end secure HTTPS connection at no additional cost.
Safari remembers recently closed tabs — ECJ rejects earlier Safe Harbour US data sharing decision
Stewart joins us to head up development on our financial services platform for FIM Capital.
We work with independent food writer Major Foodie to secure his hosting and codebase, improve search using Elasticsearch and add a geographical view of his restaurant reviews with Google Maps.
Safari moves to reduce cross-site tracking of users with cookie limitations — Chrome starts to highlight plain old HTTP sites as insecure — Government promises high speed broadband for all
Our online raffle site for the annual Liberal Democrat Draw allows the event to continue despite rising costs making an offline draw unviable. It raises £95,000 over the next five years thanks to a strong new brand and effective email marketing.
We add email your MP functionality into the first of many campaign sites, drawing on multiple sources to build an up to date list of electoral areas and parliamentarians.
General Data Protection Regulation comes into force — WordPress moves to block-based editing — Billions of devices patched for Meltdown/Spectre processor bugs — Face mapping technology raises concern about deep fakes — Cambridge Analytica harvests data from millions of Facebook accounts
The Lib Dem Directory launches, a crowd-sourced (but moderated) online register of groups affiliated with the party.
Existing client Lib Dem Image looks to us to improve the look and feel of their e-commerce site as we help them rebrand and move to WooCommerce.
Campaign to rejoin EU most-signed ever UK Parliament petition, crashes website — Browser engines consolidate as Edge also switches to Blink — Mobile phone speeds rival home broadband with launch of 5G — Strong customer authentication required for online payments — Dark mode added to mobiles and CSS
Search engine expert and content developer Rosa joins us to enhance our WordPress based portfolio of business and campaigning websites.
Our fast, easy to use, mobile friendly Lib Dem app Lighthouse feeds membership data in and out of Salesforce to provide local party officers access to only the data they are entitled to see.
Adobe discontinues Flash — Chrome and Safari concentrate on privacy, security improvements — Pandemic boosts video conferencing — Supply chain disruption and high demand causes chip shortage — PHP speed increases again with just-in-time compilation — EU rejects Privacy Shield US data sharing agreement
We bring together electoral area and census data from a variety of sources so Lib Dem local parties can manage candidate selections and compare member demographics with the area population.
Chrome implements faster navigation to visited pages and defaults address bar to HTTPS — Facebook commits to developing the metaverse — Surge in demand for NFTs — EU enshrines right to repair
Dalton joins us as apprentice developer and quickly becomes an indispensable part of the team.
Our Typo3 based rebuild of the Liberal Democrat website platform feeds into Salesforce, NGP VAN‘s voter database and Eventcube and includes the main party website and hundreds of smaller sites.
Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter — Big tech lays off thousands of workers — Apple retires iPod — Artificial Intelligence dominates headlines with release of ChatGPT
🎉 We’re celebrating 21 years in business and looking forward to many more exciting opportunities yet to come. 🎉