Kiswebs stands for "Keep It Simple WEB Solutions", and to this day that is still our mantra.

Kiswebs website design and development started in 1999 as a general website design and development agency, creating websites for both public sector and private sector clients.

At the time of starting, the web industry was in its infancy and there was a lot of "clever" and "impressive" and often "moving" ( or as we like to call them "distracting") graphics, appearing on a lot of websites.

We soon identified that much of this was a waste of everyones time, and wasn't adding any real value to the websites or those visiting the websites.

To be fair to the designers of the time they were having a great old time to themselves, as they were allowed to express and explore their creative talents.

But were the organisations or the website visitors really benefitting because of these "impressive" website designs?

We didn't think so. We believed that people wanted to get the information they needed as quickly as possible, without the obvious distractions of the time.

Hence why "Kiswebs" ( Keep It Simple WEB Solutions) came to be.

PHARO stands for "Putting Housing Associations Right Online".

Around 2002 we were commissioned independently by 3 separate Housing Associations to design and develop their new websites.

From our discussions with them it became apparent they all had similar needs and wants.

So we asked them if they would like to participate, with us, to develop a solution that was specific to their needs and wants, and the needs and wants of the housing sector as a whole.

They were delighted to help and become part of something unique and special for the sector.

But we didn't just want to create great looking websites specific to the housing sector, we wanted to also enable the housing associations and societies to manage their own websites internally, without having to constantly go back to the designers for updates.

The first version of the PHARO Content Management Solution (CMS) was born.

PHARO was and still is very much a collaboration between Kiswebs and Housing Associations / Societies.

It was created by Kiswebs and Housing Sector organisations, for Housing Sector organisations.

Kiswebs have now helped create hundreds of website solutions for the UK's Housing Sector, all using versions of the PHARO CMS over the last 20+ years.

This has been crucial to not just the development of the PHARO solution but also the Kiswebs team.

The people that know the housing sector best are those that work within it.

Many of the ideas that led to new functionality within PHARO have come directly from our many housing sector clients.

We at Kiswebs have greatly benefitted from soaking up the knowledge and insights that comes directly from the housing association staff we work with on a daily basis.

This means we are extremely well placed to advise our clients in not just design and development but also in many other important legislative aspects you wouldn't necessarily expect a design agency to be familiar with.

Through our thousands of interactions with housing sector staff and housing sector compliance organisations, we have gained great knowledge about and implemented solutions for; Freedom of Information, GDPR, Privacy, Cookies, Recruitment, Board / Committee login areas, Apps, Online Housing Applications, Document Management, Tenant / Resident Portals.