Forumskin started in 2002 as a specialist in providing bespoke, top-notch forum designs. It enjoyed brisk, continuous growth year after year.

In 2010 however, after more than a year into the Great Recession of the US (which started in late 2008) that found several of our clients unable to fulfill obligations, Forumskin itself underwent a series of events that could only be described as a “perfect storm”.

First, our small but very capable coding team left the company en masse to pursue other opportunities, leaving a skeleton crew that was saddled with the workload of the team. This happened when we had a maximum load of projects pending that required completion.

Second, our efforts to hire a new team quickly, initially showed some promise. However, our specialty usually required new coders to undergo a 90-day intensive training regime before being allowed to touch client/production projects.

This was a double-whammy because our coders are full-timers and as such, training required ongoing salaries, which ate up on our overhead, while trainees could not yet be allowed to work on full projects. What’s more, while we utilize the Internet and technology in our training, this still required time from the remaining skeleton crew to provide guidance and training; further straining an already deep backlog.

Furthermore, our skeleton crew was unable to cope with the time constraints and workload, such that while we utilized all other methods to speedily obtain resources for coding– including trying freelancers, outsourced help, forum coding specialists and the like– all of these were unable to either fulfill the required standards, or were simply unable to provide the required service based on our (artwork) designs required to be translated into code.

Third and finally, was a prolonged personal family tragedy that befell the company’s founder and creative director, which prolonged new project schedules, altogether resulting in delayed projects and angry customers.
We vowed that nothing like this would ever happen again. As such, we have instituted a new process that not only ensures we learned from this experience, never let it happen again, and henceforward make our process so we consistently provide not only the beautiful effective designs we are known for, but also do them in a timely manner without the delays we underwent in 2010-2011.

Today, late in 2012, these said policies have been in full swing since early in the year, and to date has proven to work flawlessly, and as such, we are now poised to continue improving further, with the knowledge that our process works extremely well, and without ever repeating the mistakes of the past.

These include (but are not limited to) the following highlights:

Limiting concurrent ongoing projects. Instead of an average of eight ongoing projects per coder, we are going to be doing only two (2) projects at any given time.

Retaining our training regime, but using even more effective methods for even deeper training with faster turnaround. Our dedication to constant and a perpetual learning process (new technologies, techniques, etc.) naturally continues to evolve.

Redundancy. Employing internal as well as outside support for coding, in case contingencies or overflow events ever occur. This latter part has not occurred over the past year, but remain in place anyway in the off chance that the workload requires it.

Simplified and Better Project Management

Larger base of software and platform support. Forum, CMS and other platforms.

These and more constitute what is effectively a wholly new Forumskin that retains the key and successful elements that have made our company a favorite for high-end forum design customers, but also having learned from our mistakes and experience, are stronger, better and wiser for them. Attributes we utilize to full effect in each of our projects.

We thank you for your understanding and continued support during our most difficult of times, and we are dedicated to providing unparalleled results and customer happiness.