United's official website at cambridgeunited.com began as an unofficial site in July 1996, when Andrea Thrussell launched a few pages on 'Geocities' with the aim of raising the club's profile and sharing information with other U's supporters.

The first site offered fixture details, player profiles, news updates and some basic contact details for the club, and in the absence of any other CUFC site on the web, the visitor numbers grew steadily and the site itself won a host of website awards and glowing magazine reviews.

Within two years cambridgeunited.com had been adopted by the club as it's "unofficial official site" and club officials - notably then-Secretary Steve Greenall and his assistant Andrew Pincher - helped with press statements and the odd photograph.

The site had undergone one major restructure in November 1999 as the content expanded and Andrea's skills became more advanced, and 2000 it underwent a major relocation when it caught the attention of media group Rivals. Offering free web hosting and links with other major club and sports sites, the site was absorbed into the Rivals network in August 2000 and was one of the new network's leading sites.

Within months there were further developments as the Football League unveiled an Internet rights deal that meant every club must have its own official website to share the financial benefits. The club approached Andrea to set up the club's first official website and in November 2000 the fledgling site was launched, carrying the very first official advertising banners and including input from all areas of the club.

Dramatic changes followed in 2001/02 as FLPTV - a joint-venture between The Football League and Premium TV - saw all clubs in the lower three divisions take a giant step forwards into the digital age. Each club's official website had to be completely overhauled to fit into the PTV template, while mobile, betting, auction and gaming partners were sourced.

By now cambridgeunited.com was attracting hits of up to 60,000 a month with more pages than ever before and was regularly in the top performing 35 sites, outperforming the sites of many much bigger clubs, and Andrea finally gave up her unofficial Rivals site in 2002 due to the conflict of interest.

The official site changed again in 2003 with a fresh new look, while the FLPTV deal was restructured and Football League interactive (FLi) took overall control of the sites, with Premium TV becoming its service provider and hosts for the clubs.

Despite relegation to the Football Conference in 2004/05, the site continued to go from strength to strength. By April 2007 the site was averaging almost 80,000 visits a month and more than 3.8 million pages were viewed in the previous 12 months despite the club's lowly status, meaning that the website continues to outperform many clubs in Leagues One and Two.

The latest relaunch in July 2007 is another massive step forward as, along with the 77 other FLi member clubs, Cambridge United's official site is completely updated in look and navigation and offers yet more features and content than ever before.

We hope you like the new look cambridgeunited.com Any feedback - good or bad - is welcome and can be directed to Andrea at web@cambridge-united.co.uk or you can use the feedback form within the Club section.

Many thanks to the following regular contributors:

Writers:
Andrew Bennett - the alternative match report
Mark Johnson - Travellers' Tales
Matt Ramsay - Blue Square Summary
Henry Mills - Away travel details and directions, youth profiles
Doug Shulman - opposition match previews

Match photographer:
Gordon McMillan - pitchside for every game, home or away, rain or shine!

And special Summer 2007 thanks to Matt Ramsay who deputised for two weeks to allow me to have a rare fortnight off, and Mark Bennett who produced some of the graphics for this new-look website in a very short timescale.

Andrea Thrussell

AT080220