If you're a regular visitor to to Practical Action's website, you may have noticed some changes.

While practicalaction.org has been very successful over the years, there is always room for improvement, and we've taken the opportunity to develop the site - retaining popular features such as Practical Answers and our award-winning classroom resources for Schools, but improving the way we present information about the important technologies that underpin our work and allowing greater opportunities for interaction.

New features

The key changes that you may notice as you explore our site are:

• The eight sections under What We Do have been expanded to 12, with new sections on Reconstruction, Markets, New Technologies, Infrastructure and Waste Management. All programme content will sit within one of these 12 sections, bringing together project work, policy, practice and learning in one place for each topic.
• Easier access to our extensive library of project and technology documents - over 2000 files available through browsable document libraries and an improved search system.
• Improved opportunities to have your say, with forums and on-page commenting throughout the site, in addition to the existing blogs, plus better connections to Twitter and Facebook.
• Clearer navigation, making it easier to find your way to the information you need, quickly.
• Enhanced speed, using a network of servers around the world to improve response times and delivery of large content items such as images, files and video.
• A fresh new look, showcasing our practical solutions to poverty with enhanced use of photographs, and a general smartening up of the site.

Coming soon ...

Later this year we'll be introducing a simpler interface for our popular Practical Answers service, offering free technical advice and information for people working in poverty reduction around the world. Last year Practical Answers' downloads helped over one million people, and we hope that the improved services will allow us to benefit even more in the future.

Continuity

All your favourite features of the Practical Action site will remain, including the blogs, simple introductions to technology for poverty reduction, free technical resources from Practical Answers, classroom materials for teachers and in-depth policy and practical documents.

In addition, all current pages will be retained, although some older content will be archived. These pages and documents will still be accessible via our improved search system, and all old weblinks, bookmarks and URLs will continue to work.

We hope that these changes will make this site easier to use, more enjoyable and ultimately help Practical Action continue in its mission to help people lift themselves out of poverty.

What do you think? Let us know below ...