Under One Roof was now online after 5 months of development, all shiney and new.
Now the worries, the fears and the questions started. Would anyone join?, would anyone post an exchange advert if they did?, could anybody find the site?, had we wasted our time?, was if worth it and would the site ever appear in google?
At this time UOR was suffering from the same problems faced by all new council house exchange sites. The structure of the site was in place but it had very few members and even fewer adverts. Most of the boards were empty which would in itself put off the few members we had from posting an advert, or even returning to the site. The internet is littered with sites that never got beyond this stage and which gradually fade away, there was a real possibility that UOR could go the same way.
Gradually the number of members began to build and the team got very excited when we reached 100! Also more adverts were being posted and more counties had at least one advert within them. The numbers joining UOR was also rising, word was getting out because still the site was very low in the major search engines.
One of the first people to join the site, Jen who was our 9th member became one of our greatest supporters and has now been a valuable part of the UOR team for a couple of years. Jen was the first person added to the team since the launch.
Towards the end of 2006 a milestone was passed when UOR finally had at least one advert on every county board. Even the tiny county of Rutland, which at that time had it's own board, had an advert on it.
On reaching it's first birthday in March 2007 our early questions had all been answered, membership was over 6000, more and more people were joining, google knew who we were and perhaps most importantly our members were recommending us to their friends.
Under One Roof was now a proper exchange site and it had somewhere to go.
