New blackbox site- Redesign, Rebuild or Reskin?

The new Blackbox E-Marketing website is not just a redesign, its a complete rebuild. So whats the difference between a redesign and a rebuild? 

A simplistic way of categorising the different types of webdesign refresh is as follows:

  

Reskin: 

This is when a websites code and structure remain unchanged, its just the graphics assets and stylesheets that are affected. This can be useful for changes in logo or corporate branding. Reskins are very quick and cheap to do. Changing a font style throughout a website can just involve one small change in one line of code in a .css file.

Redesign:

A redesign involved rebuilding the 'front end' of the website - ie the stuff that the consumer sees when loading the website into their browser. In most cases, there is no change to the structure of the website - the organisation of pages and folders in the website remain that same. The advantage of trying the keep the structure is that search engines and sites with backlinks to pages within your website will continue to work as normal.

Rebuild:

A site rebuild involves changing the functionality or back end code of the website. In some cases, you can have a site rebuild with no visible changes to the front end of the website, for example when using a different content management system to create the same website. Rebuilds are more technically involved, but do have the advantage in that unwanted legacy code can be eliminated and the site can be more efficient as a result.