I acquired my first internet access in early 2001 and it was through visiting sites such as Faktaomfartyg and Gary Andrew's Yahoo groups that I realised there were other people out there in `cyber space' interested in ferries and photography. Having a general interest in computers I decided to have a go with building a website using Geocities online page builder. This website was originally hosted by Yahoo Geocities in 2003 as a way I could share my recent pictures with friends and family. Due to the bandwidth restrictions associated with a free Geocities account and having acquired MS FrontPage and an idiots guide book in 2004 I decided to set myself a project of designing a small site by myself and publishing it to my internet service providers 50 megabytes of web space. In the early days it wasn't easy as I didn't really have a clue with what I was doing! Eventually the site started to evolve as my knowledge grew. The aim of the site was to portray the comings and goings of the ferries in the port of Dover through my photography with a few news snippets that I had picked up along the way. It was at this time I started to host pictures from other people. Mainly from my Belgium friend Johnny Jorissen. The old site closed in January 2005 when I upgraded to proper web hosting with 123-reg and acquired the domain name www.doverferryphotos.co.uk. In December 2006 the site was transferred to a new hosting company, Webfusion to offer greater capacity and an increase in bandwidth. Today the site has 1gb of space and contains photographs of not just ferries but cruise ships and just about anything else which floats in the waters of the harbour, news, timetables, internet links and vessel information from myself and a number of regular contributors. These include Nigel Thornton , John Mavin (our roving local reporter) and Johnny Jorissen. For a full list of site contributors please click here. It was thanks to maritime photography and the maiden arrival of the Maersk Delft that I met Nigel Thornton in February 2006 and a good friendship has since developed. In September 2006 Nigel started compiling the hugely popular Past and Present features. These features profile the history of an individual vessel through photographs and as much information as possible. Nigel has also been fundamental in the supply of technical information and vessel histories for the new look vessel pages which are currently appearing on the site. I now like to think of this site as a community project rather than that of my own and with the number of photographic contributors now coming onboard to supply material to the site its growing daily. In November 2006 the Dover Ferry Photos Forum was launched. This has been designed as an additional area to compliment the website. It is easier and quicker for me to submit news to the forum than I can put it through FrontPage. As a consequence of this the news section of the site is no longer updated with all news appearing on the forum. The board has been designed as a meeting place of anybody who is interested in the shipping scene here in Dover. Everybody is welcome to join the forum but we do ask you to register first. The reason for this to keep the spammers out and maintain some form of quality control. In December 2006 the `Dover Patrol' board was opened so local members could post daily pictures, giving a brief snapshot of day to day port life. The forum in now home to over 70 members and has been a great addition to the site. Its nice to see some names on there which are the very people who inspired me in the first place. What does the future hold? At present the site is being overhauled (seems to be as regular as a ferries annual overhaul!) with new information and pictures and custom designed graphics. Nigel has a lot more Past and Present features in the pipeline as well. As for the rest who knows? | 
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