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| | | August 2008 | | |
| | | 1st August 2008 | New Photos: Invicta (III) Past and Present and Canterbury (II) Past and Present courtesy of Stéphane Poulain. Information: The website is now carrying an RSS news feed which mirrors the contents of this page. The advantages of RSS is that you can receive the latest site updates without having to visit the site.
RSS is now natively supported in both Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox without the need for separate news reader software. The feed itself should be auto discoverable by both of these web browsers via the homepage. This symbol  should appear on the menu bar in IE7 and in the address bar of Mozilla Firefox to show a feed is present.
If your browser doesn't detect the feed it can be found and subscribed to at
http://feeds.rapidfeeds.com/12479/
For those of you who are not technically minded an explanation of RSS can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss
Ray Goodfellow | | |
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| | | July 2008 | | |
| | | 31st July 2008 | New Page: Canterbury (II) Past and Present New Page: Invicta (III) Past and Present New Page: Cedric Hackes Photographic Guide to Zeebrugge New Photos: Caledonian Princess Past and Present New Photos: The Year So Far, My Photographic Review | | |
| | | 29th July 2008 | New Page: Caledonian Princess Past and Present New Photo: Koningin Fabiola Past and Present courtesy of Arne Pyson. | | |
| | | 26th July 2008 | New Photos: Sisters, Maersk Delft, Maid of Kent, Horsa, Compiegne, Earl Leofric all courtesy of Stéphane Poulain. New Page: Koningin Fabiola Past and Present | | |
| | | 25th July 2008 | New Page: Koning Albert Past and Present New Page: Prince Philippe (II) Past and Present New Page: Roi Leopold (III) Past and Present New Page: Koningin Elisabeth Past and Present New Page: Reine Astrid (I) Past and Present New Page: St David Past and Present New Photos: Seafrance Moliere, Pride of Dover, Gardenia, Maersk Dover and Maersk Dunkerque | | |
| | | 24th July 2008 | New Page: Cedric Hackes Photographic Guide to Oostende New Photos: The Year So Far, My Photographic Review | | |
| | | 22nd July 2008 | New Page: David Church Brief History, | | |
| | | 21stJuly 2008 | New Photos: The Year So Far, My Photographic Review | | |
| | | 12th July 2008 | New Photos: The Year So Far, My Photographic Review | | |
| | | 11th July 2008 | New Pages: Carnival Splendor Past and Present and a personal request from the Port of Dover Police - Delta 99 Brief History | | |
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| | | April 2008 | | |
| | | 26th April 2008 | Great Forum News: Forum News: Firstly may I take this opportunity of thanking those of you who have taken the time to fill out your information in the online form at www.doverferryphotos.co.uk. This has enabled me to keep many of you updated on the technical problems our forums have faced over the past couple of weeks. I would also like to say a big thank you all of you for all your kind words of support, both myself and the moderator's team have been deeply touched by the sheer enthusiasm to keep the forums going. Our forum host's, Iforumer, have announced that there hosting services should resume on the 29th April 2008 but due to the way the forum's collapsed in the first place I have to say I am not holding my breath on this one. Despite the date quoted above our forum's server is now back online and I can now access the boards as an Administrator. The best bit of news is that all our data is currently intact! The boards themselves are running a lot quicker and seem more stable than they have been for a long time. How long they will stay like this is anybodies guess as Iforumer's support forums and associated support aid's are still offline which means we are not getting any answers to the questions all board owners have been asking, for example what is the future for our boards? I am hoping this will change after the 29th. I have requested a backup of our forums database and the hosts have given me access to the software to do this but the bad news is the login details they have supplied didn't work so I can't backup the forums at present. I have raised a second support call with them with regards to this but 48 hours have now passed and they still haven't responded to my query. I am hoping they may respond once they have all there forums back online on the 29th of April. In an endeavour to get our boards reopened as soon as possible we have been through the forums and deleted a number of members. Now this may sound a bit of a drastic step but all the accounts we have deleted have been where people have joined up but never actually logged into the forums. As our forum's server is now back online my aim is to reopen the forums ahead of Iforumer's official date of the 29th April . If all goes to plan our forum will reopen by 18:00 (GMT) on the 27th April 2008. I can't guarantee how successful this will be but we want you to have your forums back as soon as possible, from the feedback received there is a huge demand for a speedy return. Iforumer is a free hosting service which makes money by placing Google Adverts on the forums pages. It was due to it's free nature that Iforumer was chosen to host our forums back in 2006. There seemed little/no point in paying for a service which may not have been used. If only we had known then just how popular our forums would have become! My aim is to move away from Iforumer as soon as we possibly can. The way this whole situation has been handled by Iforumer has been a disaster for us and you as members deserve a better service. At the end of the day this is your community as much as it is ours. Paul Bilbrough from www.ferryenthusiasts.co.uk has been a great help since the failure of our forums offering his technical help to get us back up and running. Paul has been researching various options that will eventually enable us to host our own forum's using the popular phpbb forum software. We still have a few technical hurdles to overcome but rest assured we will be moving in the near future, hopefully with all our data from Iforumer. I will of course keep all members updated on the planned move over the coming weeks. Once again on behalf of myself and the moderator's team I would like to thank you for your continued support and I hope our recent troubles are behind us. | | |
| | | 22nd April 2008 | Forum News: I am afraid the forums are still currently offline and it looks a strong possibility that our hosts have gone offline, possibly permanently. (please see yesterday's posting) I know this isn't the news people want to hear and it is a big set back for the whole team, it's like two years hard work has been destroyed because the hosts couldn't keep on top of things!! As a consequence of the failure we have lost all contact and username information for all our registered members. To this end a form has been added to the site this evening to enable registered users to send us there email and username details so we can keep them updated on the situation. This form can be accessed here (Please note that all email addresses submitted will only be used to keep you updated on the forum situation) From the feedback I have received via email from members this evening it looks like we still have a lot of support out there to continue with the service and I would like to assure you it will return in one way or another. The re-launch plan's are currently at an early stage and they are all dependent on what happens with the current hosts. If the host does come back I will retrieve a database backup as soon as possible and then we will move to a new host. If we can't get a backup of the database we will endeavour to start up a new forum as soon as possible. At the moment we are investigating bringing the forum hosting `in house' running on the same server as the main website. There are a number of technical hurdles to overcome before this happens and I would like to thank Paul from http://www.ferryenthusiasts.co.uk/ for offering to help us with this side of things. It just leaves me to apologise to everybody once again and I will update this page as soon as I have some definitive information. Ray Goodfellow, Webmaster and (ex) Forum Administrator. | | |
| | | 21st April 2008 | Forum News: I am afraid there have been a number of technical issues with the hosts servers over the last couple of weeks which have seen the eventual collapse of Iforumer's affiliate hosting company Forum5. Since the collapse of the Forum5 network there have been some severe speed issues effecting those forums running on the Iforumer server and as of tonight there appears to be yet another intermittent fault with iforumer's hosting services which means the forums may be unavailable at present. Presently none of Iforumer's customers (including myself!) know what is happening with the service as the support team seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth and are not responding to any queries. I am currently trying to get a back up of the forums database but due to the lack of support this is becoming increasingly difficult. The eventual aim would be to transfer our forums to a new free host or to host the forums ourselves. I am keeping my fingers crossed for obvious reasons as we have built up a really good community here with over 230 members and a lot of information and I would hate to loose it but there maybe a strong possibility of this happening. So once again on behalf of myself and the moderator team I would like to apologise for these ongoing problems and I hope to bring some better news in the coming weeks. Ray Goodfellow, Webmaster and Forum Administrator. | | |
| | | 13th April 2008 | New Pages: DHB tugs Diligent and Dominant Past and Present Brief Histories Forum News: The forums have now re-opened following yesterdays server failure. | | |
| | | 12th April 2008 | Forum News: Due to a server failure the forums are currently offline and unavailable. Further updates will appear here. Ray Goodfellow, Webmaster and Forum Administrator. New Pages: DHB tugs Deft and Dextrous Past and Present Brief Histories | | |
| | | 11th April 2008 | New Page: MSC Poesia Past and Present Brief History New Article: Nigel Thornton takes us back in time to take a closer look at the Drive-on/Drive-off revolution of 1952-1953. Forum News: There appears to be some severe speed issues currently effecting the forums which means some boards are taking an age to load or are not loading at all. This appears to be a fault effecting all the boards hosted by our forum hosts Iforumer. A support ticket has been raised and I will post further updates here as soon as I know what is happening. Ray Goodfellow, Webmaster and Forum Administrator. | | |
| | | 10th April 2008 | New Article: Nigel Thornton takes us back in time to take a closer look at the original train ferry dock here in Dover. New Photos: The Year So Far, My Photographic Review | | |
| | | 9th April 2008 | New Article: Introducing a new article compiled by one of our regular website contributors John Mavin. In this article we look at the tragic loss of the HMS Glatton in the port of Dover on the 16th September 1918. | | |
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| | | March 2008 | | |
| | | 29th March 2008 | New Photographs from Pascal have been added to the newly renamed Seafrance Moliere Past and Present (former Superfast X/Jean Nicoli) | | |
| | | 25th March 2008 | New Photographs and commentary from Ed Connell (Ships in the Port of Dover) depicting the European Endeavour during her recent `line parting' incident at Dover's Eastern Docks. Service Update: The Guestbook has now been incorporated into the main website | | |
| | | 24th March 2008 | New Pages: Presenting the second part of our Easter Extravaganza update please find Past and Present files for the Valencay, Vilandry and the Princesse Astrid. | | |
| | | 23rd March 2008 | Information: I would first like to take this opportunity of wishing you all a Happy Easter and I would just like to give you a quick update on where we are. As many of you have noticed there have been no updates to the site since January but I am afraid I have been having a few personal problems that have taken precedence over the site. With things gradually getting back to normal it's time to start catching up with other things and as a consequence I have started adding some new material to the site. A few months ago we mentioned the possibility of launching a new section looking at the history of Dover and it's associated ports. A lot of research has been made in this area but we have opened a huge can of worms with this one due to the amount of history involved. So as a consequence I have decided to release the articles under the current `Port related articles' menu item rather than create a whole new mini site. The majority of the port articles will be photographic based focusing on a particular area of a port showing how things have evolved over the years. Now today's long awaited updates........ New Pages: Autocarrier, Stena Danica, Roi Baudouin, Viking IV and Falaise Past and Presents. Page Updates: Pride of Canterbury and European Endeavour. New Photographs from Mark Leiper added to the Midnight Merchant, Northern Merchant and Dawn Merchant Past and Present files | | |
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| | | January 2008 | | |
| | | 26th January 2008 | Information: There is a major problem effecting the forum system today which means they are currently unavailable. I would like to apologise for this outage but it is beyond my control. The issue is currently under investigation and I would kindly ask that you do not contact me with regards to this matter. If and when any news is available I will post it here. UPDATE @ 17:00 - The forums now appear to be back up and operational. Once again apologies to all registered users for the outage but it was beyond my control. Cheers Ray | | |
| | | 24th January 2008 | New Page: Viking Viscount Past and Present | | |
| | | 23rd January 2008 | Information: Following feedback from several website visitors I have decided to retire the old website colours of varying shades of blue and have replaced them with a silver and grey scheme. In addition to this all the sites page banners and have been redesigned and optimised for quicker downloading times. The old blue colour scheme was starting to look a little tired and due to the use of white text on light blue backgrounds it was getting increasingly hard to read in places as well (trust me as a wearer of glasses I know this fact!) I hope the new colour scheme goes down a lot better than Norfolk Lines new .com livery as seen on the Delft! (see the link below and the homepage) Some areas of the site may be a little slow in loading at the moment due to a scripting issue caused after transferring the site from FrontPage XP to FrontPage 2003. These issues should be rectified in the next couple of days so please bear with me. New Photographs: European Endeavour and Maersk Delft Past and Presents | | |
| | | 22nd January 2008 | New Photographs added to the following Past and Present files thanks to Brian Pawley: St Eloi, Cote D Azur, European Clearway, European Endeavour, European Highway, European Seaway, Hengist, Pride of Bruges, Pride of Dover, Pride of Sandwich, Stena Cambria, Stena Parisien. I consider these last photographs from Brian to be absolute gems as they not only show the Pride of Hythe (FE V) in the inner docks at Dover and also at North Shields for refit but they also portray both the Pride of Hythe (FE V) and Pride of Canterbury (FE VIII) whilst they were laid up at Tilbury awaiting disposal following the demise of P&O's Dover to Boulogne service. New Photographs added to the following Past and Present files thanks to `ferryboy': Pride of Dover, Stena Cambria, Stena Challenger and SpeedOne New Page: Jean Nicoli / Seafrance ? Past and Present | | |
| | | 21st January 2008 | New Pages: Prins Philippe Past and Present and Transcontainer I Past and Present | | |
| | | 13th January 2008 | New Photos: The Year So Far, My Photographic Review | | |
| | | 9th January 2008 | New Page: 2007 News Review - With all news items now being posted to the Dover Ferry Photos forum instead of the website I thought it would be handy to have an overview of the main news events from Dover in 2007. The forum has had over 5000 messages posted in the last 12 months so I have summarised only the main events of 2007. It just leaves me to wish all visitors/members a Happy New Year. All the best Ray | | |
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