The history of the website

The initial idea followed a surprise letter from Mike Cresser, a former NAIAD shipmate who managed to locate an ex-shipmate, Tim O'Leary, together with some other members of 3MP Mess. A small reunion followed in 2000 together with the posting of a very basic website.  This was little more than a visitor's book and front-page.  Not long after, Tim left the country for 3-years and the site had to fend for itself.  When he returned he was surprised to find around 40 entries in the visitor's book and over 1,000 recorded visits logged on the homepage.  This prompted a re-think and the site received a modest update together with the registration of the domain name hmsnaiad.co.uk.

Following the update it was again left dormant for 3-years and the rights to hmsnaiad.co.uk expired, together with any associate email adresses. This period also saw the demise of the first visitor's book in 2005, as the hosting company changed their administration procedures and access to the data was withdrawn, but this has since been recovered.

The domain hmsnaiad.co.uk is registered by the webmaster who has sole rights of ownership. The site remains a non-profit making, non-commercial venture, with all financial costs borne by the Webmaster. It is hoped that there will be facility shortly where members can donate towards the site's upkeep, but this will be on purely voluntary basis

How the site runs

Presently, the webmaster is the sole administrator and owner of the rights to hmsnaiad.co.uk.  The site content has recently moved for the fourth time since inception, starting out from a free site provided by Yahoo, via hosting servers of MonteCarloHosting in Canada. That move had many advantages, as the Monte Carlo servers provided support for many new features, one of which provided the ability to host a forum.  Subsequently the Naiad members page has been withdrawn and the visitors book is now 'Read Only' until further work on the web-site is completed.

The website is currently hosted by 1&1 Web Hosting and administered by Roy Crawford who recently volunteered to take over administration of the website after attending the 2010 reunion in Birmingham. It is hoped that a number of the original features will be re-established including the photo gallery, since all the original content has been retained for re-publication to the website.

The website is expected to continue to evolve and be a valuable resource for anyone with an interest in HMS Naiad.

HMS Naiad Webmaster. March 2011

Acknowledgments: Thanks to Mike Cresser for the inspiration to start the Naiad website and to all those who have visited and emailed their appreciation and encouragement - it's your site and develops with the assistance of visiting members.