I have been designing, building and managing Island Packet Yacht web sites since 1997 when I built the first one called MDschool.com for the Maryland School of Sailing. This lead me to next build Rock Hall Fleet focused on Island Packet Yachts, the first of its kind. This site was organized around the massive and then famous Rock Hall Island Packet Rendezvous. Starting in 1997, I built a site that helped to organize this event. The site provided photos of the event as well as registration data and committee reports.
- Rock Hall Fleet web site archived here
My second Island Packet Focused web site was built in 1999 around the idea of photo sharing. Back then, this was a complicated process with a web browser and web server. By Christmas of that year, I rolled out IPphotos.com with a site structure for all yacht systems on every Island Packet Yacht model. This site took off very fast and became a real challenge to manage and grow. Today, Island Packet Photos is hosting over 11,000 digital photos and serves thousands of visitors from all over the world.
After Facebook launched in 2004, everyone saw the power of community web sites, and by 2004 my IPphotos.com site already had over 2,000 photos shared by hundreds of IP fleet members. My next Island Packet Yachts web site was the Island Packet Yacht Owners Association at IPYOA.com. This site brought to the web the first true IP community web site. A site more than just a forum, emails or photo sharing, this site idea provided 10+ new collaborative sharing ideas into one community site. The site offers...
- Google Map sharing service for locating Island Packet owners, dealers, and services
- Web links database sharing
- Document sharing application to index all our Island Packet docs
- Shared classified advertising app where owners can mange their own ads without admin need
- A unified portal system collecting and indexing all our resources
- Modern and up to date forum app with photo and document integration
- Video indexing library
- Photo indexing library with bulk uploading process where you can upload 50+ photos at once!
- RSS feeds collecting and indexing all Island Packet Owners' blogs into one location!
- A weather portal for common weather service
- And most of all, a true community app with event registrations and true sharing
This IPYOA.com web site is now serving thousands of page views per month and is very active with the fleet. Within the first year, the fleet added over 2,000 photos in 2 months. Island Packet Yacht owners love to share and this site provides the foundation for that. I am very proud of this work....
My passion is sailing Island Packet Yachts and my enjoyment is building and managing web sites focused on this passion.
If you need a web site, then please see my web design services here...
Sincerely,
Hayden, Island Packet Owner since 1991
