Oops! New Server and Some Teething Problems
NI Ferry Site has moved (again) which led to some people getting an out of date notification this morning.
Blog
In the NI Ferry Site blog we take a look at issues and stories across the wider ferry industry, as well as publish articles that don’t fit neatly into one of the other sections of the site.
My Ferry has been Delayed or Cancelled – Could I Be Entitled to Compensation?
Had your ferry booking cancelled or delayed? Take a look at our handy FREE guide to claiming compensation under EU Rules. You could be entitled to a partial refund or even accommodation costs!
We’re back!
Following major technical difficulties at our web host, NI Ferry Site is now back online.
NI Ferry Site annual refit (2018)
NI Ferry Site is undergoing an update and facelift this year during quarter 1. The majority of changes, including the changes to navigation and layout, will take place during the following 2 weeks (from 21st February 2018). The website will remain available throughout this “refit” period.
Belfast’s New Cruise Terminal – Your Questions Answered.
Update July 2019: According to Belfast Harbour’s annual report for 2018, planning consent was granted for the new cruise terminal at Belfast D3 on Airport Road West during March 2019. Market demand for the facility is being reviewed and “timelines for delivery” considered according to the annual report It’s been a while since plans for a new purpose-built cruise terminal in the Belfast Harbour estate were revealed, however there appears to be a lot of interest (and questions) from visitors to this site about the new development. In this article I will attempt to answer some of those questions. Where will the new cruise terminal be located? The proposed new cruise facility would be located in an area currently designated as D3. This is the area currently lying unused beside the RSPB ‘Belfast WOW’ sanctuary and the opposite side of the river to Stena Line’s Scotland terminal (Victoria Terminal 4). Previously … Read more
Site update/planned downtime (we are moving again)!
Eagle eyed visitors will have noticed a few changes on NI Ferry Site over the past couple of weeks. This has been the result of the ‘in-service refit’ which I previously posted about when we moved server from the US to Germany just under a month ago (it seems longer!). This has taken a lot longer than I had hoped, but as a result things are moving a lot smoother. I have added some proper galleries now and plan to replace all of the photo feature pages with proper galleries over time. This will both improve page loading times and also allow for pictures to be displayed at higher quality on larger screens (and in a light box) rather than being constrained by the width of the page window. Speaking of higher quality images, a number of photographs have been re-uploaded with higher quality versions, and I have also secured … Read more
(Another) site update.
It has been a busy week in terms of site maintenance, even though there hasn’t been a lot of added content to show for it! As previously posted the site moved physical location from the USA to Germany over the weekend. However, other work has been happening behind the scenes as well (and more to be done)
We’re back *
After a short period totally offline, NI Ferry Site is available again at www.niferry.co.uk (which is now the main address for the site) and www.niferry.com. The original url of www.niferry.co.uk will take up to 48 hours to transfer from the original host (though in reality this usually takes just a couple of hours) and so may bring up an error page if used to access the site.
Maintenance update.
Migration to new host about to commence. This is just a quick update to let users know that I am about to start the process of migrating NI Ferry Site to its new European host. As notified earlier in the week, this process may lead to the site becoming unavailable or slow for periods during the next 48 hours or so. This will be the last post before a snapshot of the site contents and database is taken for use on the new host. Any further posts and updates will be from the new host. The process will see the site move from Surpass Hosting based in the US to a much more suitable hosting package with 1&1 internet in Europe. Should there be any unexpected downtime or in the event the site breaks I will update users via the NIFS Facebook Page. Amongst the benefits of the move are a … Read more
NI Ferry Site Planned Maintenance.
In order to allow NI Ferry Site to migrate to a new hosting provider, the website will only be available on an occasional basis this weekend from the evening of Friday 7th April until Sunday night. This is to allow the various mechanisms of the internet to update to the new location, and hopefully the actual time the site is unavailable will be much shorter than this period. This migration will see the physical location of the website move from Florida to a server in Europe with a much faster connection and a superior uptime record. The move should hopefully result in a much better user experience and a lot less down time due to technical problems, which are often a result of the memory restriction imposed on Wordpress by the current hosting provider. A bonus of this move is that the new hosting provider uses 100% green energy. As a … Read more
NI Ferry Site back online
Following a short maintenance period, NI Ferry Site is back online. This planned maintenance was essential to ensure the ongoing security of the website. The maintenance included (but wasn’t restricted to) restoring the website from a clean backup and completely changing the backend of the site. This will make any compromise of the website much more difficult. Additionally several security plugins are now running and I have also done some housekeeping. The site has been resubmitted NIFS to google for review, but it may take a few weeks for “This website may have been hacked” message to disappear from Google search results. Another planned maintenance period may follow in the next couple of weeks as I am considering moving the site to a UK based host which offers more flexibility. However I have yet to make a final decision on this, and will give a few days notice if the … Read more
Some changes in response to the unauthorised use of material on this website.
Following a regrettable incident where an article and accompanying images where copied verbatim from this site and posted to Facebook without any credit or acknowledgement to either the site or any of the photographers, I have taken the decision to watermark all images on the site. In order to post this material to Facebook, the individual circumvented all of the measures already in-place on the website to prevent copyright theft. The alternative to watermarking would be to either take the site down (something that I briefly considered given the theft of written work), which would defeat the object of establishing this website in the first place, or further reduce the resolution of the images displayed on the site. Considerable effort is put in to not only researching the articles on this site, but also securing the permission of the copyright holders of the images prior to their publication where applicable. By copying … Read more
