The History of Steamboats.org (part 2)

Save the Queens! The break-through for Steamboats.org visitors-wise came in 2001 when AMCV filed for chapter 11, all three Queens had a very uncertain future and employees lost their jobs, not having a chance to stay in contact and share information about the proceedings. That's when we started the message board which immediately became the central place for sharing information about the future of the boats.

This message board is still existing (Steamboats.org Message Board) with all its messages but is not active any more but was replaced by a more flexible and secure software which is the today's steamboats.org message board.

Capt. Mike's Delta Queen Log. I'd like to mention just one series of postings out of many fantastic ones that made the message board so great: Capt. Mike Williams' Delta Queen Log of 2002 when Capt. Mike took care of the Delta Queen when she was laying on idle, whith uncertain future. Youll find it in the steamboats.org archives.

Today's message board was introduced in May 2006, after the old message board software was repeatedly hit by spam attacks and didn't have the features to block these spammers effectively. Well, the rest is history, I'm actually very happy with the new message board software as it made maintenance of the message board much, much easier and less time consuming. Almost unbelievable: since May 2006 there are more than 12,000 postings on the new board, that is an average of 15 postings per day.

Rest of the Story. Well, the rest of the story is told quickly: The most important step for steamboats.org at all is one you probably didn't even recognize as the website didn't change much. But in the background I moved from single static pages to a content management software, feeding all the content from a database now. This took me about 4 weeks of full time work in the summer of 2007. Not an important step for you, but very important for me as it again made the maintenance of the website much easier and less time consuming. Without the new message board and this new content management software I'm not sure whether I'd be able to still maintain this website at all.

Steamboats.org grew over the time and is huge now. This is great! But it also costs a lot of time, and I'm still running it as a non-profit website, just in my spare time on evenings and weekends. The advertizing you see on the site just covers the cost. But that's fine :-) All the joy we have with this website, all the good friends we made through this website is much, much better than anything money can ever buy.

That's the end of the story so far. It'll continue as soon as the Delta Queen is save and sound, cruising as overnight passenger vessel in 2009. THis for sure will start a new chapter in the history not only for the Delta Queen but also for steamboats.org and all the fans of this wonderful steamboat.

Thank you to all who helped us in one or the other way over the years to make steamboats.org what it is today. Thank you very much!