Fishing Lives — a public archive platform built by SR7

An SR7 project, not a client commission. Fishing Lives is a free public archive of fishing boats, crews and harbour communities from Britain and Ireland — built, run and paid for by SR7 Web Design.

Visit the live site →

What it is

Fishing Lives is an archive of fishing boats and the people who worked them. Anyone can browse it for nothing. Members can add a boat, upload photographs and write down what they remember. It covers Britain and Ireland, past and present.

I built it and I run it. There is no client on this one — it is included here because it is the clearest example of the kind of work that does not fit on a brochure site: accounts, contributions, moderation, rights handling and a catalogue that has to stay usable as it grows.

Why it exists

Most photographs of working boats are in drawers, albums and lofts. The people who can name the crew in them are not getting any younger. Once a photograph is thrown out with a house clearance, that is the end of it.

The requirement was a place where those photographs could be uploaded easily by people who are not especially confident with computers, kept in order, and — this is the part that mattered most — kept under the control of whoever contributed them.

What I built

• A custom WordPress theme built for the archive, rather than a stock theme with a gallery plugin bolted on.
• A vessel catalogue — every boat gets its own page, with photographs, details and a place for discussion.
• Search and filtering across the whole catalogue: free text search, plus filters for port letters and numbers, length, vessel type, decade and status, with sorting and pagination on top.
• Browsing by harbour and by decade, because that is how people actually look for a boat they half remember.
• Free membership, with a contribution route for adding a boat or a photograph.
• Stories, for the longer accounts that do not belong on a single boat page.

The system behind it

Most of the real work is in a custom plugin, Fishing Lives Core, currently at version 1.9.3 and still in active development. The plugin holds everything the archive needs, so the site could be redesigned tomorrow without losing any of it. What it does:

• Photograph privacy pipeline — contributions are handled so that nothing becomes public before it is meant to.
• Moderation dashboard — every submission is checked by a moderator before it appears anywhere on the site.
• Rapid triage tools, for working through a queue of submissions quickly without cutting corners.
• Duplicate detection and merging — the same boat gets submitted more than once under different spellings, and the records have to be merged without losing anybody’s contribution.
• Safe photograph reassignment, for when a photograph turns out to belong to a different boat than the one it was filed under.
• Member notifications, so contributors hear back when their submission is published.
• Boat discussions, so people can add what they know to a boat page.
• Reports and enquiries workflow, with replies handled inside the admin rather than in a mailbox.

Handling other people’s photographs

This is the part of the build most people would not think about, and it took as long as the catalogue did. Photographs contributed to the archive stay the copyright of the person who contributed them. The site publishes contributor and copyright terms, and there is a proper takedown route for anyone who finds an image of theirs and wants it removed.

Nothing is published automatically. Every submission passes a moderator first. That is slower, and it is the only responsible way to run an archive built out of other people’s family photographs.

Measurement and automation

Google Analytics 4 event tracking is built into the plugin across the whole contribution funnel, not just as a page-view counter — so it is possible to see where somebody starts a submission and gives up, which is the only way to make the process easier. Analytics is wired in through Google Site Kit, with a cookie consent layer in front of it.

On a phone

The catalogue, the filters and the contribution flow all work on a phone. That matters more here than on most sites: a lot of contributions start with somebody photographing an old print on a kitchen table.

Where it stands

Live, public and growing, with the catalogue searchable by boat, harbour or decade, and free membership open. Development is ongoing — the plugin has been through nine minor versions so far. There is also an advertising route on the site for anyone who wants to support it.

I have not published visitor or member figures here, because I would rather show you the thing working than a number you would have to take my word for.

More work

• SR7 Transport — the other SR7-owned build, with a live quote tool and a job management system
• KPM First Aid Training — a client rebuild with a custom plugin behind it
• Treemasters — a trade site built to get the phone ringing
• Back to all work

Need something more than a brochure site?

Accounts, submissions, moderation, notifications, a catalogue that has to stay usable as it grows — if what you need is closer to a small piece of software than a website, this project is the proof I can build it. Get a quote or call 07538 227194.