The story of the longest running Blackpool FC fansite
Feature by INOIT
Updated Tuesday, 11th May 2010
Seasiders.net finally called it a day on Friday 12th May 2006 after nearly a decade online and like its mailing list (which still continues) can both trace their origins back to the mid 90's.
Ironically after following Blackpool's fortunes in the lower leagues throughout this period from 1996 the subsequent season after closing the Seasiders returned back to the Championship after a 29 year absence in 2007 and the spectacularly they achieved Premier League status in 2010 becoming the 44th team to play in the top flight. That's football!
First Blackpool FC fans site:
 | Screenshot of the original BASIL website |
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In website terms and for the record Chris Tomlinson's BASIL website was first of what could now be referred to as a true unofficial fans site. It was his site bult by himself and hosted on his University server where he was studying which introduced those very lucky few Seasiders fans who were capable of using and enjoying the internet to news about Blackpool FC and long before the days of annoying adverts, pop-ups, viruses and spyware had been unleashed on the masses.
The "Basil" website was accompanied by the way with a image of the infamous TV glove puppet Basil Brush on screen and contained just about everything you would expect from a modern website today and probably did more than any other football site to show what could be achieved oand to encourage other fans to produce their own site and publish online. Basil quickly went the way of many fans site over the years and although it remained online for sometime it went into limbo was not being updated. In this case however, Chris had actually moved on and was unable to get access to update the site off campus!
"It's not Orange, It's Tangerine!" rises from Basil's ashes
 | Screen shot of the original INOIT website |
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Within a year of Basil's decline and probably inspired by the rise in fans site generally across the internet a young IT expert Steve Melrose launched his own topical Blackpool FC website called "It's Not Orange It's Tangerine" or INOIT for short. INOIT also benefited by being hosted by a local Blackpool hosting who offered generous free-hosting for his site. INOIT set out to be different - a bit of interactive fun whilst reporting on all things Tangerine. What it did achieve was the setting up of a long running "Tangerine mailing list" which proved a very popular hit from the outset and still exists today with many of the original members still involved.
INOIT was to prove to be the Blackpool FC ground breaking site eventually introducing regular news and updates and features which saw visitor numbers climb and enabled the website to sponsor Phil Clarkson's first team shirt and was an early indicator of how BFC online fans could work together and raise funds to support the club.
At this time I had moved to the East Coast but fed with regular editions of the Evening Gazette and with what was then fairly expensive equipment I began with permsision from the paper to simply reproduced match reports and photos from a posted edition of the Evening Gazette it gave fans a chance to learn how Seasiders were progressing.
The technology to scan and reproduce images and text was available but software was buggy and the hardware as I mentioned was hideously expensive but match reports for the first time were being read online within days of publication and long tme before even the newspapers had truly recognised the usefulness and the impact of the internet. At this time the internet was accessed on a dial up modem but the speeds were originally painstakingly slow but were quickly increasing having started with a 14.4k Modem it soon rose to 28.8k then 33.6k before finally reaching 56k. Speeds which finally made updating websites a lot quicker and easier.
With the demise of Basil soon the two sites were working together and receiving a great response from BFC fans around the globe who despite the lowly status of the club its supporters were at this time receiving a stunning service from its fans sites and comparable with some of the top premiership clubs who had the money to invest in decent club sites.
 | Screen shot of the re-launched official site in 2000 |
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On Saturday 22n February 1997 Blackpool FC launched itself onto the internet with the club's new website designed by Arnold School and accessed by the Fylde provider Cyberscape. The site included club history, stadium details, player information it was hoped to expand to include match reports, news and a feedback page. Sandy Taylor of Cybescape added
"Ultimately they could be selling match tickets or merchandise over he Internet. By the end of the year 3 million UK users will be connected." Sadly the site never lived up to it's billing and within months appeared out of date and un maintained in fact visitors were left with an image of Andy Preece staring out into cyberspace each week from the home page and disappointingly he was still there long after he'd left the club who having fallen out with the site hosts had also fired the webmaster!.
Seasiders.Net appears online
Both INOIT and my own fan site agreed to merge under a new banner during 1997 and "Seasiders.net" was formed as the first truly independent fans website to which it remained until 2006.
Whilst securing the Seasiders.net domain Steve also obtained
www.blackpoolfc.co.uk at a time when no club site existed and he wanted to stop it falling into the wrong hands should the club in teh future build a website although to be honest there did not look to be anything materialising on the horizon. One of the interesting requirments when it was transferred back to the club was to ensure it never befell the demise of the previous site and indeed this is the the domain that the official site is now officially recognised "Blackpoolfc.co.uk"- not that any credit for ensuring the domain did not fall into the wrong hands was ever forthcoming!
 | Screenshot of the original Seasiders.net website |
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Seasiders.net launched at just the time that things really got interesting online and indeed surfing speeds began to rise - indeed some areas were beginning to use ISDN and early broadband connections which enabled surfers to view pages instantaneously rather than sat waiting for them to appear. The arrival of cheap TV capture cards also enabled us to consider providing our first movie goal clips of BFC online. One of our first attempts wasn't in fact a recognised movie file but was of an animated gif of the Pool vs Plymouth game in 1998 they beat us 3-0 and a couple of weeks later visitors were able to download an actual movie clip of the Seasiders 3-3 draw at Deepdale.
Text messaging on Seasiders.net
 | Seasiders.net introduces WAP text messaging |
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Suddenly this opened up an exciting new chapter for Seasiders.net who were now having their own match reports prepared by John Secker within hours of a home game finishing whilst still providing a copy of all the Gazette news and reports. Gerry Wolstenholme began writing our historical features and we already had columnists from BSA, North Lancs Seasiders, Leyland & Chorley Seasiders and together with John Aspinall's Pool Prediction League on board this was avery busy and active site.
The early TV clips which used to take hours not only to prepare on even the latest PC's at the time but upload and I use to despair sometimes at the length of time they would eat up and how many times the dialup modem would drop its connection or the upload simply die after completing nearly 97% of the file transfer - so much is now different and easier these days eh!
We soon attracted interest from the club but not the kind of interest I'd hoped for! A call at my workplace meant I then ensued a frantic 300 mile round trip to Bloomfield Road after being called to attend a meeting with both Karl Oyston and then Sales marketing manager Andy Morley. It was mistakenly hoped this would be some way of forging a new co-operation and partnership between both a fans website and the official side.
Instead and unforgettably I was pretty much berated over what proved to be a mix-up over an unpaid bill for shirt sponsorship that had no relevance to the site or myself for that matter it being a scheme run by my fellow editor and for which although I personally was not responsible for and to be fair hadn't much of a clue about. But the club were adamant Seasiders.net themselves should play. I still today cannot describe my disappointment at that meeting but suffice to say matters were settled instantly when I produced my own cheque book. Still I harboured no hard feelings and Seasiders.net with brilliant fans support went on to provide over £2000 pounds worth of sponsorship for Blackpool FC over the following seasons.
The website might have evolved over the years and had its hiccups and so did the Tangerine mailing list which has been forever linked to Seasiders.net being the first real forum for Pool fans online to discuss and debate topics which was famously spammed probably by a jealous young PNE fan which brought the list to its knees and blocked certain email accounts including my own which took days to clear.
It had 23 members when it started - and was initially run by Chris Tomlinson on the University of Central London's servers (without management knowledge!). Steve Dunthorpe reminded me earlier this year of a famous message sent in 2001 by Steve Melrose which summed up the mailing list "'We are in a play-off semi-final in the next few days, stadium work is set to begin this week and this mailing list has had more than 100 messages in the last 24 hours. At least 50 per cent of those messages have been about pies.'
You had to be there, I guess....
In the late 90's the website began introducing a new text messaging a service ahead of its time and completely free. We also quickly saw the usefulness of mobile phones encouraging fans to ring in with live match reports which could then be made as an audio file that you could download and play on your PC.
Trying to update a website whilst receiving, encoding and uploading phone calls made for a hectic afternoon when Pool were playing and I couldn't get to a game!
In fact when when Blackpool toured the Caribbean Seasiders.net was able to feed the Radio link from "Radio ZIZ" the local Caribbean station to online fans in the Uk and they were treated to live if indeed comical commentary of Blackpool's games against St kitts & Nevis during the Summer of 2000.
Visitor numbers seriously started booming at this time as indeed did the internet as a whole and Seasiders.net bandwidth usage rocketed however on the horizon was a new network known as the Unofficial Football Network or the UFN which later began to be known as the Total Football Network. Seasiders.net was invited to join this new independent fans hub that promised to retain the individuality of each of the fans websites in return for hosting and advertising rights.
Seasiders.net reaches the millenium and new fans sites such as AVFTT appear.
 | Screenshot of the original AVFTT website |
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Throughout this period a series of new Blackpool FC fans sites came and went which we did our best to support and give advice and which also saw the introduction of AVFTT.Com under the rivals network banner.
We worked with AVFFT.com to introduce the successful Blackpool FC Fansites Player of the year award which was first presented to club captain Ian Hughes back in 2000. Shortly after the arrival of AVFTT Blackpool FC along with most Football League Clubs sold their online rights to Premium TV and along came the much dreaded subscription services and the clampdown on photo, fixture and live streaming licences which are still very much in place today.
The golden days of a free internet leaving us behind as a number of clubs alienated unnoficial fans sites up and down the country in order to boost their own club profits by obliterating any opposition.
Some however were able to adopt a more pragmatic approach and decided to co-exist alongside existing fans sites something which originally Blackpool FC at the time could be proud but slowly the support ebbed away over the following years.
Seasiders.net moves to the footy-mad networkThen the Total Football Network folded when the internet bubble famously burst in 2001 which took a number of famous online names to the wall. Seasiders.net lost its free hosting and eventially found sanctuary with the new "footy-mad" network of fans sites. Whilst we were initially forced to lose our independent look and had to adopt the template design of the footy-mad networks we managed to at least retain our own logo and our original contributors.
The footy-mad years from 2001 whilst they signalled the start of a slow decline allowed the site to support new projects such as birth of a series of fabulous books by Gerry Wolstenholme which were made available through the site to online fans in the UK and further afield.
Always looking out for new ideas we produced fixture wallpapers and an innovative new BFC Toolbar as well as providing once again links to BFC goal clips. Baseball caps, T shirts and a car sticker were made available and sold at cost as we also resurrected the 70's tower logo.
After finally losing yet another news editor early in the 2005-6 season the number of actual contributors fell to its lowest since the site began.
You can get tired of a website and a website can grow tired of you and in some respects this is true of Seasiders.net. After 1000's of articles features photographs images and stories there comes a time when you wish to become like any other supporter. One who enjoys his afternoon at the game and can go home without rushing back and then spending hours afterwards and during the week having to maintain a website about it. It was time for a break.
More significantly it was also not as much fun as it once was with the restrictions that are enforced upon you that just didn't even exist when we first began. The internet has moved on as well with far more commercial sites than there ever has been.
Whilst amazingly the club may not have progressed all that much on the field until the remarkable 10 game unbeaten run which swept them into the Championship in May 20007 in all that time the online community that is BFC along with its websites, lists and messageboards must be quite unique - it is heartwarming to see the fans getting it right and in particular with Blackpool FC the fans did get it right. Proving yet again that although we may not yet be a top club thats not to say we can't have decent fansites.
Right from the start Seasiders fan were given an extraordinary headstart with an online presence that many lower league clubs could only dream about and have enjoyed ever since and Seasiders.net wsa privileged to have played their small but hopefully memorable part.
If you asked me of the best moments there are so many! - simply working with some brilliant contributors was always a highpoint and there have been so many I have been very fortunate. For myself I enjoyed writing reviews and other articles for both national newspapers and monthly magazines and this has always been a bonus of being a Blackpool site editor helping spread the Tangerine gospel even further whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Assisting the hundreds of Pool and other club fans who used our feedback to ask questions and deal with enquiries (god help the remaining sites when we are gone!) and of course meeting fellow supporters and encouraging contributors. Finally helping to provide a truly independent voice and allowing those sections of supporters with differing views to have a platform to freely publish them.
On behalf of all the people that worked on the Seasiders.net and the (continuing) mailing list I'd like to thank the following whose contributions and support at some stage or another we are forever in your debt.
Peter Gillatt Seasiders.net Editor
Steve Melrose
John Secker
Gerry Wolstenholme
Phill Heywood
Mark Orr
John Cross
Rob Frowen
Russell Pinfold
Cary Crusiau
Damian Feeney
Phil Trow
Matthew Williams
Chris Reece
Dave Lardner
John Woodman
Simon Mason
Mick Squires
David Squires
Derek Cross
Duncan Adams
John Aspinall
Stephen Yarwood
Stee Jackson
Matty Lewtas
Joe Orban
Mick Severn
Roy Calley
Pete Seddon
Ray Carr
Geoff Banting
Simon Bennett
Dean Roscoe
Han van Eijden
Andy Morley
Ken McGill
Stefano Marzaroli
Tony Green
Alan Ainscow & Family
Gary Broughton
Les Holmes and everyone at esagroup
TFN and all at Future Publishing
Tim Hartley at Sport First Newspaper.
Luke Nicoli at 442 Magazine.
WSC
And the hundreds of you who kindly gave us your assistance, shared your knowledge and gave us your valuable contributions. If I've missed you off please accept my humble apologies 10 years can dim the memory somewhat.
Seasiders.net was also extremely proud to have been sponsors of the following:
Official Blackpool FC PA Team Announcements 2000/1
Official Directors Box Sponsors of the Macclesfield Fixture 2000/1
Official Blackpool FC Match Programme "Great Games" Articles 2001/2
Official Blackpool FC sponsors of Goalkeepers Caps - 2001/2
Official Sponsors of BPMCC Magazine since 2001
The Independent Fans Websites Player of the Year Award since 2000
Contributors to the Official Matchday magazine since 2001
Peter Gillatt
Seasiders.net Editor
Postscript - From 2006 to the Summer of 2010 the site renamed "the Seasiders" continued and was retained on footy-mad" until Blackpool's promotion to the Premier League when the site returned to its original former name of "It's not Orange, It's Tangerine" or simply INOIT.
