The Virtual Marine Arsenal is just a simple directory trying to compile some stuff (mostly software) which may be directly related to the naval architecture and marine engineering interests. The first version had been released in 1997. The active development has been stopped in June 2005.

After almost ten years later (see Picture.1) I decided for an update! It took about eleven weeks to build the new structure which is database driven this time and move the old data to the new site. The work was not that straightforward tough...

While moving the data by hand I have understood that many software entries on the old directory were not exist anymore.  In that relatively short time frame, more of them had been swallowed by the several software cartels of the 21.Century. On the other hand there is also a much more important incident: The Rise of The Open Source!

The most important part of the open source is not the money but the freedom and even the future of the humanity may be directly related to the success or failure of the open source communities somehow.

As a secondary effect, the software cost has also importance specially for the future of so called third and fourth world countries.

By the way I am not against the commercial software and use when required, there is nothing wrong with that but this matter is a little complicated.

First Stage Completed

Since you were reading this page it means the first stage of the site update has been completed. The old data has been cleaned, updated, corrected and also moved to this new sub domain.

The New Version Launched as Today

Since the shell structure has been almost completed there are much work to do for getting ready to the cruise.

The directory component is far from complete yet but before adding more data and content I had to upload it to the host. Since the site has been developed on my localhost, the cruising conditions were not rough, very calm indeed. So lets see it's performance on the real stormy conditions.

Second Stage

If everything goes well or possible problems solved after a trial of about one month, the second stage of the update work may begin. This work will be in two parts;

1. Updating the directory which is named as Virtual Marine Arsenal. So much data waiting to be processed.
2. Adding content for the new Ship's Log section. Actually this will be mostly a translation work for the beginnig. Indeed I have the content data available in my main site which is linked on the above menu as "Mühendishane". The problem is all of them written in Turkish and I don't like the translation works. Anyway, I will start somehow and this section will be all new for the VMA97.

Third Stage

The old site had a marine related 3D models section once but it had been closed for several reasons long time ago. I also plan re-activate this section again with much more content possibly in the first quarter of the 2016, if I am still alive in this time frame.

Fourth Stage

Actually I made the core work for this stage at first and tested it. This feature was multi language content. The planned additional content languages had been configured as

1. العربية
2. 中国
3. Français
4. 日本人
5. Español
6. Melayu
7. Português
8. Русский
9. اردو
10. Türkçe

But after three additional  languages my CMS setup had experienced serious performance drawbacks and I could not able to find a solution for that matter so dropped this plan at last stage. The multi-language feature may be even canceled.

And

The site may likely contain errors so you can contact me about them or something else.

23-07-2015 / Üsküdar

Picture.1) Screenshot for homepage of the previous version of Virtual Marine Arsenal as today. The last update was 19.June.2005 with FreeShip. The next update came almost ten years later!