About Virtual Swanage

About Virtual Swanage

The Virtual Swanage website was started in August/September 1996 by Brian and Andrew Dorey on their Amiga 1200 computer to experiment with building webpages as a hobby which went on to become a successful web design agency.

The first version of the Virtual Swanage website had 5 pages with the following:

  • Home page intro
  • Small photo gallery
  • Cycle routes page
  • Police speed trap locations
  • Business listing page which had 2 businesses that also had websites in the area.

The website has grown considerably since its launch and now has over 2500 pages, events, business listings, and photos of Swanage and the Isle of Purbeck.

We also hosted a popular community forum for several years but with the arrival of Facebook, many of the forum users moved there to discuss local issues. 

With the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Virtual Swanage website in 2016 we found some of the previous styles and layouts the website has used in the past.

You can click on the small images below to view the full-size screenshots of the website.

2001 website
2001
2005 website
2005
2008 website
2008
2009 website
2009
2015 website
2015